Handling a project will be all too easy if you only have a handful of tasks and people to handle. However, as the tasks grow and undergo certain processes with different people involved, handling a project can be tricky. This is where project tracking comes in.

Project tracking will help you streamline processes so you’ll know what tasks are precedent to another. And helping you prioritize one over the other. 

Doing so also helps you mitigate risks, identify blockers and fix them, and meet deadlines. Overall, moving the team and the project in the right direction. 

If you manage and track your project properly, the result won’t only benefit the project. But will also get the team a thumbs up from the higher-ups. 

How and Where Project Tracking Helps with Your Team’s Success

Project Tracking Helps Define Goals and the Tasks in Entail

When handling a team, especially with remote members, clearly communicating the project’s goals to the team members will get everyone on the same page. This way, they will align all their with the goals. 

But why is goal alignment so important?

When it’s clear to everybody what the goals are, it ensures that the deliverables are right. And with the best real value for the project. Simply said, a proper plan will be executed to achieve these defined goals. 

On the other hand, if everybody works out without the goals in mind, the project will have poor focus and vague objectives. 

Simply, they just don’t know why they are doing what they are doing. The output will be mediocre and done just for the sake of compliance. 

A great example of this is if you’re working on a digital marketing team. And promoting a product for an upcoming occasion. If the team doesn’t know that the goal is selling all available inventory before a certain date, they might still be running campaigns after that period is over. 

With project tracking in place, you can communicate goals to the team. And explain the breakdown of the project into tasks. 

Putting the project into smaller tasks keeps the team members on a clear objective of their efforts. And allows the team leader to identify risks and issues clearly and manage them promptly.

With everything tracked and in order, as the tasks get done, the team will see their efforts geared toward reaching the conclusive project goal.  

Makes Room for Effective Resource Allocation

Project tracking allows the team leader and members to gauge workloads. Identifying who and what resources are involved in accomplishing tasks. 

After breaking down the project into tasks, the team leader can now define what resources they need for each task in the process. 

The biggest resource a team leader has is his members. With project tracking in place, team members with the appropriate skill set what they need to accomplish certain tasks. And delegate with the right tasks at the right time. With this proper expectations in output can be set. 

This also allows the team leader to see if the timeframe is appropriate for the member working on it. Or how many people they need to handle the workload with a deadline set, setting reasonable expectations and milestones for the stakeholders and the team. 

With project tracking, resources are in place when and where you need them to be. 

Say your client is an eCommerce store owner. And you asked to manage it and scale its sales. Then you need to tap third-party teams like an SEO agency to work on content optimization. And web designers to optimize the store. 

Knowing these ahead will mean you’ll tap on the right people when you need them. 

Additionally, by pairing up the task and member, they will time allocate other resources like tools and machinery to prevent delays. 

If your client owns an Amazon store and hires you to manage it, getting a listing optimization tool and product inventory software when you’re in the scaling phase will help streamline your work process. 

You can also monitor phases. And identify the most demanding periods needing more workforce and tools so you can prepare everything in advance. Or plan who to pull out from what task to support the need for these more demanding phases. 

With everything worked out efficiently, you can avoid unnecessary expenses by optimizing a process that allows for the best quality or quantity output at the lowest cost. 

Deadline will be achievable and expectations will be reasonable. Everybody is happy. 

On the other hand, without project tracking, budgets and deadlines can become over-ambitious. Resulting in every member getting burned out and affecting their output poorly. This also means they will likely deliver the project late and over the allotted budget. 

Allows for Monitoring of Project Status in Real-Time

With project tracking, they define tasks so members can log progress. And update the team lead, contingent team members dependent on a prior task, and other stakeholders. 

Also, with employee tracking, you won’t need to micromanage your teams. There won’t be a need to interrupt members to ask for updates. And everybody can focus on working on their respective tasks. 

You can easily get a clear picture of what’s getting done in real-time even if you’re handling a digital workplace. 

