Why a Project Management Office must monitor project progress
Project monitoring and project tracking is an important facet of the responsibilities of a Project Management Office. In reality regardless if a PMO is in place or not, project monitoring must be done.
Why you need project tracking and project monitoring
The reason behind this is to ensure that a project is making progress and on course to deliver, there must be a mechanism to monitor progress. Without this, a sponsor and organisation will be placing blind trust the project will deliver what’s been specified, by the agreed date and within the allotted budget. I’m sure you will agree that this is a particularly large “leap of faith”.
This should additionally be of the heaviest priority to the project manager, in truth it is a part of their job description to manage and monitor progress. Without monitoring how will the project manager know if the project will deliver and if interventions are needed?
What’s project monitoring and project tracking
In it’s simplest and purest terms, project tracking is monitoring the progress of a project to asses if it is making the correct progress in order to achieve the agreed objectives or outcomes. This is generally done by the use of a professional project status report.
The report must provide a clear and accurate statement of the project standing as at the date of the report. It should also include a direct and informative executive statement (“elevator speech”) that details the standing, any key issues/risks causing a status apart from Green along with required action.
Smart project tracking and monitoring for a PMO
If you want to increase the value of your PMO you should look to:
– Implement a good, clear, pro project report
– Provide clear guidelines on the way the report should finished
– Review submissions and check for quality and consistency
– Meet with the project manager to study, understand and challenge the report
– Issue a reporting calendar
– Provide upper managers with high level overviews through PMO Dashboards, trends, areas of focus
Never under estimate the power of presentation
While good quality content is the most significant input for project monitoring and project tracking, do not undervalue the power of a soundly designed report with good visible indicators. When this is forgotten a good report can be considered unfairly as sub-standard. Therefore , ensure you have a pro looking project report and dashboard. If you don't have some time or aren't good at design, speed this up by buying a set of proven project management templates .
Simon Wilkinson is the owner of Practical PMO where he writes a regular blog providing practical information on the way to set up a PMO and how to do project monitoring.
