Project Management Step by Step: How to Plan and Manage a Highly Successful Project

Measuring and managing progress on a project

The most important task for the project manager is to manage progress – that is, to ensure that a project is moving forward, at an adequate speed, to deliver the desired end result in the timeframe wanted without spending more money than was expected.

Managing progress is about ensuring that the pace of work being done by yourself and other project team members is matching that planned and required. To be able to determine this, you must have a way of measuring progress. Because you have a plan, you have something to measure with – and that is one way to think of the plan, as a project manager’s measuring device. However, a plan is simply a view of how the future might work, it is not a statement ...