Track and Analyze Projects › Tracking and Analysis Overview

Tracking and Analysis Overview

Tracking is the process for measuring project status and comparing it to the project plan to identify variances and take corrective actions. This process is repeated over the course of a project, allowing you to control and monitor project progress and cost. You can also use tracking information to generate project status reports. Tracking consists of reviewing information on actuals, such as the actual start and finish dates, the actual duration of tasks, the actual time worked by resources, and the actual cost of the project. Tracking also provides information about tasks in progress and those that have been completed.

To ensure efficient monitoring of a project, make the lowest level of the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) represent small amounts of work. Use milestones to indicate significant events and mark progress. To closely monitor a project, you must be able to spot problems and trends that develop during the project's life cycle in time to do something about them. Periodic evaluations of your project data can help you pinpoint problems as they arise, letting you initiate the necessary corrective actions to bring the project back on target. In instances where the word “analysis” is used, it signifies the review, examination, investigation, and evaluation of project data to:

• Identify deviations
• Determine causes of deviations
• Determine the importance of deviations
• Decide on corrective actions

Deviations are differences between expectations and actuality, including variances traditionally used by project managers to compare planned and actual performance. Open Workbench incorporates a number of field names that you can use in views to produce the analysis project managers need to track work performance, spot trouble areas, and account for cost and schedule variances.

The list of field names in the View Definition dialog box contains many calculated variance elements and performance indices, and several field names that you can use in an analysis to signal potential trouble (for example, “Critically Late?”). Use these fields in views to directly identify tasks with deviations.