Progress measurement involves determining and reporting on task, activity, and project progress. Performance measurement compares this progress against defined criteria, targets, or benchmarks to assess whether a project is over or under-performing.

It involves six key metrics: CV, SV, CPI, SPI, VAC, and TCPI. There are five key processes involved in progress and performance measurement: progress measurement planning, performance measurement planning, progress and performance measurement execution, monitoring and control, and measurement closure.

Make important information more accessible and digestible by gathering it all in one place. Avoid reinventing data collection strategies every year.

Know exactly how to structure and populate your data collection tools e. what survey questions to ask. Set up an integrated way for your organization to intentionally review, tweak, learn, and improve its entire tutoring program year after year. What are the prerequisites for designing a good Performance Measurement Plan?

What are the components of a Performance Measurement Plan? Measures: The criteria that define success; your indicators of whether a step in your Logic Model was implemented and achieved the expected results.

Performance Expectations: The benchmarks you want to hit by a certain date; your prediction of expected progress towards measures at each stage.

How to Develop a Performance Measurement Plan Start with your completed Logic Model. Extract the intended Impacts Short-Term, Intermediate, or Long-Term that will measure End-of-Program Impact.

Use these for impact measures. Extract the intended Outputs that you will use to track progress and performance throughout the program. Use these for monitoring measures. List measures that would define success in this aspect of the program, potentially by formalizing and systematizing those that are already in use by your team.

A key measurement is the current status at the start and how this compares to the end. Were the deliverables handed over on time, on budget, and on specification? The results can help to inform the next project undertaken and adjustments can be made based on historic results.

Using this method for how to measure project progress is most useful for those with a shorter duration. Longer projects will benefit from additional measurement points to ensure that things are progressing smoothly. These percentages should be determined before the start date and should be agreed upon with the product owner or contractor for the project.

There are three common ways of splitting up the data points:. Repeating tasks should typically take the same amount of time which makes it easier to track progress.

Cost and effort should also stay roughly the same even if repeatable tasks are done by different people. As a measuring tool, this method is easy to monitor, however, it is less useful for tasks that will only be completed one time.

To measure by deliverables you need to subtract the number of tasks accepted by the client from the total amount of tasks needed. Before the start date of your project, you should have defined the deliverables with the client. If you have signed on for multiple goods, you can earn percentage points for each accepted one.

For example, if you are a video editor and a client has contracted you for 10 videos over the space of a month, you may not have specified deadlines for each video. However, all deliverables will need to be returned in 28 days.

Now you can earn 10 percentage points for each video you send back to the client. Measuring by deliverables works well as a project performance progress method only when there is more than one needed. When dealing with multiple deliverables, percentage points can be divided between each task.

You can earn the points only when each task has been delivered to the client. To measure by hours you need to estimate how long the project will take to complete. This can be based on previous experiences or decided with the client in advance.

In order to accurately monitor percentage points, you divide the actual hours completed from the expected total hours. If each chair takes 10 hours from start to finish you will earn 10 percentage points for every hour you work on the chair. For bigger projects, you should consider measuring performance by milestones.

Your tasks include a new logo, redesigned website, social media strategy, and promo material. Each task can be assigned 25 percentage points or they can be divided according to the amount of work required.

This can be decided internally for your monitoring or decided with the client. Milestones are a great way to identify different tasks and track the progress of each of them within a project. Measuring by cost is another method for monitoring project performance that works best for something long-term.

You will need to forecast the expected costs for the deliverables, which can be agreed upon with the client before the start date. As the project progresses you can take the cost spent and divide this from the forecasted total which will give you your percentage points.

Measuring by cost makes it clear how much money is left in the budget to complete the task. It makes it easier to understand if a project is likely to come in over budget or not. The cost method works well for project managers who can easily determine how much the deliverables will cost your company to produce.

You can use your previous experience to help determine this or you may have to work within a budget set out by your boss, or the client.

To ensure the total success of your projects there are some key tactics for you to understand. Measuring performance is vital for communication, understanding, and team growth. However, you can also make sure your projects are successful by setting them up correctly and using these methods to deliver results.

Before you start anything make sure that you and your team understand the scope of the project , leaving nothing open to interpretation. Define the roles and responsibilities for each person in your team and what will determine project success.

