In project management, it’s important to monitor track of the project’s progress and make sure that every task is done on time so that the project can be completed on time.
When you’re managing more than one project at a time, it’s hard to manage track of everything. MPT is the process of executing tracking of and managing tasks, resources, and time for more than one project at the same time.
There is software that can help you manage multiple projects, but you can easily build a Project management Dashboard spreadsheet to manage multiple projects well.
What is tracking a project?
Before we go any further, we need to know what project tracking is and how it works. This term means figuring out how far a project has come or how much work has been done on it.
We know that a project is made up of small tasks that add up to the whole. This is called a “work breakdown structure.” When we talk about project progress, we are talking about all of the tasks that have been finished. On the basis of standard practises, it is highly recommended to do a project audit to evaluate the overall performance.
Different tools and techniques are used to keep tracking of this. Here, we’ll talk about project management tracking templates. Here is its format, which is important to know if you want to know how it works.
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Format of Multiple Project Tracking Template in Excel
This tracking spreadsheet has three sheets. The first sheet is used to enter data (such as staff members, tasks, deadlines, etc.). The second sheet shows the project plan, and the third sheet uses diagrams and numbers to show the overall progress and status.
As an employee finishes a task, he reports it on this spreadsheet. The sheet will automatically calculate its performance based on the data he entered on the sheet and show the task’s status on the sheet.
Basically, these task reports and statuses show how far along a project is, and when the last task is finished and its data is entered into the sheet, it will calculate the whole database and show if a project is done or not.
The answers to the following questions about the project can be found in project progress tracking;
- Which activities have been completed?
- What parts of the project are being done right now?
- What activities are coming up next?
- What problems has the project had up to this date?
- How is the project as a whole going?
Elements of a Multiple Project Tracking Dashboard
To manage and keep track of tasks for multiple projects, the multiple projects tracking template dashboard must have the following key elements:
Multiple Project Details: It shows the name of the project, the name of the customer, and the name of the project manager, so that the project can be understood quickly and communication is easy.
Multiple Project Selector: It should look like a dropdown menu that lets you choose one or more projects to see a list of their activities and details.
Multi-Project Tasks Status – It shows the progress of each task in a project. There are different ranges for how many tasks have been done, such as 1–25 percent, 25–50 percent, 50–75 percent, and 75–100 percent.
Multi-Project Status – This shows the overall progress of each project.
Multi-Project Gantt Chart: It shows tasks for each project separately as well as on a single Gantt chart.
Multi-Project Summary: It lets you see at a glance how many projects are doing. You can also add new projects and manage their labels here.
How to Keep Track of Multiple Projects in Excel?
Excel spreadsheets can be used to make many different tools for keeping track of projects. There needs to be more than one spreadsheet, and each spreadsheet serves a different purpose. Here are the spreadsheets you need to keep track of and keep an eye on several simple projects at once.
Information spreadsheet
The purpose of this sheet is to give a summary of several multiple projects. There should be a Project Gantt Button, a Data Sheet Button, and a Project Plan Button in this sheet so that details can be seen.
Spreadsheet for a project plan
On a Gantt chart, the dashboard of this template will show the project plans and timelines of multiple projects. This sheet will get dropdown menus for project tasks, task status, and project status.
Spreadsheet for Project Summary
It will show information about each project as a whole, such as the high-level KPI metric, the number of tasks, their start and end dates, the number of days needed, and the project’s progress.
Spreadsheet of Project Data
On this tab, information about each project will be written down, such as a list of all the tasks, how they depend on each other, dates, how long they will take, and how far along they are. You can use the filter to see one project at a time to get a clear picture of any project.
Advice on Keeping Track of a Project
Here are some highly recommended practises for project tracking Excel templates that will help you get results that are free of mistakes:
Planning: A professional project plan is a guarantee of project success because without proper planning, we can’t evaluate if our project is making progress or not.
But a project plan has SMART Goals, objectives, purpose, Tasks, budget, stakeholders, timeline, milestones, etc. And we use the KPI Dashboard to see how things are going.
Realistic Approaches: We should always use a realistic approach, which means that our goals, end result, and deliverables should be attainable. It will be a disaster if we set goals that can’t be reached within the proposed delivery schedule time and on budget. Setting timelines over and over again is another sign of bad planning.
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Evaluate Risks: It’s important to look at the things that could go wrong and make a plan for how to deal with them. Because if you don’t have a risk plan, you can’t do anything when problems go wrong.
First, you should know that there are two types of risk factors. The first risk factor is known, so we can make a plan to deal with it. The other is unknown. So, to deal with this second thing, we make a plan B.
Consistency: Check project reports every day to keep progress of how your project is going. Monitoring a project means keeping progress of how each activity or task is going. This will help you keep track of the project as a whole.
Accuracy in Monitoring: If the process of completing a task takes longer than expected, do an analysis and meet with RACI to find out what’s going on. This method will help people get more done. But accuracy is everything when it comes to monitoring. Check all statistical data before a decision.
Templates for keeping track of more than one project
There are different kinds of tracking dashboards that are highly recommended for tracking. We’ll talk about them below;
Dashboard for Tracking Multiple Projects
This tracking tool is based on an Excel dashboard that lets you manage your different projects on a single Excel sheet. Basically, this dashboard is directly linked to different charts like the Gantt chart and the project status report. Download.
Gantt Chart
In the process of management projects, the Gantt chart is a popular software for tracking project of things. The main task of this tool is to give project managers and team members a place to report on the progress of daily tasks and share reports. After that, this software makes a report with graphs and charts that shows what it found.
Excel Project Budget Tracker
The budget is the most important part of a project, so tracking a project budget helps you keep your project within the budget. This tracking spreadsheet also helps you keep track of different project budgets on a single spreadsheet.
Spreadsheet for tracking project time
A project timeline is an important tool for figuring out how far along a project is. It shows how far along the project is and what its real-time stats are. This statistical information helps project managers and people at the top of the company make decisions. This time tracking spreadsheet shows if a project is making progress and going according to plan or not.
Tracking Your To-Do List in Excel
Another easy-to-use project management software that can be set up quickly and used to keep track of projects. This to-do list tracker helps you keep track of what you’ve done or what you need to do. Also, you can change this tool to customise the needs of your project.
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Is it required to pay some price
Anyway it’s good work being done
Many thanks
Hi. Do you have a trial version?