What to track and how to track

Tracking meetings is a useful way of motivating and rejuvenating a team. The project manager must bring with him a very high level of energy and optimism to the meeting, says Pradeep Pendse

The purpose of tracking is to ensure that the project stays on course. The defined course is of course the project schedule. The project manager must therefore attempt to gather facts about all tasks and try and relate them to the project plan. Every week should give him and the team the sense of forward movement leading to the successful completion of the project.

Thus tracking requires a good

understanding of how individual tasks relate to project milestones. The project manager can get drowned in details which are thrown up during the tracking meeting. He has therefore to rely on the baselined plan and the milestones to keep the context right. This also helps him eliminate unnecessary information. Design of good reporting formats as mentioned earlier help minimise the clutter and ease the process of relating the micro details to the big picture.

To identify what should go into reporting formats, that is to say what should be tracked, the project manager must rely on the basic methodology of MIS, e.g. critical success factors. What is critical to project success? How do I measure it? Where do I get data for these measures? If you can answer these questions you can easily design a good MIS format for project tracking.

Consider the following:

While the table is just an illustrative list of some of the performance indices, it does give us some feel of what should be the content of a good MIS format for the project manager.

These indicators would help the project manager quickly detect areas of concern. He can then drill down into the relevant area to bring to the surface the real cause of the imbalance in a certain performance indicator.

Project managers should take a leaf out from the manufacturing manager’s book, for the simple reason that most software organisations not only work like factories they actually call themselves software factories.

Critical items

Tracking however does not end with numbers. It deals with tasks, their interdependencies and the people behind those tasks. Identifying those tasks which are critical, those which are likely to become critical soon and identifying imminent risks is a vital element of tracking.

It helps if you have a list of critical items which need to be tracked consciously during each tracking

meeting. In fact, finding that a critical item continues to remain on the list week- after-week should ring the alarm bells. This means that some key aspect has not been addressed adequately by the team and may blow up later. In one of the projects, I remember reminding the team on several occasions that they should conduct a test simulating a large number of users. However, in meeting after

meeting, the team seemed to have ignored these warnings. Finally, one day I received a call from the customer that the system is not efficient. I said to myself “I knew it would happen one day. I wish I had forced the team to leave everything aside and carried this test earlier.”

From this example it is clear that a project manager has to on occasion force an issue such as a critical item, giving it the urgency that it deserves. However, in case there are several such critical items, ensure that you assign only one task at a time to the person concerned, else nothing will happen.

Tracking is also a means of identifying gaps in different working groups.

Project tracking and use of formal tools

As was discussed earlier, tracking involves going through a number of tasks. Unfortunately, individual tasks are too numerous and it would help if the project manager has a handy tool which would tell him the progress without any effort.

Unfortunately, PERT/CPM/GANTT charts and other visual reporting tools used in preparing project schedules do not interface in real-time with underlying data processing systems which may capture daily data at individual and task level. For instance, time sheet data may exist but this does not naturally integrate with visual planning tools. Not surprisingly therefore, even large engineering projects seem to have their CPM charts frozen in time since engineers find it tedious to update them.

Many software companies have tried to create custom-built solutions for easy review of project status and at the same time provide operational facilities such as pending task lists, etc, for the individual to benefit from.

Action plans

The final purpose of tracking is to lead you to action. Hence tracking should end with a clear and actionable plan with clarity in roles and

responsibilities. Quite often there is the temptation to reschedule a plan on the basis of tracking or larger reviews. My honest submission is tracking tells you the short-fall. You must take the chance at leveraging the tracking meeting to excite the team to stick to the committed dates despite delays. Avoid changing plans since you would lose credibility, apart from losses due to contractual and legal implications.

Equally, don’t even think of rescheduling if you have not really understood the root cause of the delay. You can change your plan only if you are convinced that no matter what you do there is going to be an impact on the overall delivery schedule and/or you have now diagnosed the real problem and are able to predict the time to fix it.

Tracking requires personalisation

Not all people need to be tracked to a detailed level. The project manager must therefore be able to detect people who seem to show signs of drift, or who are new and really require a lot of hand-holding. The project manager must then flex his leadership style from one of leading, to guiding, to delegating, to directing and supervising, depending on the need of the hour and the person. This personalisation of leadership styles is vital so that even the project manager divides his attention effectively and ensures that even the weakest link in the chain is strengthened.

In HR terminology this is known as situational leadership—that’s your key to success.

Positive energy

Apart from the feeling of stretch and urgency, I have personally found tracking meetings as a useful way of motivating and rejuvenating the team. No matter what may be his state of mind, the project manager must bring with him a very high level of energy and optimism to the meeting. This is a panacea for sagging spirits, low productivity, low team morale and a desire to quit to name just a few.

While some tracking meetings may sound like a condolence meeting, you would admit that most meetings do have some element of success to report. So while much of the time may have been spent resolving issues, do not let go of the opportunity to congratulate the team for the work done and in fact celebrate even if it be in a small way.

A final word on tracking

If so far, tracking meant to us only hard facts, firing and blasting people, this article has displayed quite a few subtle and human aspects of tracking. Do we still need a separate article on people side of projects? I would not think so.

Pradeep Pendse is Senior Associate Dean—Systems & E-Business, Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research. E-mail: pendse_pradeep@yahoo.com