Executing the Plan: Key Processes and Priorities, Explained

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Executing the Plan: Key Processes and Priorities

Project Management · Chapter 8: Driving Project ExecutionSection 8.1 · lesson 44 of 7315 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

Carrying out the approved plan through authorization, records and regular review.

  • Explain how the baseline guides execution and changes only through formal change control
  • Describe work authorization and the problems that unauthorized work causes
  • Distinguish deliverables, activities and milestones, and work performance data from work performance information
  • Apply the plan-do-check-act loop to a single work package

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Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (2,198 words). Read along, or search it.

Opening Case

Two People, One Unassigned Task

Two capable people, four days of work, and one deliverable. How did that happen? Priya is the project manager for a new appointment-reminder service at Willowbrook Community Clinics, a made-up network of four clinics. In week two, she asks Marcus, a developer, for an update. He has spent about two days writing the wording for the reminder messages. Then Elena, a patient-services analyst, mentions that she has spent two days on the same templates. Neither was assigned the task. Marcus saw it on the plan, and assumed nobody had started. A clinic manager had asked Elena, informally, to get the messages sorted. Now two drafts disagree on tone and length, and the launch date leaves no slack. Who failed here? By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to say.

Process Groups

Where Executing Fits in the Life Cycle

To answer that, start with where this work sits. A project moves through a life cycle, from the first idea to a finished, handed-over result. Alongside it, the work of managing is sorted into five process groups: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. They're not rigid stages. Planning is mostly done before the main work begins, but executing and monitoring run side by side for most of the project. And planning returns briefly whenever an approved change forces part of the plan to be rewritten. This lesson is about executing: the part of the life cycle where the planned work is actually carried out, and its results begin to exist.

Baseline

The Approved Plan Becomes the Measuring Stick

What gets carried out is the approved plan: what will be delivered, in what order, by whom, and at what cost. Helen, the network director who sponsors the project, approved Priya's plan before the work began. Once a plan is approved, its scope, schedule and cost become the baseline: the fixed reference that actual work is measured against. A plan, while it's being written, can be drafted, argued over and revised freely. A baseline has been agreed and fixed as a measuring stick. It changes only through formal change control. If people quietly adjust their own part of the work, the baseline still exists on paper, but nobody can tell what the work is measured against. So execution carries out the plan. Where the plan proves wrong, the remedy is a recorded change, not private improvisation.

Three Questions

Planning, Executing and Controlling Differ

The three middle groups answer three different questions. Planning asks what should happen. Executing makes it happen. Monitoring and controlling asks whether it's happening as planned, and what to do if it isn't. A manager in mid-project can slide into the wrong one: planning again while authorized work waits, or doing work without ever checking it against the baseline.

Core Activity

Directing and Managing Project Work

The central activity of executing has an official name: directing and managing project work. It means carrying out the planned work, producing its deliverables, and keeping a record of what happens along the way. Directing sounds like giving orders. In practice, Priya assigns work so each person knows what's expected, and coordinates people, materials and tools so work happens in a sensible order. She makes sure outputs are actually produced, and that observations, issues and decisions get recorded as they happen. And when the plan no longer fits reality, she raises a change request, a formal proposal to alter the baseline. Once a change is approved, she sees it carried out.

Work Authorization

Clearing a Named Owner to Start

It starts with work authorization: the recorded permission that clears a named person or team to start a specific piece of work, at a specific time. The unit is usually a work package: a small, defined piece of work with a named owner, a described output, and a place in the schedule. A useful authorization says what the work is, what output is expected, who owns it, and when it may start and is due. It also says what resources it may use, what makes the output acceptable, and who the owner reports to. It needn't be elaborate. A signed work order, a card on a shared task board, or a short written message all work, if it's unambiguous and easy to find. Authorization is also about order. You can't test a reminder message before it's written, so work is cleared only when its prerequisites are ready.

