What Are The Three Key Trackers For Successful Project Management?

I’m an ordinary accountant by training. I fell into project management by accident. During one of my contracts, the CFO (Chief Finance Officer) found out that that I had experience with a finance system that was being implemented called Workday Financials. Workday is huge but at the time, Workday Financials was relatively new so accountants with direct experience was rare.

Overnight, I went from working in FP&A (Financial Planning and Analysis) to leading the reporting workstream of the Workday Financials implementation. We had a rapidly approaching and immoveable deadline because the old finance system was going to be switched off. It was my first proper project and I had to learn a lot of jargon quickly – milestones, scope, business cases, workshops and PMOs (Project Management Office).

The best thing I learnt about project management came after I got publicly dressed down by the Project Manager: James - fill in your tracker!!!

What is a Tracker?

A tool or system used to monitor and record the progress, status, and details of key project elements, such as tasks, issues and risks.

What Isn't a Tracker

Trackers are for the day-to-day.

There are separate strategic project management items: business case, timelines, stakeholder analysis, plans on a page etc. One for a separate blog post!

Why are Trackers Important?

They are a key tool for:

• monitoring the progress of a project

• providing clarity on who is doing what

• keeping project managers accountable for their areas of responsibility

• making sure nothing important gets missed

Therefore, James - fill in your tracker!!!

What Are The Three Key Trackers?

In my opinion, these are the three key trackers that should be present on any project. For smaller organisations managing smaller projects, these trackers will cover most of the work required. For larger projects, the quality of these trackers can be a quick diagnostic of a project’s health.

1) Task Tracker – more than a “to do” list, it breaks down a workstream into manageable chunks. For instance, an accounts receivable transition can be broken down by client. This is easy to understand and helps with work planning.

2)RAID Log – lists out the Risks, Actions, Issues and Dependencies and how they are being managed. A project management classic, which is more about managing potential problem than tackling tasks. An example is below:

ID	RAID	Description	Responsible Person	Status	Date Open / Closed
Risk 1	Risk	Worldwide economic meltdown from super tariffs	Donald Trump	Open	14 Apr 25
Action 1

3) Communications Tracker – at the root of many problems is bad communication. Tracking the who, what, when and how of communication with the different project stakeholders mitigates a lot of issues. The communication targets can range from key individuals (such as the CEO) to groups of people (such as suppliers).

How Should Trackers be Used?

• Daily – expect the whole project team to be using its key trackers on a daily basis
  

• Collaboratively – Teams, Sharepoint and Google Drive are wonderful tools to get everyone joined up
  

• Strategically – make sure the trackers are used as the means of achieving the project aims. For example, present tracker summaries at any strategic meetings.

What Are The Signs That Trackers Are Being Used Badly?

Keep an eye out for these warning signs:

• Low Engagement – filling in trackers does require extra work. The perception is that it is easier to just get on with it. Trackers die a death when there is not enough buy-in for their use. Overcome this with good leadership from the project manager and project sponsor.

• Too Much Excel – make sure you are using the right tool. Excel trackers are super easy to set up but can become clunky and are not user friendly. Use modern, online and collaborative tools where appropriate – Asana, Monday.com, Trello, etc. If you are emailing around trackers them something is going wrong.

• Wrong Sized – following on from my first project management experience, I tried to look smart by implementing a full RAID log on my next project. But no-one wanted to use it. It was an attempt to look smart but backfired because the project wasn’t large enough to require a full RAID log.

What Happened Next?

Workday Financials got implemented and my contract ended when the budget ended. I got my Prince2-Agile project management qualification to make sure I had the right skills for the next project.

Recently, I got to tell me other team members to fill in your tracker!!! Effective and cathartic.

What Now?

If you need advice setting up a finance transformation project, or your current project is in trouble and needs improvement, then chat with me at hello@alongsideaccounting.com