Tracking Progress

There are several reasons why you must have a formal process for tracking progress. At the top of the list of reasons: tracking project progress will help you make adjustments and tweaks to the implementation plan, should you need to. Imagine a long-term project that has several milestones and teams dispersed throughout the world. A weekly meeting is not going to be a feasible method to get a grasp on the project status.

You will need to develop an internal process for your team to report completed tasks so that you can reflect the project progress in an electronic form and analyze the team’s work, the budget, and the days until completion. This also allows you to accurately report to management how the project is moving along.

Creating a Reporting Process

You should create a mechanism that allows your team to report the status on assigned tasks on a regular schedule. In some organizations, this is a formal Work Authorization System. This system requires project team members to report activities completed with given metrics so that downstream activities can begin. A Project Management Information Systems (PMIS) system can streamline this process— so long as the quality and verification of the work actually being completed exists.

Some project managers like team members to report as each milestone is reached, while others prefer weekly status reports on the tasks completed over the last seven days. Whichever method you choose, or develop, it is important that your collection of data be on a consistent schedule. Although it’s not well advised, you can start a project and collect status reports weekly one month and then biweekly the next. Develop a schedule that works best for you and fits the timings of the project and stick with it. Of course, you’ll document this schedule of status reporting in your Communications Management Plan.

Determine the format for how work should be reported. Ideally, you should base this on the number of hours or days assigned to the task. For example, during the activity duration estimating process, say you allot 56 hours for testing a new application and assign Rick to the task. When Rick reports his progress, he should indicate the number of hours into the testing phase, in addition to a percentage of the total completed work Rick believes is done. As Rick moves closer to 56 hours, he should be moving closer to 100 percent completion of the task. Figure 8-2 shows the impact of exceeded hours on the budget and the overall time of the project duration. The actual collection of work completed will allow you to see how the progress is going and to make adjustments to the project schedule to keep things on track.

Figure 8-2: Tasks that exceed their durations impact both the budget and the project.

When problems arise in the implementation phase, the number of hours assigned to a task will no doubt increase. For example, Rick’s testing of the new application is taking longer than the 56 hours assigned to the task because of the discovery of a hardware conflict. Based on your communication with Rick, through your regular meetings, and the hours reported by Rick through your reporting process, you should be able to quickly ascertain if more hours will be required for the testing activity. In other words, it shouldn’t be a surprise when Rick reports he’ll need some more time to complete his task.

To react to this problem, you need to analyze how additional hours will impact the following:

Dependent tasks in the PND
Other, nondependent tasks in the PND that Rick has been assigned to
The critical path
The budget
The project completion date
The management reserve
Additional resources
Risks

To resolve a problem, analyze each of the facets of the project plan impacted by the new requirement for additional time. If dependent tasks are being held up by the problem, you need to find a solution to resolve the problem as quickly as possible. Generally this means you’ll have to do one or more of the following:

Assign Additional Resources When a task is delaying dependencies and needs additional time to resolve an issue, assign additional resources to the task, such as team members or consultants, to reduce the amount of time required. In theory, assigning new resources to a task should reduce the amount of time required for the task to complete. In reality, this is not always the case. For example, when installing an operating system that takes one hour to install, assigning two team members to the task doesn’t mean that the installation procedure will only take 30 minutes. These activities are fixed-duration as opposed to activities that are effort-driven. In some instances, however, assigning an individual who is more experienced in the technology may cost more per hour (as in a consultant), but that person can finish the task in less time, saving overall costs and preventing the delay of dependent tasks.

Invoke Management Reserve Recall that management reserve is a final task in the critical path of the PND. It is an artificial task that is a generally 10 to 15 percent of the total amount of time allotted for all tasks. When tasks exceed their allotted time, you assign the overrun to the management reserve task. For example, Rick is testing the software and will overrun the allotted time by 24 hours. A project manager could assign the 24 hours toward the completion of the management reserve and allow the critical path to continue as planned—assuming there are not other constraints affected by the delay of the activity.

You can also use a combination of additional resources and management reserve. For example, assigning an additional team member to assist Rick may reduce the time overrun from 24 hours to 16 hours. The 16 hours would then be applied to management reserve.

Reassign the Work Unit Finally, you can choose to reassign the task to someone more qualified in the procedure. If Rick has exasperated himself and cannot resolve the issue with the software, then you may elect to hire a consultant or assign another team member to the task. The result of this solution is generally less risk of additional hours spent by Rick, but additional financial costs applied to the budget, as Figure 8-3 shows.

Figure 8-3: As risk is reduced, cost may increase.

Status Collecting Tools

As a project manager, you may not always have the time to chat with each team member each week to get a verbal confirmation on the progress of each task. You will need a process to streamline the collection of hard numbers on the hours and percentages of the work completed. There are several methods you can use to collect this information from your team:

E-mail A simple solution is to have your team members e-mail the hours on the work they’ve completed on their assigned task. This simple solution is not very automated, but at a minimum it allows for easy collection and accessible reporting for all team members. Of course, you’d then have to transfer the information into Microsoft Project, Excel, or another project management software program.

Spreadsheets A slightly more advanced method to collect and compute project status is through a weekly spreadsheet each team member would complete to report the tasks that person has been working on. You could create a template that lists the tasks, allotted hours, and hours actually worked on the tasks, and include an area for any comments from the team member. Once you receive the spreadsheet, electronically of course, you can have macros and formulas retrieve the team member’s information and dovetail it into a master spreadsheet.

Web forms An aggressive approach is to create a web-based reporting system that would allow team members to report their activities and the hours committed to each via a web page form. The submitted form, via a script or ASP page, would automatically calculate percentages of work, overruns, and impact on the critical path. This would be ideal for a geographically dispersed team.

Microsoft Project Any of the preceding methods can be used in conjunction with Microsoft Project. Microsoft Project supports collaboration via e-mail, web interfaces, and other applications such as Excel. If you are using Microsoft Project from the onset of your project, you will have created the WBS, the Gantt chart, and the PND within the application. Calculating task completions, overruns, and assignments of additional resources is very easy to do with Project.

Microsoft Project Server Microsoft Project Server is a server-based product to Microsoft Project that allows for true collaboration between the project manager and the project team via an intranet. Microsoft Project Server can automate the submission for task reports—and the request of task updates from team members. This solution is ideal for small or large projects.

Whichever method you choose or develop for your project, it is imperative that you create and document a detailed schedule for collecting project status. You must have periodic project updates, or the project will grow stale, you’ll miss opportunities to make adjustments to prevent overruns, and team members may lag behind on tasks. A consistent, persistent project manager is needed to keep a project team dedicated to tasks and collect information about the completion of each task.

Tracking Progress