The Project Management Institute estimates that 14% of projects fail. Nearly half fail to complete their tasks on time, 43% exceed their budget, and 32% deliver a product that falls short of expectations for project’s progress.
Project managers can stay up to date and informed while also reacting when things don’t go as planned by tracking the project progress.
How does project tracking work?
Problems with keeping track of the project’s progress How do you measure the project’s progress? Twelve suggestions) What is project tracking?
The process of keeping track of a project’s actual progress is called project tracking. In addition to delivering a successful outcome, it involves evaluating the rate of progress in terms of time and resources.
Monitoring related resources that have been utilized at any given time and having visibility over completed tasks and milestones are also part of the project control process. Project managers either create project status reports at this point or pull them from the project tracking systems they use.
Runn is a project and resource planning tool that aids in the creation of high-level project timelines, the identification of resource bottlenecks, and the monitoring of your project’s financial performance to prevent overspending.
Importantly, project tracking aims to assist project managers in modifying deliverables like budgets and timelines based on information gathered throughout the project.
A project manager
For instance, can rebook resources for the subsequent stage until they are required and adjust the project delivery timeline if one stage of the project takes much longer than anticipated.
- Problems with keeping track of a project’s progress Project managers who are responsible for keeping track of a project’s progress and writing reports often run into the following problems:
- There was no communication. In project management, it can be challenging to obtain an accurate picture of a project’s progress without timely and efficient communication.
- Uncertain criteria or goals. It’s hard to know how close you are to finishing your project if you don’t know what success looks like.
- Creepy scope. A wide range of budgets, timelines, resource requirements, and other aspects of a project can be impacted if the scope of the project changes midway through.
- A project risk that you haven’t fully anticipated can cause a number of unanticipated problems.
You are aware, if you are involved in project management and execution, that your initial strategy can only get you so far. Your project’s budget and deadlines could be significantly impacted if your team members don’t work as scheduled.
You can begin a new project by:
- Create budgets for each role as well as for various project types like Time and Materials and Fixed Price.
- After setting a budget, you can add people and watch the real-time budget tracker move as you assign work. Each project has its own dashboard, where you can get useful project insights. You can predict where your project will end and keep track of both time-based and financial metrics.
- You will be aware to alter your plans early if the graph indicates that you are going to exceed your budget.
- You will also be able to compare the actuals of the project to your plan if you use timesheets. Use Runn’s built-in timesheets and time tracker extension, our API to create your own integration, or our native integrations to integrate actuals.
- You will be able to see how much time was actually worked compared to what was scheduled for each day, week, or month by looking at the Variance chart.
- You can always go back to the Runn planner to change your plans by adding or removing assignments or shifting your project timeframes.
Tracking becomes simpler when information is shared throughout the project, from the assignment to the project phase, budget, and schedule.
You shouldn’t collect data too frequently and nag teams for no reason as they collaborate. Other members can view the project schedule and update their progress if they have access to the project management tool.
The following contains additional suggestions for successful project tracking and reporting!
1.Choose a method for tracking project progress You can track progress using either quantitative or qualitative methods.
Methods for quantitative project tracking look at numbers like cost, time, and milestones. In contrast, qualitative methods track progress through regular team meetings and survey data.
Importantly, you must monitor the progress of your project qualitatively and quantitatively.
Pro tip: Examine your project tracking procedure at least twice a year or every quarter. Learn how the qualitative and quantitative metrics you are tracking are assisting you. Think about it:Is tracking this metric beneficial to us or just more work? Get rid of metrics for monitoring that don’t really help your team.
2.Make project tracking a team effort! Because you will need to consult with members of your team and other contributors and receive regular updates to report to higher-ups, you need everyone’s support.
Initiate tracking by bringing the entire team together.
Make use of the appropriate project tracking tools. Project tracking software can save a lot of time and eliminate a lot of the manual work involved in tracking projects. A project manager is able to quickly generate reports and gain a deeper understanding of how your project is progressing toward your goals.
- There are numerous choices, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. The project management tools you choose need to have real-time features that let you see actual progress.
- Runn project management software is easy to use and can be used to measure important goals in many ways. It has the appropriate tools for project, resource, and financial management:
- Visibility over resourcing is included in project schedules so you can see what resources you have and what you need.
- Project tracking lets everyone see where things are at and celebrates milestones.
- Before committing to a project, you can create tentative ones to see how they would affect your company.
- Performance is shown in relation to KPIs, so you can see if you’re on track or not.
Monitor your progress on a project
You don’t set objectives and stick to them. The most important thing is to set goals that help your team members accomplish your overall goal. As a result, they ought to be SMART:particular, measurable, doable, pertinent, and time-bound.
Be specific about the requirements for achieving this goal successfully to combat this. Achievable goals should be challenging but not impossible to achieve. Relevant goals should clearly tie into the bigger picture of what you want your team to accomplish. Time-bound goals should avoid ambiguity about timings.Put a clear time limit on your goal to avoid this.
Share those objectives with your coworkers and ensure that you stick to them once you have them.
Make use of checklists and milestones Every time you start a project, divide it into phases with milestones.
