The Project Tracking Table: a Must-Have

The Questions You Should Ask Yourself Before Preparing a Tracking Table

Your team has been chosen to conduct an important project. Congrats—now, to ensure its success, you have to plan the different actions. Turns out, today the use of a project tracking software allows that. Indeed, through this kind of tool, you can manage and coordinate your project in record time

The project manager will be in charge of monitoring the project, and so must start by answering the following questions.

• What are the main objectives?
• Who will be involved in the project and what will their responsibilities be?
• When does the project begin and end? Is there a possible margin of error? These dates will be determined within a given time frame. Why? Because, without the time constraints of deadlines, actions tend to be put off.
• What are the priorities? Note down all the high-priority actions. Feel free to “rate” the actions based on priority criteria.

You will then be able start planning the content of your tracking table during a project meeting. For this process it is helpful to have all the team members present and make sure that each person understands their objectives and tasks.

Don't make your collaborative table too complicated: keep it simple and fast.

How do I Create my Project Tracking Table?

You will find some examples of the columns categories you can add to your table below.

Action list:

Collaboratively manage the action list of your team while simplifying the progress and follow-up of your project.

List the team members involved in the project

This section of the table will focus on the people who are directly involved with the project. You can choose to authorize either full or partial access to the table for your collaborators.

Priority level:

Specify the priority level of each task, and add a reminder to receive an email automatically at the completion of each action, so that you can quickly change its status.

Description:

Add the information that will specifically explain the task of the team member.

Attached files:

Add the documents needed to understand each task. For example, you can add the rental cost quote for a room at an event.

Comments:

Easily add comments throughout the project, without cluttering up the table. For instance, a problem is blocking you during the completion of a task; write a comment to the project manager, who can answer you directly within the particular task.

As you can see, a project plan can be considered to be a road map. It clearly defines the tasks, objectives, responsibility, and due date for each project participant. Finding the appropriate chart template will help you guide the entire team toward project success.