This essay will lay the groundwork on how the Alternative Technology Association under the leadership of International Project Manager, Kate Greenwood will be able to monitor and evaluate their solar project in East Timor.  It will ensure that every angle is covered to ensure that this project is successful and if there is need to improve anything to ensure the success of the project. Thus this will outline how Kate would be able to monitor the project and also to control it. Also, it will show what kind of data the project manager, Kate, should give to the CEO and stakeholders. It is this data that will make sure they know that the project is going on as they had planned for it.

In the case of project success, there is a need for a methodology to monitor how funds assigned to the project are being utilized. For this solar project in East Timor, the cost management system that I would recommend to be used is the Earned Value Management or Analysis method. This method is a mathematical one where one can measure how the project is performing in real time (Fleming & Koppelman, 2016). It can be used to for both monitoring the cost and schedules of the project. It will enable Kate, the project manager to know if the solar project in East Timor is being undertaken on budget and also be able to understand the project in-depth and if it is not on a budget she could take the corrective action to ensure it goes back on track. The reason I choose this cost and schedule-monitoring method is that it can perform both duties of monitoring how the project is using the budget it has been assigned and if the schedule of the project is being kept and everything is being done on time. It also enables the ATA better manage and measure how the solar project in East Timor is performing and its progress so far thus it gives good insight on the company.

Some of the benefits of using the Earned Value Management System include. First, it serves as an early warning system in case the East Timor will not be prosperous. The system will be able to detect whether or not the cost and schedule planned will vary and thus make the project unsuccessful when undertaken or it will face the issue as it is being implemented (Kerzner, 2013). The next benefit is there is a centralized system to control management. The supervision and recording of information across the various systems are disorganized and ineffectual. With this method though, there is a dependable central information source thus this will result in a system that is faster when reporting on the project progress and also when analyzing the data collected. Next is that one can have data to compare with in future when undertaking a similar project so that they can use it and know the dos and don’ts of the plan to make it successful. Finally, it will enable the organization monitor the funds being received through donations towards the solar project how it is being used and where it is being applied in the project hence there will be transparency in the system. Some of the advantages of the other methods include the following (Pajares, & Lopez-Paredes, 2011). In the forecasting method, it similarly to the above process has the advantage of providing the organization make decisions for its future as it uses qualitative data that has been judged by experts (Box, Jenkins, Reinsel, & Ljung, 2015). The next method is variance analysis; its advantage is that it creates a sense of responsibility accounting. It is where managers are held accountable for their actions when the project is being done hence everyone will do the project to their best of their ability (Hocking, 2013).

Some of the risks that are involved in the methods of monitoring the cost and schedule in the undertaking of the East Timor solar project include the following. In the first mode Earned Value Management System, some of the risks are that we tend not to focus on the quality of the work done in the project just achieving the values that we set for the project. Also, another risk is that it is quite costly to implement the management system and also needs to have coordination with several departments hence requires a lot of work for it to function (Naeni, Shadrokh & Salehipour, 2011). The risk involved by using the forecasting method is that there is no accurate way to forecast the happenings of the future thus there different scenarios that this technique will come up with on how the project cost and schedule will be ongoing (Box, Jenkins, Reinsel, & Ljung, 2015). For the variance analysis method, the risk in using it is that there tends to be a tendency to focus on the past projects and not on the future of the ongoing project thus they may change the project even if it may have been successful on the path they were undertaking (Hocking, 2013).

The reports that will be presented to the stakeholders and CEO will be in the following format using the format of a financial report. The data that should be shown is on how the funds received from donors is being used in the project implementation, the schedule of the project implementation and it progress as of the time the report was being reported and also how the budget that ATA has set for the East Timor solar project is being used and performance of the people in the project (Glesne, 2015). I prefer this, as it will ensure that the stakeholders and CEO are up to date with the progress of the project by receiving quarterly reports. The Governance Board should meet at every quarter to review the project progress for the length of the project, and this should involve Kate the international project manager, stakeholders, the CEO and the financial team as they all play a part in the East Timor solar project. The CEO and Board project reports should follow the format of the annual report, as it will sufficiently represent the information got from meetings they will hold (Lichtenberger, Mather, Kaufman, & Kaufman, 2012).

References

Box, G. E., Jenkins, G. M., Reinsel, G. C., & Ljung, G. M. (2015). Time series analysis: forecasting and control. John Wiley & Sons.

Fleming, Q. W., & Koppelman, J. M. (2016, December). Earned value project management. Project Management Institute.

Glesne, C. (2015). Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction. Pearson.

Hocking, R. R. (2013). Methods and applications of linear models: regression and the analysis of variance. John Wiley & Sons.

Kerzner, H. (2013). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Lichtenberger, E. O., Mather, N., Kaufman, N. L., & Kaufman, A. S. (2012). Essentials of assessment report writing (Vol. 22). John Wiley & Sons.

Naeni, L. M., Shadrokh, S., & Salehipour, A. (2011). A fuzzy approach for the earned value management. International Journal of Project Management, 29(6), 764-772.

Pajares, J., & Lopez-Paredes, A. (2011). An extension of the EVM analysis for project monitoring: The Cost Control Index and the Schedule Control Index. International Journal of Project Management, 29(5), 615-621.