Project tracking is essential for efficient project management and provides several significant benefits for companies, such as effective time tracking, risk mitigation, and increased client satisfaction. At its core, project tracking ensures that a project is finished within the time and budget constraints while maintaining high-quality standards. To master project tracking, businesses often implement various strategies.
This article explains what project tracking is, why it’s needed, and breaks down strategies that help companies ensure their teams complete projects within the allotted time and budget constraints.
What Is Project Tracking?
Project tracking is an aspect of project management that involves monitoring the progress of a project against the goals, milestones, and timelines set at the beginning. Project tracking allows project managers to oversee the project scope and development in real time, granting them opportunities to adjust resource allocation to ensure the project remains on schedule and maintains the necessary project performance standards.
Project managers need to keep track of multiple elements to ensure the efficiency of a project, including the budget, resources, schedule, and quality. Efficient project tracking alerts managers to potential challenges and issues before they happen, allowing for proactive intervention.
Why Is Project Management Tracking Important?
Project tracking provides an essential framework for successful project planning, execution, and completion. By clearly defining goals and milestones, project managers create a strategy for finishing the project within the assigned time limit while navigating budget and resource limitations. Project tracking indicates the current status of a project and where it is heading, allowing stakeholders, management, and team members to be on the same page.
Projects that don't utilize project tracking may have several negative consequences. When there isn't a clear direction or framework to monitor the progress, teams may miss deadlines, and overspending may occur. Project managers may be unable to detect issues or allocate resources appropriately due to poor project reporting and communication. This disorganization may result in the project failing to meet the client's expectations, a loss of trust from stakeholders, and lower project team morale.
Benefits of Project Tracking
Project tracking is vital to the overall success of a project. Various advantages result when a project manager takes project tracking seriously and implements steps to monitor progress adequately. Some of the most significant benefits of effective project tracking include:
- Reduced risks: Monitoring a project allows project managers to identify potential risks before they become issues. Effectively determining and mitigating risks means fewer delays and prevents overspending.
- Improved communication: Project tracking keeps everyone informed on the progress of a project. Due to regular status reports and meetings, team members, management, and stakeholders will be on the same page about the project’s status.
- Better resource management: Project managers use project tracking information to determine how to best allocate resources and tasks. Proper distribution of resources and tasks will improve the quality and speed of a project’s development and enhance job enrichment.
- Increased accountability: Project tracking allows team members to understand their expectations. Employees will take more ownership of their progress when they know the project manager and other team members are aware of it.
- Effective budgeting: Understanding the current status of a project allows project managers to better determine if the project budget is on track. Project managers use this information to control costs proactively.
- Client satisfaction: Project managers utilize project tracking information to make necessary adjustments. This ensures that the project meets the client’s quality standards and timeline expectations.
7 Ways To Track Project Progress Effectively
Effective project tracking is a vital aspect of project management. Project managers must have a real-time understanding of the project’s status to ensure the team meets the expected quality standards and deadlines. Project tracking also helps managers identify challenges and proactively work to resolve them before more significant issues arise. Effective project tracking strategies keep the project on course and optimize the team’s performance and efficiency.
1. Determine Goals and Milestones
Goals and milestones make up the foundation of a project and allow project managers to determine progress. Project goals should be precise and clear so that all team members understand what they are working toward. Project managers should choose goals that are measurable through qualitative and quantitative metrics.
While goals are essential for success, most projects require milestones to keep projects on track. Milestones break down goals into smaller segments. Milestones also work as indicators, offering project managers insight into whether the project is progressing as planned. These insights allow the project manager to adjust resource allocation and task delegation based on dependencies to ensure the team completes the project on time. When a team meets a milestone, it also adds a feeling of achievement and motivation.
2. Allocate Resources Appropriately
While resource allocation primarily relates to project management, it plays an important role in project tracking. Resource allocation is the distribution of resources to ensure that a team completes a project within the timeframe and to the client's expected quality standards. When project managers determine the goals and milestones of a project, they must consider the resources necessary to achieve them.
To appropriately distribute resources, project managers must continually make adjustments to ensure the project doesn’t run into bottlenecks. A lack of resources could result in employee burnout and decreased motivation or quality. Proper resource management will also safeguard against overspending and keep the project on budget.
3. Develop a Risk Management Strategy
Risk management is a vital part of project tracking. Project managers who develop an effective risk management strategy ahead of time more easily navigate challenges and unforeseen issues that slow down or derail projects. A risk management strategy instills stakeholder and team members' confidence in the project.
