A guide to efficient project follow-up

What is project tracking?

Project monitoring: definition

Project tracking is the regular analysis of a project's progress and financial performance, in relation to an initially set objective.

Project tracking is a necessary action to guarantee the success of a project. There are many reasons why a project can fail, so it's important to have access to the information you need to monitor the project, such as task progress, adherence to budget and margins, or the status of work remaining to be done.

Ideally, all projects should be tracked. Even internal projects that do not generate direct profit should be tracked, so that the data can be used to answer the following questions:

• Who worked on this project?
• Overall, how much time do employees spend on internal projects?
• How much do in-house projects cost?

For sales-generating projects, project follow-up is even more important, for the reasons outlined above.

Who is responsible for project follow-up?

The project manager is generally responsible for monitoring the project. This responsibility involves respecting a time objective (fixed duration or deadline for completing the project), a quantity objective for deliverables, a quality objective for deliverables, and a budget objective for completing the project.

Project managers need to be given responsibility for project follow-up. They need to be able to track a certain number of elements.

• Task completion and quality of execution.
• Monitoring costs and staying within budget.
• Meeting overall project deadlines.
• Project invoicing where applicable.

What's the difference between project management and project monitoring?

Project management and project monitoring are often equated, but they differ in the scope of their actions.

• A strategic vision

Like corporate management, project management involves a strategic vision, responding to decision-making issues, and includes stages such as : 

• • Measurement
  • Anticipation
  • Simulation
  • Adjustment

• An operational dimension

Project management focuses on the dimension operational dimension of the project, with a more limited strategic vision. It essentially involves monitoring production on a day-to-day basis.

What's the difference between project monitoring and project management?

Project monitoring and project management are also often confused.

In fact, project tracking is an integral part of project management and project monitoring.

• Collecting data

Monitoring involves collecting data that will be used to make decisions.

Tools such as dashboards, time tracking and meetings provide the basis for this data collection.

• Compare data

Focused on ongoing activities, project monitoring must be continuous and regular. 

The data collected and analysed help to identify and assess discrepancies between actual and the forecasts.

How do you make a success of a project through effective follow-up? 

Careful project preparation

Preparation is a key stage in the five phases of project management. It will enable you to clarify a number of points, such as :

• expected deliverables,
• the budget,
• deadlines,
• key skills,
• the different stages of the project,
• tasks for each deliverable.

The project manager must then be able to offerrealistic estimates. This then goes through:

• analysis of available resources (financial, human, material),
• consideration of the project's context,
• prioritizing goals and tasks
• risk anticipation.

Although preparation is long and time-consuming, it lays a solid foundation for good project follow-up and, ultimately, the overall success of the project.

Select resources strategically

Identify available resources

The resources allocated to a project determine its success.

Make sure that your project manager knows exactly what resources he or she has at his or her disposal, both human and material. human, financial and material.

Maximize resource planning's use 

As far as human resources are concerned, understanding the challenges of resource planning and its strategic implementation will be a valuable asset.

Simulate and adjust

Simulate scenarios using project management tools, and adjust as necessary.

To deliver a quality project on time, you'll need to organize your resources meticulously.

Stafiz integrates the most advanced functions on the market in terms of resource planning , including capacity planning - precise assessment of needs, anticipation of profile requirements & sourcing - employee allocation/planning and time tracking.

Learn more about resource planning with Stafiz

Step 1: Follow-up of task and schedule planning resource planning

Unsurprisingly, project schedule monitoring is essential to ensure that deadlines are met.

This involves planning project tasks for each task manager, and checking that the load level is correctly calibrated. Contributors must be neither under- nor over-staffed to ensure smooth project execution.

GANTT charts are generally the best way to keep track of deadlines for different tasks.

Deadlines must be regularly reviewed by the project manager. If a task requires a larger-than-expected load on a task, the schedule must be updated immediately.

Ideally, the project tracking tool enables you to recalculate future costs as and when the project schedule is adjusted.

Step 2: Project accounting monitoring as a basis for management

In addition to anticipating risks and taking corrective action, project tracking enables you to step back and better prepare and budget future projects.

When a business involves a large number of projects, you need to be able to analyze historical performance to identify any corrections that need to be made.

For example, if margins are consistently below target, you need to understand why.

• Are project times frequently higher than budgeted?
• Is the distribution of time between the various roles in line with budgets?
• Are subcontracting costs and purchases properly budgeted?
• Is project pricing too low?

So many possible reasons to confirm in order to improve future performance.

All too often, finance teams or management controllers carry out analyses on their own, without sharing information in real time with operational teams. This leads to inertia in project follow-up and prevents companies from rapidly and effectively improving their profitability.

Step 3: Setting up effective communications 

Projects involve several contributors, who will need to have all possible resources at their disposal to communicate on progress and be able to pass on information to each other.

