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Taking the Watch (Monitoring and Controlling) • 127

monitoring and controlling. The project management team will be even
less familiar with the monitoring and controlling of the project’s green
aspects. As a result of these uncertainties, a good monitoring and control-
ling program must be set up and should integrate these green aspects as
determined by the project manager and team.
Being educators, we’re always pleased when students (experienced proj-
ect managers themselves) bring their own (sometimes comical) views of
project management to our courses. One student, for example, shared the
“Six REAL Phases of a Project” with our class. This is a tongue-in-cheek
look at project management. There are many variations on this “theme,”
but we like this one.

Phase 1: Enthusiasm
Phase 2: Disillusionment
Phase 3: Panic
Phase 4: Search for the Guilty
Phase 5: Punishment of the Innocent
Phase 6: Praise and Honors for the Nonparticipants

Funny, yes. But it does contain a kernel of truth. Learn a little from this
comedy—watch for your project falling into the traps identified by this
humorous view—that captures a little bit of truth.
Monitoring and controlling the project’s output and processes will cer-
tainly help you avoid Phases 2 through 6, at least as just described.

greenality data ColleCtion and analysis
There are many effective ways to collect data on a project and they all
start with observation. Simply put, observation is about watching (hope-
fully previously identified) project indicators. One of those indicators is
the set of key project milestones. Milestones are those places in the project,
single points in time, when the execution of a planned task is complete.
Sometimes we call them “anchors” because they hold the schedule to a
fixed point, such as the end of a quarter or a date by which proposals are
due. From a green perspective, if we were doing a software project, and the
recyclable-packaging design was due on the first day of a given month, then
that is a milestone, and one of the many milestones the project manager