Parameters of Project Control
Time: time estimate largely depends upon the size of the project itself. the larger the project more time will it take to complete the project. the time frame can be reduced partially by increasing the work force allocated to the project. However, there will always be a trade off between the number of people and time. why should this matter though? simply because, an increase in the number of people requires an increase in the management overheads in contoling all the people resource effectively. Also after a point the increase in the number of people starts to have a counter effect on the time required to complete the project. It can almost be argued that increasing the work-force on a project delays the project more often than not.
Organization: the organization of a team is of great importance for successful projects. If every member clearly knows what to do (and more importantly why he/she is to do it) then the positive results seen in the development of the project are more than evident. In an event that this has not been conveyed clearly, there is no proper sharing of responsibility with a project team which only induces delays and poor quality of work. Also, it leads the members of the team to set their own goals, which has its own obvious repercussions.
Quality: No one is interested in the technical know-how of any product. Ultimately, the product should work. I.e., it should end up doing what it is supposed to do in the right manner and at the right times. This is where the concept of quality and quality assurance stems from. This is best achieved my ensuring high standards of quality at every stage of the product development. it should never be a one time affair, which is done once the implementation phase is at a close. This is how quality is incorporated into any product as its fundamental feature rather than an add-on. ("the quality requirements for software and for its development process are often in conclict."??)
Money: A very fundamental dimension of project control. Expenses are largely decided by the labour force emplyed and it calculated in terms of man-hours. this (read labor force) is turn is evaluated on the basis of the size of the project. However, there are other factors that need to be taken into account while making cost estimations of software. Hardware and material resources are one set of things which require expenditures (these are small and very precicely calculatable). since the fundamental premise of expenditure is still labour, many labor cutting methods have been employed. These include use of tools and techniques for improved productivity, use of existing code bases to build new products, etc. Such techniques, while do cut on labour costs, have costs and expenditure of their own. Thus, in a convoluted manner, the software development slowly starts to become a cost-intensive proposition rather than a labor intensive proposition.
Information: This comes in the form of documentation. and not only technical or user documentation but also project documentation which includes information pertaning the current state of the project, various changes agreed upon and decisions made.