The importance of being involved in a project
In project management, it is not enough to make a decision or to assign a task to a collaborator to ensure the result: it is imperative to monitor the project’s progress, using a project monitoring tool to check on a regular basis (daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on the project) that everything is taking place as planned. The project’s progress is the responsibility of the project manager, who must ensure that the team is progressing well and in the right direction, works together with the common goal of achieving the set objectives, respects the allocated budget and human and material resources, and meets deadlines. The purpose of monitoring and follow-up—in addition to ensuring that the project is progressing toward achieving its final objective—is to maintain motivation and continuously improve the performance of your project team.
Ensuring the success of your project
Once your project has been launched, it is not enough to just complete one task after another to achieve the objectives and thus make the project a success. Project management is naturally more complex than that. To ensure the success of your project, it is essential that the assignment of tasks takes into account the skills and strengths of each of the collaborators involved. When the different tasks are allocated, it is imperative to follow their evolution throughout the project to ensure that the task and the skills of the collaborator are well matched, and that the deadlines and budget are correctly estimated. If not, it may be necessary to adjust the conditions. In addition to reassuring you about your team’s performance and the achievement of objectives, this type of monitoring also enables you to estimate the cost of the project at any time, based on the time already consumed.
Set Up Project Monitoring Meetings
In addition to using project tracking software, monitoring the progress of your project involves regular follow-up meetings throughout the project, as well as the use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the performance of your project.
The project manager leads the meeting, which includes each person assigned a project task. It must focus on the table, using information shown for each of the different tasks. Each task should be reviewed, discussed, and classified based on its status: completed, in progress, or not started.
This follow-up meeting makes it possible to
- Inventory the tasks in progress and the tasks outstanding
- Identify tasks that need to be started next
- Define any new tasks to be added and those to be deleted
- Make the necessary decisions
After the meeting, a report details any delays noted, their origin, and the actions to be taken to resolve them; the schedule, a reference document, must be updated accordingly.
In summary
Tracking the progress of your project allows you to verify that tasks are progressing according to deadlines, resources, and budget, and intervene if they are not, so that the objectives defined at the start are achieved.