Create a spreadsheet or use the project management platform Teamly to document each of the tasks that need to be completed along with who is taking ownership of it.

List tasks based on their priority and double-check this with the client or your manager to make sure the most important things are being done first. Sit down with your team to talk about the tasks and make sure they understand the priority levels for their jobs.

If tasks are split between staff, they need to understand what roadblocks could be encountered. Communication stands tall as the most important thing a project needs to be a success.

Explore Agency Life and learn how to scale your agency, straight from agency leaders. Project management. There is only one way to measure whether a project is a success or a failure—with data.

Thanks to project metrics and the right tools to track that data , it's now easier than ever to crunch the numbers on previous projects to see where we went right and what task ended up causing a major delay. Project metrics give agencies the tools they need to track performance and spot problems before they become catastrophes.

We're talking about everyday issues that successful project managers need to deal with like meeting deadlines, sticking to budgets, and keeping everyone working productively.

Should you track individual performances or team productivity? Does it make sense to look at every single piece of project data? Take a breath because we're here to help you simplify all of this and break down things like:.

The hassle-free way to track and measure OKRs. Use our OKR template to set and smash your goals while making sure everyone is on the same page. Try our free OKR template. Monitoring parts of a project like productivity, scheduling, and scope make it easier for team leaders to see what's on track.

As a project evolves, managers need access to changing deadlines or budgets to meet their client's expectations. What makes project metrics so important is that they can give team leaders a 10,foot view of any project in their pipeline while it's in progress.

Solve problems during the project and not after it has been delivered. Evaluate and change course if budget or resources are in danger. Create forecasts to make future project spending and scheduling more accurate.

Instead of figuring out how the house burned down, project metrics help you spot fire as it starts so you can quickly extinguish it. We'll say it one more time—project metrics are not the same as project Key Performance Indicators KPIs.

Metrics and KPIs tend to get jumbled together a lot of the time, which can be confusing when team leaders decide how to measure project performance. KPIs are mainly used to compare specific data points like budget variance, billable hour ratios, and cycle times.

Project metrics are more encompassing so you can track productivity metrics like utilization, scheduling, and realization to get a broader idea of what's actually getting done. So what exactly should your agency or organization use to measure performance or improvement?

Read on to find out. One of the most critical parts of any project is meeting deadlines and milestones on time. And one thing is for sure, clients don't like ever-changing deadlines without specific reasons.

The challenge is most projects don't hit their deadlines. This is a huge concern for businesses, which is why monitoring project scheduling, due date changes, and overall progress is an essential aspect of the project management job.

Tracking these project metrics gives you more insight into:. Tasks: Were they completed on time? Milestones and deadlines: Was the project delivered in line with the estimated date? People: Were there enough team members for the assigned tasks?

Now, there are a lot of data points you need to track to paint an accurate picture of scheduling. Using a tool makes it much easier for team leaders to understand how healthy a project's schedule is. In this example, we instantly see that the book launch isn't going so great.

As of now, three of the tasks are late. But the project manager or team lead can use Teamwork. com to dive into which tasks are late, when they were originally due, and who is responsible.

Now that the project manager knows that Emer is running behind on the design review for the project, they can reach out for an update or reassign the task completely to whoever has the available time.

It's also crucial to track schedule variance. This is where you look at the cost of the project's scheduled tasks and compare it to work completed. The final figure shows whether or not you underspent, met, or exceeded the project's overall budget.

If the schedule variance figure is negative—it's at risk of being delivered late and costing too much. A scope outlines the expectations of every project in your pipeline.

So it makes sense to track the scope once work starts, which will make your clients much happier. Your project scope should contain detailed deliverables , milestones, and deadlines. If these are not clearly defined or you don't stick to them , that's when scope creep kicks in.

This is a lot easier if you have a clearly defined scope before the project actually kicks off. If you struggle to create watertight scopes, please steal our free project scope template here. Tracking productivity helps team leaders see how much work every person is getting done.

If you have all of a project's inputs and outputs defined and track them once a project kicks off, it's easier to do this accurately. Ideally, you want to track your team's input like project hours isn't more than their output the amount of work they're getting done.

Figuring this out is pretty easy. First, choose the productivity metric you want to track, like how many tasks a person has completed, and then you can:. Measure a time period: Like hours, days, or weeks.

