A guide to efficient project follow-up

March 23, 2023
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.

 

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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.

 

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.

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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 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.

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What action can be taken when project monitoring indicates underperformance?

  • Reorganize the resource planning future project with perhaps more junior collaborators representing a lower cost but with the capacity to carry out the task with the same level of quality.
  • Reorganize tasks to reduce the time remaining to be spent on the project.
  • Re-negotiate the project's price with the customer to allow for a budget extension.

Our guide to resource planning

 

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.