If keeping projects on track were simple, there wouldn’t be an entire field dedicated to it. Every project needs a robust system to monitor and evaluate progress, ensuring that any deviations from the plan can be promptly corrected. This is where project monitoring comes in.
Project monitoring is a critical process within project management that allows you to track progress and implement meaningful changes when necessary. It is a distinct phase of project management, equally as vital as the other stages.
In this blog post, we’ll explore why project monitoring is essential, its various substages, best practices, and how platforms like monday.com can assist project managers in managing these tasks effectively.
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Project monitoring is a crucial phase within the project management process, which encompasses initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and closing. During the project monitoring stage, teams track the project's progress by analysing various metrics that could impact its outcome, such as:
At this stage, a project manager or other stakeholders measure the project’s current performance against the project plan and overall goals. This involves checking if milestones are being met, such as delivering a prototype within a specified timeframe. Failure to hit these milestones increases the risk of project failure. Project monitoring is essential for identifying and addressing additional roadblocks that could affect the project’s success.
Project evaluation is closely related to project monitoring, yet they serve distinct purposes within project management. While project monitoring focuses on tracking a project’s progress against its initial goals, project evaluation delves deeper into understanding the reasons behind any deviations from the plan.
In the project evaluation phase, managers use the feedback and data collected during monitoring to analyse why a project might be veering off course, scope, or budget. This involves examining various factors such as:
Project evaluation is an ongoing process that occurs throughout the project lifecycle, not just at its conclusion. In-depth evaluations often take place at significant milestones, such as during retrospectives at the end of a sprint. These evaluations help project managers make necessary adjustments to keep the project on track and ensure its successful completion.
Project control is the essential phase that completes the project monitoring process. It focuses on implementing corrective actions to keep the project on track, within scope, and on budget while maintaining high quality. After monitoring progress and evaluating the collected data, project control is where actionable steps are taken to address any issues identified.
In this phase, you might take actions such as:
Project control serves as the final substage of project monitoring. After gathering data and evaluating the necessary changes, this phase is about putting those findings into action. By making tangible adjustments to methods, strategies, and the overall course of the project, project control ensures that the project remains aligned with its objectives and is set up for successful completion.
Companies waste an average of 5.2% of their investment on projects due to poor performance. Effective project monitoring, evaluation, and control can drastically reduce this wastage by improving a project's overall efficiency and catching and resolving issues before they escalate.
These three components act as interconnected facets of project management, each playing a critical role in guiding projects to successful outcomes. Here's why they are essential:
To effectively implement project monitoring, control, and evaluation, it's crucial to follow best practices tailored to your team's and company's unique processes. By adhering to these guidelines, you can enhance the efficiency of your monitoring efforts and ensure the ongoing success of your project.
From the project's inception, clearly define project goals and outline expectations at both the team and individual levels. Ensure that each team member understands their responsibilities and knows how to communicate updates or obstacles effectively. This clarity will facilitate a smoother monitoring process.
Project management tools are invaluable throughout the project lifecycle, especially during the monitoring phase. Comprehensive tools like monday.com can streamline workflows, simplify data and feedback collection, provide performance and metric reports, and help you assess team workloads. These tools enable you to keep a real-time check on your project's status and identify areas that need adjustments.
Effective communication is vital for the success of project monitoring, evaluation, and control. Regular updates from team members and stakeholders regarding deliverables, roadblocks, feedback, and timelines are essential. This ongoing communication allows for continuous monitoring and minimizes the need for constant information requests.
Determine the optimal frequency for monitoring based on your project's needs. Some projects may require continuous monitoring, while others might benefit from periodic reviews. Decide whether to monitor weekly, monthly, or quarterly or align monitoring with each sprint or project phase completion. Tailoring the frequency to your project's demands ensures relevant and timely insights.
Since project monitoring and evaluation depend heavily on data, automation tools are utilised to collect performance metrics and other relevant information. Automated reporting based on real-time data reduces the time and resources required for manual data gathering. Platforms like monday.com offer automation features that streamline data collection, allowing you to focus more on analysing and acting on the information.
Project monitoring is an essential aspect of project management, ensuring that work progresses smoothly and according to plan. However, like many project management tasks, monitoring comes with its own set of challenges that can hinder accurate evaluation and solution provision. Let's explore some of the most common challenges encountered in project monitoring:
Collecting accurate and up-to-date data is crucial, especially in complex projects. However, ensuring data accuracy becomes challenging when multiple sources of data are involved, leading to discrepancies and inaccuracies in the monitoring process.
Projects often undergo changes and expansions, resulting in scope creep. Monitoring progress against the original plan becomes challenging when project scope is not clearly defined from the outset or when plans continuously evolve, making it difficult to maintain alignment with project objectives.
Limited resources such as personnel, budget, and time can hamper effective project monitoring. Resource constraints may lead to inadequate assessments and inaccurate evaluations, impacting project outcomes.
Project managers are tasked with overseeing multiple reports during the monitoring process to gather various types of data. However, consolidating and analysing this data can be time-consuming and error-prone, mainly when performed manually.
Using multiple work tools for communication and task tracking can result in miscommunication and fragmented data. This fragmentation makes performance assessments challenging and less reliable, especially when reporting, chats, and task tracking are spread across different platforms.
To mitigate these challenges and ensure effective project monitoring, it's crucial to prepare the project thoroughly from the outset. This includes setting clear objectives and trackable metrics for continuous monitoring. Additionally, leveraging a unified platform like monday.com, which consolidates all project-related activities and communication in one place, can help overcome the pitfalls of broken communication, manual reporting, and data inaccuracies. By addressing these challenges proactively, project teams can enhance their monitoring processes and achieve more successful project outcomes.
Project monitoring and evaluation are essential for informed decision-making in project management. Utilising a comprehensive platform like monday.com streamlines the process, ensuring organisation and efficiency across all project aspects. Here’s how monday.com facilitates project monitoring:
monday.com offers a custom reporting dashboard where you can automatically generate insightful reports based on platform data. Visualize data using charts, timeline overviews, graphs, and widgets, providing a comprehensive overview of project progress and performance.
With over 27 work views available, including the workload view, you can efficiently manage your project resources. The workload view enables you to assess team members' tasks, workload distribution, and future commitments, facilitating better resource allocation and performance assessment.
monday.com simplifies workflow management, allowing you to implement positive changes to enhance project outcomes. Start quickly with pre-made templates and boards, customise workflows with personalised automation, and leverage collaboration tools for seamless communication and real-time task status updates.
In an ideal scenario, every project would unfold seamlessly, adhering to plans and timelines without a hitch. However, reality often presents challenges such as missed deadlines, budget overruns, and unexpected setbacks. This is where effective project monitoring and evaluation come into play.
Project monitoring allows you to stay informed about your projects' progress in real time, identifying potential issues that could impact scope, quality, timeline, or budget. By leveraging insights gained through monitoring and evaluation, you can optimise processes and make informed decisions to enhance project outcomes.
With monday.com, project monitoring is at your fingertips. Our platform provides all the necessary tools and information to track project progress, evaluate current status, identify areas for improvement, and take proactive steps to keep projects on track. With everything you need readily accessible, you can effectively manage projects with confidence and precision.