5 Tips to Monitor Your Projects
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Tip 1: Time Management is Critical
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If you want to deliver your project on-time, then you need to have a
good understanding of what your team spend their time doing. That
makes sense, right?
Start by using time tracking software to record time spent. Make sure
that every team member records the tasks they are working on and the
time they have spent, every day of the project.
http://www.projectmanager.com/time-tracking-software.php
You need to then review that time and make sure that it's appropriate.
Are they spending the right amount of time on the right tasks, to
achieve the right outcomes?
As well as monitoring the time spent, you need to understand the time
remaining. So update your project plan weekly with the revised planned
finish dates. Only then can you calculate the actual vs. planned
progress of the project.
Tip 2: Track Percent Complete
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One of the easiest ways to monitor the project is to keep an eye on
the overall "percent complete". You need to identify the actual %
complete of every task and then compare it to the planned % complete
(i.e. what the % complete should be as of today).
If overall, your project should be 50% complete and yet you are only
43% complete, then you have a lot of work to do, to get back on track.
Tools like ProjectManager.com can monitor this for you automatically.
http://www.projectmanager.com/index.php
Tip 3: Monitor Spend vs. Budget
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You also need to continually monitor the current cost of the project
vs. the budget set. Record:
One-off expenses, using "Expense Forms".
The cost of your resources by calculating the cost per hour of each
person in your team, times the number of hours spent working on
project tasks.
All miscellaneous, recurring and ongoing expenses.
Summarize your project expenses every week and compare them to budget.
Tip 4: Keep one eye on tasks and the other on your team
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Projects are always stressful. Your team has too much work to do and
limited time in which to do it. So given that your team will be under
stress for the length of the project, you need to monitor their
motivation levels at all times.
Every week, hold a team meeting and while communicating the status of
the project, find out where their motivation levels are at? Are they
happy, fired up and ready to kick-ass? Or are they de-motivated and
don’t really care?
Motivation comes from having shared goals and enjoying the experience
in achieving them. If your team has low morale or poor staff
satisfaction then they will not meet the goals set. So keep an eye on
team motivation constantly and run “up-beat” workshops to get them
excited about the next phase ahead.
Tip 5: Changes are the Death of Projects.
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The biggest risk of the project is that the business wants to change
the goalposts, the minute they are set. Seen this before?
How could you win a game of football, if the goalposts constantly
change? The trick is to record every change that is requested and
monitor the effects of those changes on the project. If they are
likely to impact on the timescales, budget or our objectives, then
