How to Track Your Projects

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o succeed as a Project Manager, you need to “watch your projects like a hawk”. This means tracking every aspect of your project to ensure you deliver on time. To help you do this, read these 5 tips:

How to Track Your Projects

It’s a tough challenge; juggling people, equipment, time, money and materials to complete your project on time. To do it successfully, you need to keep an eye on 5 key areas of your project...

1. Time and Cost

Put an hour aside every week to determine if you are likely to complete the project on time. To do this, identify any tasks that are running late and determine whether they are likely to delay the overall project. Then look for ways that you can save time by; finishing tasks earlier, delaying non-critical tasks to after the project has been completed, or gaining approval from your Sponsor to remove tasks altogether.

You also need to review the total spend of the project to date against the original budget set. Identify ways to reduce costs by allocating cheaper resource, reducing the project scope, or boosting the efficiency of your team.

2. Resource Allocation

You need to keep a constant watch on the percentage of time that your team are allocated to tasks. If you have one person allocated to tasks 50% of their time and another 150% of their time, then you may not be working efficiently. Instead, balance workload fairly so that your team are kept busy 80-100% of their time, without being overloaded. If you intend to overload resource, then only do it for a short period of time, to avoid “burnout”.

As you reallocate work among your resources, keep an eye on the overall resource level. It may be that everyone is under-allocated and you can take a person off the project, saving on cost. On the other hand, if everyone is over-allocated then you may need to quickly allocate more resources to the project as soon as possible.

3. Progress and Efficiency

You also need to track the progress and efficiency of your team. ‘Progress’ means the percentage of tasks completed to date. ‘Efficiency’ means the number of tasks completed on time. You need to track these items to ensure that you are progressing according to plan and that your team are working efficiently in completing tasks assigned to them.

4. Risks, Changes, Issues

Every project encounters risks, changes and issues at some point. It’s often impossible to prevent them from occurring, so the trick is to resolve them as quickly as possible when they do come up. Throughout the project life cycle, you need to watch them closely. For each item raised, set a ‘target resolution date’ and track these dates carefully to make sure that they are adhered to.

5. Project Health

In addition to tracking the project at the micro level, you also need to stand back and take a look at the project from a helicopter level. You need to gain a clear view of the overall project health. You’ve already done most of the work by assessing the time, cost, resources, progress and efficiency of the project. By also taking a summarized view of the project each week, you can lead the project team towards success.

- Uday Mahajan

Using a Project Management Methodology

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	Are you involved with projects? If you are, then consider using a project methodology. It gives you a roadmap for delivering your project, saves you time and improves the quality of your work. So read, on to find out more about... Using a Project Management Methodology What is a Methodology? A methodology is basically "a set of methods or steps that you use to deliver projects". The key point is that you repeat the same steps for every project you undertake, and by doing that you gain efficiencies in your work. What will it do? When you use a project methodology it gives you: A defined set of steps to follow for delivering projects. A set of templates to help you do things quickly. A suite of case studies to help you learn. The ability to customize the methodology provided. The option to import your existing methodology into it. What will it not do? A Methodology is not a silver bullet. It will not fix your projects by itself. And it's fair to say that no methodology "out-of-the-box" will be 100% applicable to every type of project. So you need to customize your methodology to ensure it fits your project environment. Why use a Methodology? A methodology will help you by giving you a clear roadmap for achieving project success. It will tell you and your team what has to be done, how it should be done and by when, to deliver your project on time. Using a methodology you can: Startup and plan projects Monitor time, cost and quality Control change and scope Minimize risks and issues Manage staff and suppliers You can choose to use the elements of the methodology that are most suitable to each project you undertake. For instance, when managing smaller projects, you can use simple lightweight steps to deliver your project. And when managing large projects, you can use more heavyweight steps to monitor and control every element of your project. By following the same generic steps for every project you undertake, you'll become more efficient, work smarter and reduce stress. You will also have a clear roadmap ahead, giving you the confidence you need to succeed. -Uday Mahajan

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Completing a Feasibility Study

The best way to find out whether your project is feasible is to complete a Feasibility Study. This process helps you gain confidence that the solution you need to build can be implemented on time and under budget. So here's how to do it in 5 simple steps...

Completing a Feasibility Study

A Feasibility Study needs to be completed as early in the Project Life Cycle as possible. The best time to complete it is when you have identified a range of different alternative solutions and you need to know which solution is the most feasible to implement. Here's how to do it...

Step 1: Research the Business Drivers
In most cases, your project is being driven by a problem in the business. These problems are called "business drivers" and you need to have a clear understanding of what they are, as part of your Feasibility Study.

For instance, the business driver might be that an IT system is outdated and is causing customer complaints, or that two businesses need to merge because of an acquisition. Regardless of the business driver, you need to get to the bottom of it so you fully understand the reasons why the project has been kicked off.

Find out why the business driver is important to the business, and why it's critical that the project delivers a solution to it within a specified timeframe. Then find out what the impact will be to the business, if the project slips.

Step 2: Confirm the Alternative Solutions
Now you have a clear understanding of the business problem that the project addresses, you need to understand the alternative solutions available.

If it's an IT system that is outdated, then your alternative solutions might include redeveloping the existing system, replacing it or merging it with another system.

Only with a clear understanding of the alternative solutions to the business problem, can you progress with the Feasibility Study.

Step 3: Determine the Feasibility
You now need to identify the feasibility of each solution. The question to ask of each alternative solution is "can we deliver it on time and under budget?"

To answer this question, you need to use a variety of methods to assess the feasibility of each solution. Here are some examples of ways you can assess feasibility:

* Research: Perform online research to see if other companies have implemented the same solutions and how they got on.
* Prototyping: Identify the part of the solution that has the highest risk, and then build a sample of it to see if it's possible to create.
* Time-boxing: Complete some of the tasks in your project plan and measure how long it took vs. planned. If you delivered it on time, then you know that your planning is quite accurate.

Step 4: Choose a Preferred Solution
With the feasibility of each alternative solution known, the next step is to select a preferred solution to be delivered by your project. Choose the solution that; is most feasible to implement, has the lowest risk, and you have the highest confidence of delivering.

You've now chosen a solution to a known business problem, and you have a high degree of confidence that you can deliver that solution on time and under budget, as part of the project.

Step 5:
It's now time to take your chosen solution and reassess its feasibility at a lower level. List all of the tasks that are needed to complete the solution. Then run those tasks by your team to see how long they think it will take to complete them. Add all of the tasks and timeframes to a project plan to see if you can do it all within the project deadline. Then ask your team to identify the highest risk tasks and get them to investigate them further to check that they are achievable. Use the techniques in Step 3 to give you a very high degree of confidence that it's practically achievable. Then document all of the results in a Feasibility Study report.

After completing these 5 steps, get your Feasibility Study approved by your manager so that everyone in the project team has a high degree of confidence that the project can deliver successfully.


Uday Mahajan.