The International Community for Project Managers wrote an article on the “” in order for your project to be successful. This blog goes into the details of the different issues that a project manager must keep in mind when managing their project.
I thought about what kind of support a company would need in order to ensure that these different activities are followed, and it comes down to having the proper tools to track this information. When researching project management applications, here are some features that you should look for to help your project managers monitor these different areas:
1. Watch how you spend your time
You need to have a tool that will allow for all staff members who are working on the project to enter their time efficiently and to the appropriate projects. Ideally, you should be looking for an application that allows team members to easily and quickly enter their time so that project managers are able to review this information as it is being entered into the system.
Since a lot can change in a week, by having the ability to review the time spent as it is being entered, the project manager will be able to catch any issues earlier and make necessary adjustments to the projects in a more timely manner.
2. Watch the work completed and the work remaining
This information needs to be easily and constantly communicated between the team and the project manager. With a timesheet that can send notifications whenever there are adjustments made to the estimated time to complete a task, project managers will be able to stay up to date on the re-evaluated time compared to the budget.
3. Watch your spending versus your budget
This is an important metric for all project managers and it is more accurately tracked if it is integrated to your financial system, because depending on the different resources that will perform the task, the impact on the actual spend to date will vary.
Ideally, managers should be able to forecast their spending as well as their earnings to completion, this would be based on the particular resources allocated to certain tasks. This way, they may evaluate the different scenarios and impacts on the remaining time and budget. For example, they could assess what would be the impact if it were a junior or senior that would be completing the work. Allocating the junior to the work may be less costly to the budget, but if they take three times as long, the impact on the time to complete the task should also be taken into consideration.
4.Watch team morale and team dynamics
There aren’t any tools that can help measure team morale or dynamics, but there are tools to help monitor staff utilization levels which can give an indication of whether the project team will be at risk for busy and stressful periods throughout the project. This can give the project managers some cues to when they should be more aware of possible decreases in motivation levels and increases in stress.
5. Watch for project changes
Changes are inevitable, but with the proper tools to easily change staff members, revise budgets and track deadlines, project managers and their team will be able to review their work load more efficiently and in turn, be prepared to adapt to these changes.
Having the right tools with a fully integrated will allow project managers to easily transfer information between them and their team members. Everyone has access to the information when they need it, and it is updated in real time. A project becomes even easier to track when all this data is integrated to your financial solution, which then allows you to review project costs and revenue so that both the project manager and management can have a better understanding of the profitability of a particular project, typically one of the key metrics in reviewing its success.
By JOVACO Solutions,