Common Problem

Why Unauthorized Work Causes Trouble

Unauthorized work, begun without that recorded clearance, causes trouble even when the person is capable and means well. Two people may do the same job without knowing it. Work may start before its inputs are ready, and have to be redone. Hours and materials get spent that appear nowhere in the baseline, so the cost and schedule picture becomes false. Extra features creep in, because nobody defined the limit of the work. And if something goes wrong, it's unclear who was responsible. None of this accuses anyone of bad intent. The project simply can't manage work it doesn't know exists.

Two Views

Central Clearance Versus Pulled Work

How tightly should work be cleared? There are two strong positions. One says central, recorded authorization is safest. A single record prevents duplication, protects the baseline, and keeps accountability clear, especially on big, spread-out teams. The other says the people closest to the work know best what's ready. Waiting for clearance slows them, so teams pull work from an agreed list, within limits the manager sets. How much delay clearance adds, and how often duplication really happens, are factual questions, and reported experience varies by setting. How much freedom people should have is a question of values. This course takes no side. But both positions share one requirement: someone knows, and has recorded, who is working on what.

Key Terms

Deliverables, Activities and Milestones

Authorized work produces things, and three terms keep them apart. A deliverable is a verifiable output. It exists when the work is done, and it can be handed over and checked against its acceptance criteria. An activity is work carried out over time, named with a verb: draft, interview, install. A milestone is a point in time that marks a significant event. It has no duration, and produces nothing itself. At Willowbrook, drafting the reminder wording is an activity. A tested set of reminder messages is a deliverable. Templates approved is a milestone. Effort isn't output. A team can be busy all week on activities, and still have no deliverable to show. So progress is judged by deliverables that exist and meet their criteria. Until one is checked and approved, treat it as submitted, not finished.

Data and Information

Raw Observations Versus Analyzed Results

Work also leaves a trail. Work performance data are the raw observations collected while work is done: hours, tasks started, items finished, dates, and problems reported. On their own, data describe what happened, but not whether it's good or bad. Work performance information is what data become after analysis: compared with the baseline, combined, and interpreted. Here are some made-up numbers. Marcus's package planned 16 hours this week, and 4 items finished. His timesheet shows 22 hours, and 3 items done. Those are data. Set against the plan, they become information: more effort than planned, and behind on output. That deserves Priya's attention. Two cautions. Define started and finished, or one person's finished means typed up, and another's means checked. And late data are of little use, because the point of recording is to catch a problem while there's still time to act.

Manager Priorities

Four Priorities That Pull Against Each Other

Four priorities guide a manager through execution. First, protecting the baseline: any proposed departure goes through the change process, instead of happening silently. Second, keeping people productive: each person has clear work, the tools and information to do it, and no reason to wait. Third, removing blockers. A blocker is anything outside a person's control that stops their work, like a missing approval or an unanswered question. Team members can often only report a blocker, so clearing it is largely the manager's job. Fourth, keeping stakeholders informed: the sponsor, the people who'll use the result, and other teams whose work depends on it. These aren't ranked, and they pull against each other. A quick fix for a blocker can tempt a shortcut that breaks the baseline. So in each case, Priya asks which priority she's serving and which she's putting at risk, and she records the choice.

Quick Check

Six People Idle for Two Days

Quick check. On another clinic project, six team members finish their assigned items by Wednesday. Then they sit idle for two days, because nobody told them what to start next. Which priority slipped? Pause, and decide. Keeping people productive. The work was fine, and nothing outside the team stopped it. They simply had no clear next work. The fix was in the manager's hands: authorize the next packages before the current ones finish. Nothing here touched the baseline or the stakeholders. But two idle days for six people is twelve person-days, lost to a missing assignment.

Improvement Loop

Plan, Do, Check, Act as a Habit

Holding those priorities together takes a rhythm: the plan-do-check-act loop. Plan a piece of work and its expected result. Do the work. Check the actual result against the expected one. Then act on what the check showed: accept the result, correct it, or adjust the plan, and begin again. Used at a set interval, it becomes a habit. A day's task, a week's work, and a whole work package can each run through the same four steps. Each step fails in its own way. Skip planning, and there's no expected result to compare against. Work without recording, and there are no data to examine. Drop the review, usually because everyone is busy, and problems grow unseen. Miss the last step, and a finding never becomes a decision, or a fix is made but never recorded as a change, so the baseline silently drifts. It's only a loop when all four steps happen, and the result of the last one feeds the next plan.

