Understanding the Three Main Control Methods in Project Management

Every agribusiness project – whether it’s rolling out a new irrigation system, launching a crop improvement program, or managing a supply chain – carries the risk of going off track. Timelines slip, costs escalate, and outcomes fall short of expectations. The difference between a project that succeeds and one that struggles often comes down to one thing: control. In project management, three primary control methods – pre-action (prevention) controls, concurrent controls, and post-action controls – provide a structured framework for keeping projects on course at every stage, from planning through completion.

Why control methods matter in project management 🔗

Control is not a single checkpoint at the end of a project. According to Lumen Learning’s Principles of Management, the control process is a dynamic cycle – a continuous loop of setting performance standards, measuring actual performance, comparing results against those standards, analyzing deviations, and taking corrective action. This cycle repeats throughout the entire life of a project.

The three control methods correspond directly to timing – when in the project lifecycle the control is applied. Pre-action controls work before the project begins. Concurrent controls operate during execution. Post-action controls engage after the project is complete. Together, they form a comprehensive system that addresses problems at every phase rather than leaving issues to surface at the very end.

Pre-action controls: preventing problems before they happen 🔗

Pre-action controls – also called feedforward controls, preventive controls, or proactive controls – are the first line of defense. Their defining characteristic is that they are future-directed: they attempt to identify and prevent deviations from standards before those deviations ever occur.

As noted by Business Management Ideas, feedforward controls are active and aggressive in nature, allowing corrective action to be taken in advance of any problem. Rather than waiting for something to go wrong, managers scan the inputs – human resources, materials, finances, and processes – and make adjustments before work begins.

Common tools of pre-action control 🔗

In agribusiness projects, pre-action controls take several practical forms:

• Risk assessment and risk planning: Identifying potential threats – such as seasonal weather risks, supply chain delays, or pest outbreaks – and establishing contingency plans before the project launches.
• Budgeting and resource planning: Establishing detailed budgets and resource allocations before any activity begins ensures that inputs are sufficient and realistic. As Asana’s project controls guide explains, the planning phase is the opportunity to set up controls from the very start – the more detailed the plan, the less there is to manage reactively later.
• Standard setting: Defining clear quality standards, performance benchmarks, and procedural guidelines that the project team must follow. Organizational plans such as strategies, policies, and procedures are themselves a form of pre-control.
• Screening and qualification: Selecting qualified personnel, vetted suppliers, and certified materials before operations begin. This prevents mismatched inputs from entering the project system in the first place.

In an agribusiness context, a pre-action control might look like conducting soil testing and nutrient analysis before a planting season begins, so that fertilizer inputs can be optimized from day one – rather than discovering deficiencies after crop growth has already been compromised.

The key advantage of pre-action control is that correction is made before the system’s output is affected. This makes it the most cost-effective type of control, since the cost of prevention is almost always lower than the cost of fixing a problem mid-project or after completion.

Concurrent controls: course-correcting in real time 🔗

Once a project is underway, pre-action controls alone are not enough. Conditions change. Weather turns unfavorable, workers deviate from procedures, or equipment underperforms. This is where concurrent controls – also called steering controls or real-time controls – take over.

Concurrent controls monitor activities as they are happening and allow managers to intervene immediately when deviations from the plan are detected. The Lumen Learning Principles of Management resource describes concurrent control as monitoring that takes place during the process or activity itself – not before it begins and not after it ends.

How concurrent controls work 🔗

The primary goal of concurrent control is to identify problems as they develop and take corrective action before final results are affected. The key question at this stage is: “What can we do to improve things right now?”

Concurrent controls in agribusiness projects may include:

• Real-time monitoring: Continuously tracking project indicators – such as soil moisture levels, irrigation flow rates, crop growth milestones, or construction progress – against planned benchmarks. When a metric deviates, managers investigate and respond immediately.
• Direct supervision: A manager observing a task as it is being performed and correcting deviations on the spot – without waiting days for a formal review. As highlighted by Business Management Ideas, this is sometimes called “steering control” because it allows intervention while the process is still in motion.
• Feedback loops: Establishing communication channels through which field workers, technicians, or supervisors can report issues in real time. In an agribusiness project, a field worker reporting unexpected pest pressure to the project manager allows for a rapid pesticide or biological control response before damage spreads.
• Production and inventory checks: Regularly comparing actual resource consumption – seeds, fertilizer, fuel – against planned quantities to detect over- or under-use early.