Project tracking allows the team to be more proactive and deal with issues or bottlenecks as soon as they arise. 

They can easily spot and correct if tasks are deviating from their pattern. Or the project is stuck on a phase. 

If you’re leading a content creation team with the stakeholder asking for an in-depth guide incorporated with a review section and video content, project tracking will let you see which part of the content is already done and what you should focus on next. 

Project tracking doesn’t just track task progress. It also allows for efficient reporting so stakeholders can have a detailed report ready anytime they need it. 

For many teams that already have their hands full, reporting can be another weight on their shoulders. But with project tracking, they constantly document tasks making the oversight continuous without needing the team to do any extra work. 

Additionally, those analyzing the report wouldn’t be needing extra explanations. Since the report provided will be in the form of digestible task progress. There they can simply compare with the goals and task deadlines and see how everything is faring. 

With this, team members can show and prove to the client or stakeholders their trust with the project. Paving the way for a strong relationship between all those involved. 

Project tracking promotes transparency. For the team to work on any issue immediately and for the stakeholders to know everything is working out according to what they agreed upon.

Improves the Consistency of Internal Communication

Collaboration can be challenging especially if the team members are working remotely from each other. But with project tracking, internal communication for people not in the same place is not a roadblock anymore.

With tasks already defined, they can tag team members on the tasks they’ll work on. And immediately see who they will be working with. They also see other tasks dependent on theirs and see their assignees. 

If your client owns a printing service like Mixam and your work is to market it and use PPC management services, the common bottleneck is when the raw resources run out. So you also have to work with the procurement and the production team to ensure you’re marketing a product that’s readily available for those who opt into it. 

The same is true again for eCommerce stores. Internal communication helps not just within one department but across different departments of the same organization. 

For an eCommerce store that provides mannequins, internal communication is crucial to ensure ordered goods are on hand.

This transparency will ensure accountability. And make it easy for everybody to know who to work with or get in touch with about certain tasks. Thus reducing the complexity of the project collaboration to finish tasks. 

Thanks to team synergy, demanding tasks will get immediate support from other team members who are capable of helping out. 

By optimizing collaboration, the project will be much more efficient and successful. 

Project Tracking Increases Productivity

As they define tasks, assign members, and allocate resources, they can avoid unnecessary delays in productivity. So the projects will run smoothly and on time. 

Using project tracking will allow members to see the whole project cycle. And help realize the urgency of the completion of their respective tasks. 

Without project tracking, instead of being proactive projects that aim to bring out quality work, the output will be hanging on survival mode. 

The team often fractures and tasks duplicate while they miss out on other tasks. Everything becomes inefficient. By not using resources to the best extent, the team fails to meet deadlines, producing a mediocre output. 

If your team handles content creation for a review website like Medical Alert Buyers Guide, project tracking ensures no two team members are working on the same product. And thus avoid task duplication. 

Project tracking allows for efficient planning. And with efficient planning, everything will be in place. Keeping issues at a minimum and allowing them to address them quickly if ever they arise. 

You’ll even get to analyze if you need additional tools like marketing automation to streamline tasks. 

With it, they won’t waste resources, and they’ll anticipate and plan on risks. Projects won’t fail, and the team together with clients and stakeholders will be happy. 

Allows Team Leaders to Make Better Decisions

As the saying goes, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Project tracking allows you to avoid project failure through wrong decisions made. 

Project tracking entails planning and allows real-time monitoring. Planning allows the decision-makers to see any potential risk early on and plan for solutions if ever they do arise. This way, they won’t suffer delays. 

Real-time monitoring will also allow the team leaders to see if certain tasks are at risk of failing. To meet deadlines so support and resources they’ll need can be available to allow the task to finish on time. 

A task finished on time means the dependent task can also start on time. 

Say your team is developing a new product like Gili Sports would do to cater to more markets. Ensuring research phases start on time will ensure the design creation and production of new boards will start on time as well. 

