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No matter if a particular project is developing as planned and the team behind it is effective at executing essential tasks, there is still a need to monitor the project’s progress. It is a project manager’s job to do this task while looking at it from the aspects of costs, performance, time and resources.
This work is done by continually comparing your current project status and current circ*mstances to the budget and work plan determined at the start of the project. Additionally, it is also essential to distinguish the planning parameters of the actual project to the parameters defined with the plan.
Other than that, it is also necessary to compare resources to those created in the plan. Project progress is calculated by performing these actions in different time periods and by looking back at what all got projected in the plan and when the project needs to get finished.
Make sure to create a good project plan
A project plan is essential for many things. It outlines the goal that managers have to reach to achieve the end of a project. Also, it emphasises on how a specific goal will be reached, who will work on the project, and which approach will take it towards achieving the goals.
Not only this, but a project plan also outlines when the goals are accomplished and how many resources may get utilised on that.
If you don’t create these projections and include them in your project plan, you will never be able to monitor how well your project is performing. That’s because you won’t have anything to compare your current performance to.
At the same time, the creation of a project planning approach needs diligence. Make sure that you didn’t miss anything significant that might affect your projections.
Oversee project schedules
A good project manager will use his or her project collaboration software to see all of the reports concerning the project schedule and compare them to the actual schedule created in the project plan. With this method, a project manager can easily see how the project is developing.
Your project schedules can look like a structure representing the breakdown of work. It will help you recognise all of the activities that are done based on:
- daily reports
- feedback
- resources used
- milestone achievements or materials that are necessary for finishing a specific project phase.
By overseeing the project schedules, project managers can recognise milestones that have been met and those that they haven’t and at the same time determine which tasks need more resources to be finished on time and within the budget.
Monitoring the budget
You can display the budget of your project in the form of various resources such as pounds, euros, dollars, hours, weeks, or some other measure. The process is quite simple – at the end of a work week, month, or a day, you merely have to compare how many of the resources you are currently using to the projected budget you have until the end of your project.
It will help you understand what needs to get accomplished and is something that the stakeholders and the project manager would have used to determine the resources required for an individual project at the start. If the spending of resources starts exceeding the number you’ve predefined in your budget, it might mean that your project will not be able to reach its end goal.
The above-given scenario usually means that you will have to make adjustments in your project scope or simply limit the resources used for specific tasks.
Tracking the scope of the project
Project scope is a big word that includes all project requirements or objectives of a specific project. It is imperative to monitor the scope of your project because it is one of those factors that affect all of the other aspects of your project like the budget, resources, costs, or your schedules.
If your project has too many resources dedicated to it, the chances are that you will exceed the costs you can afford, and this will make your project unsuccessful. However, active scope management will help you identify exactly how much work is needed to complete a project. You need to track the project needs that you’ve defined and made sure that the current practice is within the requirements.
A collaborative project management software allows project managers to look at all of the predefined work everybody has to do and to see whether or not they’ve delivered the work required of them on time. When you ensure that there is no excess or insufficient work, the project will finish on time.
Monitoring project resources
The first thing you need to do is define all of the resources in your project. The resources could be people working on a project, money, tools, equipment, facilities, and so on.
A lot of people make the mistake of monitoring only the resources valued in money, but other resources can also affect the opportunity costs, e.g., decreased human resources could mean that your project may not finish on time.
Project adjustments or delays could affect the availability and spending of resources, and this is why it is essential to monitor how they are used at all times, making sure that you always have the resources to perform actions which are necessary for a successful outcome.
Final Verdict…
To be able to monitor your project efficiently through all of the points that we mentioned, it is essential to get a collaborative project management software that can serve as a platform for all your monitoring actions. When you have everything displayed in real time, with your projections next to it, you can quickly notice when something is going wrong.
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