The strength of concurrent control is its immediacy. Unlike post-action controls, concurrent controls can prevent damage from compounding. In agricultural projects especially – where delays in one activity can cascade into missed planting windows or disrupted harvest schedules – catching a deviation early can mean the difference between a minor setback and a project failure.

Post-action controls: learning from outcomes to improve the future 🔗

Even the best-managed projects produce surprises. Not every problem is caught by pre-action or concurrent controls. Post-action controls – also called feedback controls – come into play after the project is complete. Their purpose is not to fix the current project (that opportunity has passed) but to capture insights that improve future projects.

As the Business Management Ideas resource explains, post-action controls are historical in nature: the measured activity has already occurred, and the information derived is applied to future activities rather than to the present one. The basic objective is to help prevent the same mistakes from recurring.

Key components of post-action control 🔗

• Performance evaluation: Comparing actual outcomes against the project’s original objectives. In an agribusiness project, this might mean comparing the actual crop yield achieved to the projected yield, or comparing actual construction costs against the approved budget. Variances are analyzed to understand their causes.
• Financial statement analysis: Reviewing final project expenditures, cost overruns, and returns to assess financial performance and inform budgeting for future initiatives.
• Employee and team performance review: Assessing whether team members performed their roles effectively and identifying where training or process changes are needed.
• Lessons learned documentation: Systematically recording what worked well and what did not. Asana describes this as the post-mortem process – a structured reflection session after project completion that feeds directly into better planning for the next project.

For example, if an agribusiness project to introduce drip irrigation across a farm found that installation costs ran 30% over budget due to underestimating labor requirements, that finding becomes a documented input for the next irrigation rollout. The next project team will build more accurate labor estimates – directly because of the post-action review.

The limitation of relying solely on post-action control 🔗

Post-action control is powerful for organizational learning, but it has an important limitation: it cannot undo what has already happened. As noted in Lumen Learning’s management principles resource, modifications from feedback control can only be made after a process has been completed – meaning a situation may have fully concluded before managers even become aware of problems. This is why post-action control works best as part of a complete system that also includes pre-action and concurrent controls.

Using all three control methods together 🔗

The most effective project management approach does not rely on just one of these control methods – it integrates all three. Pre-action, concurrent, and post-action controls are not mutually exclusive; they are designed to work as a layered system that covers the project at every stage.

As the Asana project controls framework describes it, project controls operate across three phases: the planning phase (where pre-action controls are set up), the development/execution phase (where concurrent controls run), and the closure phase (where post-action reviews are conducted). Skipping any one layer creates gaps that increase project risk.

In agribusiness specifically, where external factors like weather, pest cycles, and market prices can shift rapidly, the combination of thorough upfront planning (pre-action), active monitoring and adjustment during execution (concurrent), and rigorous outcome review (post-action) creates a resilient project management system. As Wikifarmer’s project management guide points out, agribusiness projects are deeply influenced by external factors such as seasonality and weather variability – making robust control frameworks not just useful, but essential.

The four-step control process underlying all three methods 🔗

Regardless of which type of control is being applied, all three methods rely on the same underlying process. According to Lumen Learning, the four core steps are:

1. Setting performance standards: Establishing clear, attainable, and measurable benchmarks before or during the project.
2. Measuring actual performance: Collecting data on what is actually happening – through monitoring, reporting, or evaluation.
3. Comparing actual performance to standards: Identifying gaps or deviations between what was planned and what is occurring.
4. Taking corrective action: Making changes to processes, resources, or plans to bring performance back in line – or adjusting standards if they were unrealistic.

Pre-action control applies this process before work begins. Concurrent control applies it during execution. Post-action control applies it after completion, feeding findings forward into the next project cycle. The same four steps, applied at three different points in time, create a continuous improvement loop that strengthens project management over time.

What do you think? In agribusiness projects where weather and seasonal conditions can invalidate careful pre-action planning almost overnight – how much weight should project managers give to concurrent controls relative to the other two methods? And when a post-action review reveals a systemic flaw in how projects are planned, what does it take to actually change practice in the next project cycle?

References

1. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wmopen-principlesofmanagement/chapter/the-control-process/
2. https://www.businessmanagementideas.com/management/controlling/types-of-control-in-an-organisation-3-types-management/7941
3. https://asana.com/resources/project-controls
4. https://wikifarmer.com/library/en/article/project-management-essentials-for-agribusiness-success-from-planning-to-execution