Project tracking allows you to see clear records of progress. So you can manage any potential risks wisely and on time. You’ll also be able to decide what to prioritize. And what can cause the biggest risks so you can work on it before it jeopardizes the whole process. 

Lastly, the decisions made will be based on reports and real-time monitoring, meaning decisions are smarter because they are data-driven. This also means there’s no need to delay making decisions because they already made available the deciding factors. 

Improves Client Satisfaction

If the project progresses on time and meets the deadline, clients and stakeholders will be pleased. 

Keep in mind that this is delivered on time, no delay occurred, and so you can assure quality, adding to the clients’ or the stakeholders’ satisfaction. 

Additionally, when they are given access to the project tracker or provided with a progress report, they can see how the goals are achieved and the project nearing completion by the day. 

It’s like a report card you provide for them. You give them the status and progress and they see the performance and if everything’s going as expected, they’ll trust the team more to handle succeeding projects. 

Additionally, this satisfaction they experience from your team will even move them to recommend your organization or group to other potential clients. You get free marketing for the satisfaction you provide, saving you funds on marketing efforts. 

Project Tracking Controls Risks

We mentioned this a bit earlier, but let’s talk a bit more about how it manages risks. 

With everything planned, you as a leader and your team can stay a step ahead from unwanted threats and risks. 

While there are still potential risks, you can plan courses of action you can take if ever it arises so it doesn’t turn to exhausting issues that will affect the whole progress of the project and cause the project avoidable delays. 

If you ask your team to manage a service-based brand or a video streaming platform, keeping in mind what kind of technical glitches would come up will allow you to plan how to fix it and assign a team member to handle and fix them. 

Without project tracking, there’s a huge temptation to sweep potential risks under the carpet unwisely thinking you won’t have to deal with them later on. 

Having a robust project tracking system will help you identify clear risks with each task and plan on how you can mitigate the risk or deal with it if it ever turns into an issue.

Again, the tasks you need to monitor in accomplishing a task can spread you too thin, handling issues will just add to the work you need to handle. 

So when dealing with complex projects, it’s best to use project tracking to identify risk so the project flow will run as smoothly as possible.

Project Tracking Helps You Stay on Budget

When they delegate everything properly, they can use resources at their best and avoid delays. This way, the budget set for the project will be enough to get to the output expected. 

Without project tracking, they will manage resources unwisely, wasting funds that will need to contact stakeholders again for an increase in budget. 

An example we will take here again is if your team is tapped to handle creation for a review content like reviewing growth hacking tools. 

Most software you can try for free but some you need to pay for. If you don’t research ahead what you try for free and what you have to pay for, you’ll go above your estimated budget. 

Project tracking will allow you to plan for research in advance to know the software that entails costs. 

Often if this is the case, the client will be disappointed and you won’t build trust enough for them to trust you for future projects and referrals.  

Investing in a project tracking tool can seem unnecessary, but when you spend on it and see how it streamlines everything for an efficient and quality output that saves you from budget shortages, you’ll realize it was all worth it. 

Project Tracking Is Essential in Team Success

Project tracking helps from defining goals to monitoring tasks and allocating resources, controlling risks, and to keeping everything within the budget and allotted time frame. 

Decisions will be better, you’ll end up on budget, and stakeholders will be happy. With this, you can build a relationship allowing you to work on more projects for them and their network.

Overall, by investing in this efficient-centered project tool, you’ll be able to scale your business as you help more and more stakeholders grow their businesses. 

About the author:

Burkhard Berger is the founder of Novum. You can follow him on his journey from 0 to 100,000 monthly visitors on novumhq.com. His articles include some of the best growth hacking strategies and digital scaling tactics that he has learned from his own successes and failures.

It may interest you:

• Time tracking for Marketing Teams
• Time Keeping Increases the Chances of Success for Your Projects
• Attendance tracker for every business
• 7 Best Practices to Lead and Manage Remote Teams