Manage by Exception

The Management by Exception principle is one of the most important in terms of responsibility and morale. Members of the Project Board including the Project Manager often have responsibilities outside of the project itself, including the day to day operations of the organisations they work for. The Management by Exception principle puts project responsibility into the hands of the project team, specifically Team Leads.

If you recall, the Plans theme discussed how deliverables are mapped out in terms of what needs to be done, through product descriptions and work breakdown structures, quality, cost, risk, and scope, as known as Work Packages. Work packages also outline important information such as the resources available to complete the piece of work described.

Each stage has one or more Work Packages provided to the Team Lead by the Project Manager which outlines the product description and tolerances. The Team Lead reports on progress via Product Status Reports or Checkpoint Reports to the Project Manager.  If tolerances are breached an issue is raised to the Project Manager and corrective action may be taken to get the project back on track. The Project Manager will update the Issues Register to record the issue. 

Examples of tolerances might include:

Cost – $500 plus or minus $100
Plan – 15 days total plus or minus 2 days
Quality – user testing shows that it has 95% usability
Benefit – the outcome of the product shows 10% increase in speed

If the Team Lead finds that he/she is no longer able to deliver a product within $400-600 or between 13 to 17 days, they will raise this to the Project Manager. Otherwise, they will be expected to manage their part of the stage without worry of micromanagement or interruption. 

Each stage as a whole will have tolerances as agreed by the Project Manager and Project Board. If an entire stage tolerance is breached the Project Manager will raise this to the Project Board, another example of management by exception.

In short, Team Leads raise issues to the Project Manager if Work Package tolerances are breached and the Project Manager will raise issues to the Project Board if stage tolerances are breached. 

When tolerances are breached, exception reports and change controls will be enacted in order to get the project back on track, whether by the Project Manager within a stage, or by the Project Board at stage boundaries.