Taking a proactive approach to risk management also allows project managers to identify probable issues and bottlenecks. Once the project manager has determined possible problems that may arise, they prioritize those risks and find possible solutions, such as a shift in resource allocation or a timeline adjustment.
4. Maintain Effective Communication
Maintaining effective communication keeps team members, management, and stakeholders on the same page throughout the life of a project. Project managers can establish effective communication by scheduling regular meetings to determine the project’s progress, delineating channels for different types of information, and encouraging open dialogue.
Clear communication throughout a project allows for transparency as team members will understand expectations, and stakeholders will be up to date on the project’s progress. An atmosphere that encourages communication helps team members understand their roles, tasks, and how their work fits into the bigger picture. An open dialogue will also help project managers identify issues early, allowing for faster intervention.
5. Monitor Progress
Monitoring the progress of a project keeps it on track to meet its goals. Project managers must regularly assess the project timeline and milestones against its current status. The information accumulated through project tracking allows project managers to make better decisions and evaluate the effectiveness of the current strategies.
Regularly monitoring updates and development keeps team members accountable. When team members know management is monitoring their work, they are more likely to remain devoted to the quality of their work and meeting their deadlines. Tracking project progress also allows project managers to offer feedback and guidance that increases a team member’s efficiency.
6. Reward Achievements
Project tracking enables project managers to keep team members on track and reward them when they reach milestones and achievements. Regularly recognizing an employee’s or team’s hard work and dedication to a project boosts morale and reinforces quality standards. When team members feel like their efforts are valued, their commitment to the project increases.
Celebrating milestones and achievements reinforces a positive work environment and company culture. Rewarding achievements is an excellent way to motivate employees and unite the team. When challenges occur, they will have more cohesion and willingness to work through the hard times as they know management will acknowledge their efforts.
7. Review and Adjust the Strategy
Consistent and regular reviewing and adapting are necessary to ensure the project’s alignment with its goals and objectives. Regular reviews allow the project manager to determine if the project is on track to meet milestones. They also foster a culture of continued improvement.
When the team isn’t meeting the quality standards or timelines, the project manager must adjust the current strategy to guarantee better deliverables. Project managers first must identify aspects of the project that are underperforming and figure out the best solutions, such as adding resources to speed up the completion of a task or changing the environment to enhance team productivity.
How Project Tracking Tools Can Help
Project tracking tools assist project managers and teams to monitor and manage a project’s progress. These tools may be standalone apps or already available in other comprehensive software development tools. Utilizing these integrations allows teams to see the bigger picture, better manage due dates and resources, and streamline communication. Many popular project-tracking tools offer user-friendly interfaces for easy implementation and task management.
There is a vast range of project tracking tools on the market, each with different features. Some of the most popular project-tracking tools include:
- Wrike: Wrike is project tracking software that allows managers to visualize project schedules and track projects against deadlines. Project managers can utilize Wrike's online Kanban boards, customizable Gantt charts, and real-time analytics.
- Smartsheet: Smartsheet combines cloud-based spreadsheets with advanced project tracking features, allowing users to create, assign, and manage project tasks effectively. Some key features that project managers can take advantage of include automated workflows, content management tools, and visualization dashboards.
- Jira: Jira is a project management tool for software development teams that utilizes Agile methodologies. It works by breaking down projects into smaller and simpler parts. Some of Jira’s key features include Kanban boards, customizable workflows, and issue tracking.
- Monday: Monday.com is a full suite of project management features managers use to optimize operations and productivity. Project managers often utilize key features for tracking and streamlining workflows: custom dashboards, pre-built templates, and automation.
- Clickup: Clickup is project management software that facilitates collaboration using shareable documents, comments, and project status updates. Clickup includes checklists, calendars, and a document hub.
- Asana: Asana is a tool that organizes work into projects that break down into tasks and subtasks. Asana’s key features include Gantt charts, strategic goals, and the Workflow Builder.
Keep Development Projects on Track With Revelo
Project tracking is an essential part of project management that ensures projects get finished on time and meet the quality standards that the client expects. Utilizing a high-performing team relieves some of the pressure a project manager will face when tracking a project.
At Revelo, we help companies that want to enhance the capabilities of their development teams. Our vast talent pool consists of Latin American developers who are time-zone aligned and rigorously pre-vetted on tech skills, soft skills, and English proficiency. Revelo assists with onboarding duties, including benefits administration, payroll, taxes, and local compliances. We also stay involved throughout the developer’s tenure to alleviate any worry about the developer’s engagement or retention.
Contact Revelo to learn how we can help you build an efficient and high-performing development team today.
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