Worked Example

One Package Around the Loop

Watch one package go around the loop. The baseline names it: set up text reminders at the Northside clinic. Marcus owns it. It's acceptable when 20 test reminders arrive on test phones at the right times. Priya authorizes it in writing, once a prerequisite, the clinic's cleaned-up phone list, is confirmed finished. Marcus does the work, and records the start date, his hours, and which steps are done. Those records are work performance data. At the end of the week, Priya sets them against the baseline. Sending is set up, but testing hasn't begun: the text service hasn't approved the clinic's account. That's information: the package is behind because of a blocker, not a lack of effort. Priya chases the approval, and tells Helen about the short delay. When it comes through, the test passes, and the tested service is offered for approval as the deliverable. Then Priya authorizes the next package, carrying what this week taught her into the next plan.

Quick Check

Texts Still Sent at Three in the Morning

Quick check. In Monday's review, the team sees that some reminder texts go out at three in the morning. Everyone agrees that's bad. A month later, they still go out at three. Which step of the loop is missing? Pause, and decide. Act. The review did its job: the team saw the problem and agreed on it. What never happened was a decision, with an owner, to change the send time. It isn't a missing review, because the problem was found. And planning isn't the gap: daytime texts were expected clearly enough to spot the miss.

Common Mistakes

Five Execution Pitfalls and Their Causes

Five pitfalls recur in execution, and each has a recognizable cause. Starting before the plan is ready: pressure to show progress sends people to work with nothing to measure it against. Unclear authority: people aren't sure who may start work, approve a change, or settle a conflict, so they either wait or act alone. Unrecorded decisions: choices made in a hallway that nobody writes down, so the baseline no longer matches the work. Treating data as information: reading hours worked as proof of progress. A team can log long hours, and be far behind. And heroics instead of process: individuals rescuing a deadline with extreme hours. It hides the true state of the work, and can't be repeated reliably.

Case Resolved

The Process Failed, Not the People

Back to Priya and the duplicated templates. So, who failed? Priya's answer is the process, not either person. The plan named the template package, but nobody was cleared to own it, and no record showed who had started. She names Elena, whose clinic knowledge is closer to patient wording, as the single owner, with Marcus reviewing the technical limits. She records that on the shared task board. Everyone now logs a start entry before beginning a package, and records wording decisions in the same place. A short start-of-week review compares the board with the plan, so two entries against one package show up the same day. The trade-off is some friction: a few minutes of logging a day, and Marcus's draft set aside. In exchange, every package has one owner, and clinic managers can see who holds what, so informal requests that bypass the plan fall away.

Key Takeaways

Baseline, Authorization, Deliverables and the Loop

To recap: execution carries out the plan that was fixed as the baseline, and changes it only by recorded change. Work starts with a recorded authorization, so someone always knows who is working on what. Progress is judged by deliverables checked against their criteria, not by how busy people look. Data become information only when they're compared with the plan. And the plan-do-check-act loop holds it all together, as long as all four steps happen.

About Project Management at UPI Study

Project Management (Business 230) is a self-paced online course of 73 video lessons in 12 chapters, from starting and defining a project to planning, budgets, scheduling tools, proposals, contracts, execution, monitoring, closure, teams and certification. It carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits.

