Tracking, by definition, is a method of following the progress of a project's

activities.

Measuring project performance regularly to identify deviations from the project

plan can help ensure that the project stays on track.

A deviation is anything that alters your original course of action. Deviations

from the project plan can be positive or negative

Tracking is also crucial for recognizing risks and issues that can derail your
progress.

With effective tracking, you will be able to identify issues in a timely fashion
and work with your team to take corrective action.

tracking is important for a few key reasons, like transparency, risk management,
and keeping the project on track.

First, you should always track the project schedule. This is made up of tasks and
activities that ensure that the project is effectively heading toward its
completion date.

tracking the status of action items, key tasks, and activities to ensure that that
work is actually getting done.
Tracking tasks also helps to track your team's progress toward milestones.

In order to avoid missing deadlines, it's imperative to track tasks as they

progress and as you approach key milestones.

need to track costs to ensure that you don't overspend or underspend on project
tasks.

Tracking tools are Gantt chart, a roadmap, and a burndown chart.

. A Gantt chart measures tasks against time and includes useful information, like
who will own each task and what the order of the tasks should be.

it's a useful chart for staying on schedule and for projects with many
dependencies or tasks or activities or milestones that are reliant on one another

. It's also a helpful chart for teams with a lot of people, because ownership and
responsibilities are explicitly laid out visually. As you track and move along
sequentially over time, this starts to look like a waterfall; hence, why Gantt
charts are commonly used in Waterfall project management. Each task is represented
by a horizontal progress bar, and the length of the bar is dependent on how much
time is allotted to the task.

Gantt charts typically live in your project plan and are updated as the project
progresses.

A roadmap is best suited for when you need a way to track big milestones in your
project. It's useful for illustrating how a project should evolve over time to a
team and key stakeholders

A roadmap also includes a high-level project overview. High-level in this context

means a concise summary, usually three-to-four sentences, to clearly state the
objectives and priorities for your project. Below the goals, approach, and overview
is a table that maps out what the process will entail. In this example, our table
is divided into quarters that reflect the project timeline
A burndown chart measures time against the amount of work done and the amount of
work remaining. Their main uses are to keep the project team on top of targeted
completion dates and to keep the team aware of scope creep as it occurs. Burndown
charts are best suited for projects that require a detailed, broken-down review of
each task associated with a project, and they're great for projects where finishing
on time is the top priority.

The Gantt chart is one of the most popular tracking methods and can be used for all
types of projects. Gantt charts typically live in your project charter and are
updated as the project progresses.

Gantt charts are useful for:

Helping a team stay on schedule

Projects with lots of tasks, dependencies, and milestones

Projects with large teams, because ownership and responsibilities are explicitly
laid out visually

Asana, one of the work management software tools featured in this certification,
has useful resources for getting started with Gantt charts.

Roadmaps are another common tracking method. Like Gantt charts, Roadmaps also track
both individual and project progress toward milestones. However, Roadmaps are best
suited for tracking big milestones in your project.

Roadmaps are useful for:

High-level tracking of large milestones. Roadmaps outline the project as a whole

and provide an overall snapshot of key points—just like an actual roadmap contains
points of interest and mile markers.

Illustrating to your team or key stakeholders how a project should evolve over time

Burndown charts are typically used by Agile Scrum teams. Burndown charts reveal how
quickly your team is working by displaying how much work is left and how much time
remains to complete the work. The main uses of a Burndown chart are to keep the
project team on top of targeted completion dates and make them aware of scope creep
if it occurs. The chart should be displayed so everyone can see it and needs to be
updated regularly in order to be effective.

Burndown charts are useful for:

Projects that require a detailed review of tasks

Projects where finishing on time is the top priority

Key components of a project status report

A project status report gives an overview of all of the project’s common elements
and summarizes them in a snapshot. It is an efficient communication tool to convey
the latest status in one place for the team and stakeholders.

Most status reports contain the following components:

Project name: The project name should be specific to the purpose of the project so
that the overall goal of the project can be understood at-a-glance.
Date: You will create project status reports many times during the course of a
project’s implementation phase. Reports can be created weekly or monthly—it all
depends on the stakeholders’ needs and pace of the project. Adding the date to each
status report acts as a reference point for your audience and also creates a
history log of the project’s status over time.

Summary: The summary condenses the project’s goals, schedule, highlights, and
lowlights in one central place for easy stakeholder visibility. Usually, the
summary section will be followed by, or grouped with, the timeline summary and the
overall project status.

Status: As you can imagine, status is a crucial piece. The status of the project
illustrates your actual progress versus your planned progress. In project
management, a common way to depict this is through RAG (red, amber, green), or Red-
Yellow-Green, status reporting. RAG follows a traffic light pattern to indicate
progress and status. Red indicates that there are issues that need resolution and
that the project may be delayed or go significantly over budget. Amber/Yellow means
that there are potential issues with schedule or budget, but that the issues can
likely be resolved with corrective actions. And green means the schedule and budget
are doing fine and that the project is on track. You can use RAG to indicate the
overall project status, as well as milestone status. Every project team and
stakeholder may have a slightly different perspective on what the colors mean and
how urgent it is to escalate issues when they see an amber/yellow or red status, so
it’s important to make sure everyone understands what the different color statuses
mean for your project.

Milestones and tasks: A summary of the project’s major milestones thus far and
current tasks helps the team and stakeholders easily visualize the progress of
those elements. In a project plan, you will typically depict the tasks and
milestones as ‘not started,’ ‘in progress’ or ‘completed’ at an item-by-item level.
But, in the project status report, it is common to summarize these items into two
categories to better communicate the status. You’ll use key accomplishments to
detail what has happened, and upcoming to detail what big milestones you will
accomplish next.

Issues: The issues include your project's current roadblocks and potential risks.
Status reports are an important opportunity to set expectations with your
stakeholders. If your project status is red or amber, you can flag what is
preventing you from being where you planned to be. You can also use this
opportunity to state your plan to get the project back to green, and ask for any
resources or help you may need to do so. You will learn more about communicating
big risks and issues in the upcoming videos.

Project status report types

With those key elements in mind, you can format your report in a variety of ways
depending on your audience and what you need to communicate.

If you need to share a status report with your team for a project that contains
multiple layers of complexity, it may be best to format the report in a spreadsheet
in order to keep track of all the moving parts.

If you simply need to communicate updates to senior stakeholders, your status

report may be best formatted as a slideshow, like the one below, containing only an
overview of the most key points.

Example of a project status report snapshot with name, summary, status, issues,
pending items and milestones and tasks
Key takeaways
To recap, project status reports are a powerful tool to:
Improve and simplify communication across the team.

Keep everyone, including key stakeholders, informed.

Request more resources and support (if needed).

Create structure and transparency by recording the project status in a centralized

place.