Track output over that time: How many tasks is each team member getting done in that time? Once you have all of this data, divide the output by the input to see each person's productivity level. However, there's an easier way. With the Teamwork. com Task Table View , you get immediate insights into task health, task completion percentages, days left to complete the task, and even budget used if a monetary value can be tied to the project.

Time is a critical project metric as it indicates whether the job will be done when the client expects it. Whether you break projects down using schedules, sprints, or cycles, there are a couple of ways you can measure time:. Cycle time: How long does it take your team to complete a task?

Successful deadlines: How often are deadlines getting hit? This is super important not just for you but for meeting client expectations. Sprints: How often are sprint items running as planned?

What impact is it having on the overall delivery of the project? All of this data makes it easier to diagnose issues. com makes this easier for groups by allowing members to add estimated time to each task. This also allows you to look beyond your team performance and dive into individual time estimates from each team member.

If your team takes a month to complete a sprint and meets the deadline , it may seem like smooth sailing. But a deeper look may find that the project had three employees hitting deadlines and one missing important milestones. The data you've collected makes it easier for you to work with your team to address issues early on and provide your clients with more transparent updates.

Robust reporting capabilities at your fingertips. Get a bird's-eye-view of everything, from overall project health to team capacity, helping you deliver projects that grow the bottom line. Discover Teamwork. com's reporting features. Anyone who has worked at an agency can tell you how quickly jobs can pile up from clients — not to mention the number of clients you manage.

When will they have time to check their emails? Collaborate with their colleagues? Use the bathroom?! com Utilization Report takes the stress off managers by automatically tracking team schedules and then calculating how much free time is available for tasks.

If someone is under-utilized they can take on more tasks , then Teamwork. com highlights them in red. Tracking utilization is a quick way for team leaders to see who has space on their schedules to take on extra tasks or say no to any new projects if everybody's calendars are already looking full.

Going over budget is one of the worst things that happen on a project. Unfortunately, this also happens a lot. It's never going to be easy to match up to your original project estimate costs — especially if you miss deadlines or hit unexpected roadblocks.

But using the right reporting tools lets you track these project metrics to ensure you don't or at least significantly overspend. The reason agencies have problems with budget management is that projects have so many moving parts. We don't need to tell you how hard it is to monitor line items like advertising costs while tracking individual billable hours.

Using project management software specifically geared toward agencies helps you avoid all of this. The Units Completed lends itself well to tracking tasks that are done repeatedly, where each iteration can easily be measured.

Usually a task that is done repeatedly tends to take about the same amount of time, resources and effort, so tracking the units completed works well here. A simple example could be installing standard light fixtures.

Each fixture takes roughly the same amount of time. If we had fixtures to install then we can simply count the units installed. In this case, there are no subjective experience-based judgement involved. An example of this technique is the forming and placing of a concrete foundation wall — laying the foundation wall on footings, erecting inside wall panels and brace, setting horizontal and vertical rebar in formwork and so forth needs to be done in sequence to complete the task appropriately.

So how do you calculate this data? The calculation is built on each single step and the budgeted amount of time labour hours that is needed to complete the task by the construction crew. As each step is completed, they are documented as a mini-milestone which represents a percentage of the total installation process.

The percentage given for each sub-task can vary based on the project. This progress is usually agreed on to be used as a measuring tool beforehand. A good way to implement this method in Primavera P6 is using Activity Steps.

This method is only focused on capturing the starting point and the finishing point of the task and nothing in between. You would implement this method if the tasks work estimations are not available or if the percent complete progress data is too difficult to collect.

These percentages are determined by the owner and contractor of the project. The Cost Ratio method is usually implemented on a project that has tasks that tend to occur over a long phase or the entire project.

Often used for Overhead costs, this technique is measured based on the budgeted allocation of dollars vs. the labour hours of production. This method gives the contractor the ability to earn value that is equal to the overall percent of project completion. Unlike the methods above that rely on definitive data, this method relies on the experience and subjectivity of the project manager.

This method was highlighted as the best technique in the text and is the one that requires more effort, but also extends to a wider data range. The tasks that are being calculated tend to occur over a longer duration time and includes multiple sub-tasks, where sub-tasks can have different units of measurements.

The example used to illustrate this method is building a structural steel package.