Every lesson transcript is free on pages like this one, and the videos are free with a free UPI Study account. Enrolling adds a practice quiz after each lesson, the graded work and final exam that earn the credit, lifetime access, and an official transcript on completion. UPI Study has helped over 130,000 students with college credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

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Why take it here

Why students take Project Management with UPI Study

How projects are planned, run and closedProject Management teaches how to deliver work on time and on budget: scope, schedules, the critical path, budgets and earned value, risk, contracts, monitoring and closing a project, and leading the team. It is a common course in business, management and engineering degrees.
Credit at a fraction of the priceThe same 3 credits can cost $750 or more at a US college. Here it is one payment, self-paced, with lifetime access.
Finish your degree soonerTransfer credits reduce the courses you still owe, so you can graduate earlier or lighten a heavy semester.
Strengthen an applicationA completed college-level course on an official transcript shows admissions and scholarship committees you can do the work.
Study on your own scheduleNo start dates, no deadlines. Watch the lessons, practice, and take the final when you are ready.
130,000+students helped with college creditsACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

Where the credit goes

Universities that work with NCCRS

Project Management carries a NCCRS credit recommendation. These universities work with NCCRS; some are UPI Study's signed partners. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

Thomas Edison State UniversityThomas Edison State UniversitySigned partnerUniversity of the PeopleUniversity of the PeopleSigned partnerCharter Oak State CollegeCharter Oak State CollegeSigned partnerStrayer UniversityStrayer UniversitySigned partnerColumbia Southern UniversityColumbia Southern UniversitySigned partnerIndiana TechIndiana TechSigned partnerPenn StatePenn StateWorks with NCCRSSouthern New Hampshire UniversitySouthern New Hampshire UniversityWorks with NCCRSSUNYSUNYWorks with NCCRS +many more cooperating universitiesFind my college →

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Executing the Plan: Key Processes and Priorities

What is the difference between a project plan and a baseline?
A plan can be drafted, argued over and revised freely while it is being written, but once it is approved, its scope, schedule and cost become the baseline: the fixed reference that actual work is measured against. A baseline changes only through formal change control. If people quietly adjust their own part of the work instead, nobody can tell what progress is measured against.
Why is work authorization important during project execution?
Work authorization is the recorded permission that clears a named person or team to start a specific work package at a specific time. Without it, two people may duplicate the same job, work may start before its inputs are ready, untracked hours distort the cost and schedule picture, and responsibility becomes unclear. A signed work order, task board card or short written message can serve.
What is the difference between work performance data and work performance information?
Work performance data are raw observations collected while work is done, such as hours, tasks started and items finished. Work performance information is what the data become after they are compared with the baseline and interpreted. A timesheet showing 22 hours and 3 items done is data; set against a plan of 16 hours and 4 items, it shows more effort and less output than planned.
What happens when the act step of plan-do-check-act is skipped?
When the act step is missed, a problem found in review never becomes a decision with an owner, so it keeps recurring. A team may agree that reminder texts sent at three in the morning are a problem, yet a month later they still go out at three. A fix that is made but never recorded as a change also lets the baseline drift silently.

About the Project Management course

How many college credits is Project Management?
Project Management (Business 230) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
How much does Project Management cost and what is included?
$250, paid once, with lifetime access: all 73 video lessons, a practice quiz after each, the graded work and final exam, and an official transcript when you finish. Students who want several courses choose UPI Study PRO instead.
Which universities accept UPI Study credits?
UPI Study has signed partner agreements with universities such as Thomas Edison State University, University of the People and Charter Oak State College, and works with universities such as Penn State, SNHU and SUNY. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities. Use "Find my college" on this page to check yours.
How long does Project Management take?
It is self-paced with no deadlines. The 73 lessons total about 15 hours of video; most students add reading and practice time and finish in a few weeks to a few months, on their own schedule.
How are the exams done?
Quizzes and assignments are online in the course. The final exam is taken online with proctoring; a person on the UPI Study team checks assignments, usually within two days.
How do my credits reach my college?
When the course shows 100% complete, request the official transcript from your dashboard. It is sent to the college you name, and you can send it to more than one. Check your college first with "Find my college" on this page, or ask Athena.

Ready for the full course? Earn 3 credits in Project Management.

73 video lessons, a quiz after each one, and the graded work that earns the credit. Recommended for credit by NCCRS.

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Project Management
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