What are good tips for project tracking?

1.
Use Real-Time Information One of the biggest causes of a project schedule that doesn’t reflect the current progress is that the data it is based on it out-of-date.
You can get round this by using real-time information.
Ask your team members to use your project management software tools to enter their progress as they are working.
They can update the progress on their tasks and even block out the hours that they are working.
Online software won’t give them any excuses as it can be accessed from anywhere, and their mobile device, so it is easy for them to update their status at any time.2.
Let Your Software Do the Work Project management software often has the functionality to pull together up-to-date information for you, so if yours does, make sure that you know how to use the tracking features.
Tracking charts, for example, let you drill down into the detail of the project to give you the background on any issues that you spot.
They give you an in-depth view of progress but in a way that makes the situation easy to understand.
Make your life as easy as possible by using all the features of your software tools by setting them up properly and using them to identify potential problems.
Then you can use the time saved researching progress to address those problems.
Don’t forget to update your project schedule if you add in new tasks to correct issues that you find.3.
Use Project Dashboards Another feature of many project management software products is dashboards.
A dashboard is a type of graphical report, produced automatically, that shows key indicators and performance measures for your project.
Many tools have the option to set up customized dashboards, tailored to your project or group of projects.
They give you the ability to see the overall picture of what is happening at any moment in time and can also be used for project communications.
As they use data pulled from the software, if the information is up-to-date the dashboard will show you a comprehensive, real-time status report.
This is really useful for tracking as it can help you identify areas where you need to investigate further to keep the project on target.4.
Monitor Changes Change management is another essentialpart of a project manager’s job, and one that you may not automatically link to status tracking.
But changes can have a big impact on your schedule, so it is important to know what changes are being made and how this affects the information that you are tracking.
Ask the team member responsible for the change to give you an assessment of the impact on your project schedule.
They should analyze it in details and then let you know what, if anything, needs to change on the schedule.
You can make this change (or ask them to update the plan) and then you’ll have an accurate schedule to track against.5.
Little and Often It can take a long time to gather the information needed to track projects accurately, especially if you haven’t asked for updates for a while.
You have to chase for updates, assess what’s changed since the last schedule revision, revise the plan accordingly, and update any number of associated documents.
Instead of making it a big job, it is far easier to make your schedule changes and track progress frequently.
Of course, you’ll see smaller chunks of progress and each time you’ll be marking off fewer tasks as complete than if you did a massive update once a month.
But it will take a lot less time overall and it will be more accurate.
Set up a reminder in your calendar, or block out an hour in the diary once a week.
You could track progress more frequently than that, especially if things are changing very quickly on your project, but normally a once-a-week review will be adequate.
Try not to make it a Friday afternoon – your team members will be more interested in going home on time than in completing updates for you.
You’ll have more success if you ask them for updates mid-week!6.
Know Why You Track Finally, don’t forget to tell your team why you are asking for all this information.
You will find them a lot more willing to update their status online or send you reports if they understand what you are doing with the data.
Copy them in on any status reports that you send to other stakeholders or your sponsor, or if you don’t think it is appropriate to do that, send the team a copy of the update afterwards.
If they can see what you do with the data they will have the confidence that it won’t be used to criticize their performance or point the finger of blame.
Tracking your project doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking.
Each time you get new information from a project team member, update the schedule accordingly.
Taking this ‘little and often’ approach, and making the most of the functionality in your software tools will make managing project tracking much more manageable.

Involve relevant stakeholders in regular communication calls Always recheck scope and highlight out of scope issues wherever identified Try to use recent data for analysis/analytics, try to do sampling using real time data Avoid repetitive analysis with similar data Identify top offender/areas of improvements and prioritize the changes using change management.
identifying challenges/risks involved and their impacts is a must Follow agile and prioritize the changes Use Six sigma methods for better quality

CPI(Cost Performance Index), SPI (Schedule Performance Index) and EV(Earned Value) management are best for project tracking.
The simplest method is percentage method, a kind of indicator for tracking.
S-curve is for graphical presentation and it provide comparison with baseline in a single view tracking.