5 Tips for Tracking Projects

As a project manager, your job is to monitor the progress of one or more projects every step of the way. However, when you have a team working on your project, it can be difficult to keep track of how things are progressing. That's why it's important to have a plan for monitoring daily project progress. This will allow you to identify any issues along the way and adjust accordingly, preventing your project from veering off course.

In this article, our partner Ameoboids shares 5 tips for monitoring the daily progress of your projects.

Tip 1: Create a project plan

The most important step in monitoring daily project progress is to sit down with your team even before the project begins to create a collaborative plan during this discussion. In the plan, you should outline the project's objectives. Having a plan in place and knowing exactly what each team member is responsible for will give you a framework for checking the project's progress. During the meeting where you create your project plan, be sure to discuss the following topics:

• A projected timeline for the completion of the project.

• A budget for the project, segmented by project parts.

• A plan for which team members will be in charge of various parts of the project.

• A list of goals and a plan to measure the success of your project

Once you have a project plan, make sure to leave it easily accessible to your team. For example, you can use Google Docs or Confluence for this purpose. This way, you can minimize misunderstandings about what you and your team decided on for the plan.

Tip 2: Plan daily check-ups

Once you have a project plan, schedule daily check-ins with each team member. As a project manager, it might seem odd to officially put these brief entries on your calendar. However, doing so will give your team members a sense of structure.

Going in and asking how a project is going can make team members feel like they're doing something wrong. They might get defensive or forget to mention key things. Having scheduled meetings, on the other hand, makes them feel like part of the daily routine. It even gives your team members the opportunity to plan their updates, making them more likely to remember to discuss any issues that have arisen since the previous day.

During each daily check-in, be sure to ask:

• How much time have you dedicated to the project so far?

• How much progress have you made since yesterday?

• Where are you sooner than expected?

• Where are you late?

• Is it ahead of or behind the projected budget?

Tip 3: Discuss the project goals and progress

Once you've completed daily check-ins with each team member, it's a good idea to send an email highlighting the project progress the team has made so far and any goals they're currently working on. A daily email summarizing the team's objectives and progress ensures that every team member feels included and understands how the plan is progressing holistically.

Tip 4: Communicate expectations

To keep your team on track and motivated every day, make sure to communicate their (realistic) expectations daily. After your daily stand-up meeting, explain how you think they're progressing on the project, mention any concerns you have, and discuss where you expect them to be at the end of the next day and at the end of the week. If needed, you can help them prioritize. If they've fallen behind, help them manage their workload and discuss a plan to get back on track.

Tip 5: Update your plan regularly

It's nearly impossible to predict exactly how your project will progress the first time you create the plan. As the project moves forward and its timeline changes, you'll want to update your plan.

An updated project plan will help you communicate an accurate timeline and budget to your supervisors. It will also help you refocus your team members if things get out of hand. Nobody likes feeling permanently behind schedule. New project plans can get the whole team back on track. Make sure this plan is updated in the same place where it was originally created. There should always be a single source of truth to avoid confusion. And importantly, tools like Google Docs and Confluence come with automatic versioning. So all your changes can be tracked at any time.

Conclusion

A good project manager is an organized project manager. Your job is to understand the big picture and ensure all the pieces fit together well. The best way to guarantee that level of nuanced understanding is to meet regularly with your team members and stay on top of their workload. Then, if you find significant problems with the project's progress, you can nip them in the bud from the start.

Do you have a different approach to carrying out what's presented? Tell us in the comments.

It's very common for there to be more than one way to do things, and we'd love to discover other ways to solve them.

We hope you enjoyed reading it.

Until next time.