Speaker 1: One of the most important responsibilities of a project manager is continuously monitoring the progress of a project, ensuring that all things run smoothly and addressing issues as they arise. Unfortunately, this aspect of a PM's job is often overlooked, which is why we wanted to talk about it more in depth. Stay tuned to learn more about what project monitoring is and get some useful tips you can implement today. Ready? Let's jump in, shall we?

Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the official Teamly YouTube channel. If you enjoy our content, please click the like and subscribe button below. Now let's get straight to the video.

Speaker 1: What is project monitoring and why does it matter? Okay, so first things first, let's cover the basics of project monitoring. This process revolves around tracking the progress, the most important metrics, and the critical tasks associated with the project, ensuring that everything is done on time and on par with the required standards. So fundamentally, your goal is to spot potential roadblocks that may creep up during a project's execution and make sure that they are addressed as quickly and efficiently as possible. It's safe to say that this is one of the most important tasks a project manager has to attend to. By carefully monitoring a project, a PM can gather a wide array of useful and actionable data and as a result, leverage it for flawless decision making. But that's far from being the only benefit. Here are some more reasons you should invest your time and effort into carefully tracking a project's progress. It helps ensure that the tasks are delivered according to the requirements of the project, allows you to keep all the deadlines in check, it enables you to understand your teammates workload and capacity, and it keeps your budget on track. Finally, it stimulates accountability for both you and your team and the management. Okay, so what should you monitor? Now let's talk about the things that you should keep a close eye on during the project. To be fair, it's easier to think of the stuff that you don't have to monitor, but we'll do our best to focus on the most important things you have to keep in mind. The first is the overall RAG status, otherwise known as the red-amber-green. The RAG status is a representation of the traffic light, which is designed to mark the status of the project and its underlying tasks. Red is a clear warning sign that suggests a problem. This is a task that requires your immediate and undivided attention, otherwise it may fail or change course. This can refer to anything from money and time to human resources and beyond. Amber isn't as bad as red, but it still signals a task that is in dire need of attention before it goes to red. Generally tasks marked as amber demand less work and effort compared to red. Green pretty much means that everything is going as planned. It generally implies that the money, time, and talent allocations are sufficient to execute all the tasks in time and abiding by the required standards. Number two is budget. Monitoring a project's budget can be as intricate or straightforward as you want it to be. It's also worth mentioning that there are many ways project managers approach this task. But at the end of the day, it all comes down to staying aware of how much budget you have left, how much has to be done with said budget, and how much you actually need to get there. Here are a few things we recommend doing. The first thing is to make sure that everyone can see how many hours have been allotted into a particular task. As a result, everyone on your team can see how much time they're expected to invest in a specific activity. The second is to suggest that your teammates report their work in different ways, percentages, hours, or days remaining. This allows people to continuously re-evaluate time frames and determine the amount of work that they can deliver within them, helping them increase efficiency and time awareness. And finally, when discussing timelines, consider asking your teammates about their next steps. This small yet powerful trick will enable them to continuously divide larger tasks into smaller ones, leading to an increase in clarity and productivity. As a result, this will allow your team to do more with less budget. Third is milestones. It's important to include a number of significant milestones to monitor progress with the target date. This is the high-level baseline from the project plan schedule. Progress can then be monitored to see if they are being achieved, on target, or at threat. A way to do this again is to use the RAG. This makes it possible to focus on the milestones that need attention and intervention. Fourth is key risks and issues. A project manager should always be mindful of at least three critical risks and issues, as well as have a clear solution for their mitigation. Aside from that, it's wise to also set clear conditions under which these issues will be escalated for resolution. As a result, this will safeguard you as the project manager and your entire team, ensuring that these events won't affect delivery. Two important things that will help you navigate these risks are the risk response and the contingency plan. Your risk response plan will allow you to determine how to reduce or entirely eliminate risks, while the contingency plan will help you navigate the risks that cannot be avoided. Five is stakeholders. Measuring stakeholders' engagement levels is also critical for a PM's success. Understanding potential conflicts, satisfaction levels, and expectations will help you navigate the project more efficiently. By tracking stakeholder conflicts, you'll be able to identify trends and behaviors of the stakeholder, allowing you to uncover useful interactions and dependencies between them. Project managers have a lot on their plate, and monitoring projects is a task that may take up a significant part of your time and attention. However, it's worth mentioning that by investing time in monitoring a wide array of variables, you'll be able to ensure that the project runs smoothly and everyone is at their peak productivity. We hope you enjoyed today's video, and as always, if you're looking for in-depth professional and organizational guidance, don't hesitate to visit our blog at Teamly.com.