Any project coordinator works with four components: spending, timing, duration and quality. Professional PMs also try to make the organization of work more efficient. Take any project and you will see that it needs labour, finance and equipment to produce satisfactory results. To work with projects effectively one need to handle several factors. A couple of them can be found below:

- Setting goals and carrying out analysis.

- Handling risks. Take any project and you will see that it contains a number of uncertainties that have to be dealt with.

- Choosing people and machinery for the project.

- Having a clear idea about the product you wish to see when the project is finished.

- Overseeing the project in terms of who is performing what and when.

- Ensuring that the products of the tasks are of satisfactory quality.

- Dealing with change. Circumstances change. The majority of projects occur in time, so the factor of dynamics has to be properly considered.

- Communicating with sponsors and participants of the project.

To manage these elements you can use pen and a notepad or perhaps MS EXCEL. However, dedicated project tracking software has a number of significant benefits:

- Idividual jobs are easier to assign to dates and times. The length of work can be calculated automatically using the workload data. It is possible to create work calendars for different employees. Managing work-in-progress also becomes easier to manage.

- Coordinating a few projects with different requirements. Productivity tracking software allows project executives to observea bigger picture and collect data on a number of projects.

- Critical path is clearly visible. The critical path is a critically relevant principle in project management. If a task on the critical path lasts longer than the manager planned, the whole timing of the project will be altered. At the same time other activities that lie outside the critical path may last longer or shorter without changing the timing of the whole project.

- Allowing everybody involved know what is going on. Big projects demand a lof of communication. Groupware productivity tracking software allows each participant to know what is up every time.

Is it always a must to use task tracking software?

Like any instrument, project tracking software has its issues. It produces the best value when used for a number of big projects. It might be a good idea to manage smaller projects by hand, so that there is no need to incur large overhead connected with using complicated programs.

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