The PMBOK Guide introductory chapter stresses the importance of collecting data and information about the project as it progresses such as work performance data, information, and reports. Companies and project managers will handle this in different ways and employ different project management information systems. One example is Jira. In Jira, every team member uploads what tasks they need to complete for the next two weeks (sprint) and at the end of the sprint, the project manager records what tasks were complete and produces a report of the team's progress. The challenge for the project manager is to motivate every team member to actually put in their tasks so that the reports at the end of the sprint actually reflect the work being done. How do you incentive team members to comply with reporting their tasks when some feel it is tedious and not productive?
Each individual member of a project team reporting progress on their own tasks is an incredibly useful tool for a project manager because they are able to quantify exactly how the project is progressing and have an understanding of what to prioritize in the future. It is understandable, however, that project team members would get frustrated spending time reporting on their progress when they could be spending time on making more. There needs to be some professional responsibility in understanding the importance of one's progress. Not only does it help the project manager know the current state of the project, it also helps the project manager determine which areas require more assistance. If one person is struggling under the workload of their portion of tasks, certain resources can be assigned to them to help complete the work in a more efficient manner. The project manager is meant to support them, and that idea should be stressed in the initial kickoff meeting. If one project team member is not accurately reporting their progress, then the project manager should reach out and request that they fill it out.
More directly aligning with the "incentive" area of this discussion, perhaps bonuses at the end of the year could be determined based on how well the project team member reported their progress and communicated effectively in needing additional time or resources. However, this could be partial and unfair since this idea would be highly subjective and dependent on the team member's department. Caution needs to be used if bonuses or other monetary rewards are to be used. In addition, they must be compliant with company policy. Overall though, if bonuses are increased based on how well team members communicate, they would absolutely track their progress more accurately.
Team members must be appropriately motivated to report their tasks which can become a tedious task at some points. Here are a few ways the team members can be motivated:
1. Recognizing and showcasing the individual contributions of the team members is likely to serve as positive reinforcement and motivate the members to continue providing accurate and timely updates.
2. Providing a direct link between the project goal and the team members' contribution would highlight exactly how the team member's contribution is aiding in the project's success.
3. Implementing rewards for consistent and accurate reports would further incentivize the team members to provide more accurate and consistent reports.
It is extremely vital to ensure that project progress is met for the project timeline to not be delayed or impacted at all. While ensuring that project responsibilities have been distributed accordingly to the members or groups, its important that progress is tracked. In my industry experience, I have been a part of projects that are tracked daily, weekly, and even bi weekly. I can say from my experiences that daily progress meetings have been very unproductive, simply because there is not enough time inbetween a single work day to get significant amounts of project work completed, especially enough to report progress on the next day. However, I found weekly meetings to very useful, where every member gets a chance to reach out and get responses from others in the company before completing their work properly and presenting it to the group. These meetings ensured that progress for each responsible party was also tracked in the form of meeting minutes. This way, not only was everyone able to see the progress of the group as a whole, but people also felt "heard" and appreciated because their work was recognized and presented to the whole team. In my opinion, I think extensive progress updates do actually slow down the project timeline and giving members ample time to do their work efficiently and effectively is where a project can move forward as well as possible.