It is therefore necessary to set up communication based on listening and project follow-up meetings to share the situation and make the right arbitration decisions throughout the project.

 

Establishing indulgent communication

Project management involves people, so communication is key to the project's success.

The project manager's role is to ensure that all those involved are able to exchange ideas constructively constructively and constructive exchangewhether they be in-houseteams service providers or the customer.

 

How to organize an effective project follow-up meeting?

Meetings remain an important component of project follow-up, although they are generally not appreciated by teams.

Organized on a regular and structured basis , they enable management to obtain feedback on reality in the field, so as to identify any necessary readjustments concerning resources or even objectives. This responsiveness is a godsend when it comes to anticipating risks.

 

These follow-up meetings are prepared in five stages.

 

1. The project manager ensures that monitoring data is up to date and can be shared.
   
2. Completed tasks have already been reviewed by the manager. The project follow-up meeting should not be used to check the quality of these tasks, but to confirm their status (completed, in progress, to be reviewed, cancelled, etc.).
3. Identify the bottlenecks in the project and prioritize the review of tasks, starting with those that represent a bottleneck.
4. Systematically review the schedule: anticipate the remaining work to be done on each task and allocate the associated workload in the employee schedule.
5. Check that the margin on completion of the project remains in line with the budget.

 

Structuring follow-up meetings

You know the saying: the shorter the joke, the better. This also applies to meetings, which should be neither too long nor too frequent, as this can lead to frustration. 

To make them productive, be sure to set an agenda and identify performance indicators to track. These will help guide your decisions.

 

Facilitate access to information

Breaking down silos making information accessible will enable efficient project follow-up.

Teams need the right level of information to facilitate collaboration. In this way, everyone can fulfill their role effectively.

 

Project monitoring tools

Specifications

Specifications are an essential part of project management, as they define the objectives to be achieved and the deliverables expected.

It serves as a reference and structures the customer's expectations in terms of objectives, deadlines, costs and expenses, as well as the division of tasks by role.

 

The schedules

Gantt chart

The Gantt chart provides a graphic visualization of the project over a given period in the form of a timeline. It is used to plan and monitor the progress of tasks.

The Gantt chart helps you quickly identify task dependencies between tasks and thus identify which tasks might be affected by a delay.

 

The Kanban view

Kanban offers another visualization mode, this time in the form of columns. It is generally organized in at least 3 columns: to do, in progress, finished.

Dashboards

Project monitoring dashboardsare invaluable tools. They enable you to centralize and aggregate and aggregate information to obtain a global view of the project.

Every project should have a dashboard for monitoring the defined KPIs. Certain indicators remain essential for project monitoring: 

• objectives achieved and remaining ;
• the status of the various tasks ;
• the latest updates.

 

Project management software

You can make project tracking easier and more accessible by using adedicated project tracking tool. They centralize data making it reliable, accessible and up-to-date.

 

Information flows more smoothly, facilitating communication between project stakeholders.

What's more, some of these software packages offerautomationfunctions . This saves a considerable amount of time, and reduces double-entry errors, giving you greater precision.

 

Stafiz centralizes data at several levels. All costs are taken into account, as well as revenues, in a full-cost accounting logic. Activity management is integrated from start to finish: from opportunity management to invoicing. You convert your opportunities into missions immediately with the initial plan; KPIs are accurate and automatically updated in the forecast.

More about Stafiz

 

Here's a list of the features offered by management software such as Stafiz.

 

Needs category	Requirements	Example of tools
Communication and fluidity	You need your team to be in sync and exchange information regularly You need a simple way to organize your tasks	Microsoft project, Trello, monday.com
Project and customer portfolio management	You need to plan your resources and consultants, anticipate skill requirements You want to accurately track your resources: resource planning purchases, expenses and see the impact on the forecast You need to arbitrate on the resources to be implemented	Stafiz - Project management and monitoring

Real-time tracking 

Real-time monitoring of status, budget and tasks will facilitate responsiveness.

 

Generate progress reports

This feature will help you prepare progress meetings to make them as productive as possible.

 

Global visualization 

The value of management software lies in its ability to provide a global view, either of a project or of a portfolio of projects.

This is strategic on two levels: macro and micro. 

 

• Macro vision

Good visibility from a macro point of view will enable you to monitor the project portfolio, and therefore all your projects. First of all, you'll be able to ensure that current projects remain aligned with long-term strategy strategy.

Next, you'll have all the information you need to allocate your resources appropriately or make adjustments.

 

• Vision micro

From a micro point of view, you'll have precise, reliable and up-to-date data to monitor your project.

You can then analyze discrepancies and get a clear picture of the objectives achieved, remainingand resources resources consumed.