In fact, certain stakeholders decide if there should be a project at all, and whether or not the project was a success. They have that much power. Given their influence, it’d be unwise to neglect your stakeholder management plan. But first, let’s review the aspects of good stakeholder management.

What Is Stakeholder Management?

Put simply, stakeholder management is the concept of managing the stakeholders involved in any major project. Because of how much power they wield, the project manager needs to balance the requirements from key stakeholders with finesse.

What are their primary goals with this project? What are they hoping to invest? The more you can tease out what each of their goals and requirements are from the outset, the better.

What Is a Stakeholder Management Plan?

A stakeholder management plan is a formal document that outlines how an organization will identify, engage and communicate with individuals or groups who have an interest or influence in a project. These stakeholders can include internal team members, clients, investors, regulatory bodies, suppliers and end-users. The project stakeholder management plan, which is part of the overall project plan, ensures that all stakeholder expectations are properly managed and aligned with the project’s objectives, reducing the likelihood of miscommunication or resistance.

The process of developing a project stakeholder management plan begins with stakeholder identification and analysis—categorizing each stakeholder by their level of influence and interest in the project. The plan then defines communication strategies tailored to each group’s needs, such as the frequency of updates, preferred channels (e.g., email, meetings, reports) and level of detail required. This helps foster transparency and maintain trust throughout the project lifecycle.

In addition to communication planning, the stakeholder management plan also includes strategies for managing stakeholder engagement—especially for those who are highly influential or may be impacted by changes. It helps project managers anticipate stakeholder concerns, resolve conflicts early and keep everyone informed and supportive. By proactively managing these relationships, teams are more likely to meet deadlines, stay on budget and achieve overall project success.

What Should Be Included in a Stakeholder Management Plan?

A project stakeholder management plan is a crucial part of project planning that outlines how to identify, analyze and engage stakeholders throughout a project’s lifecycle. Its purpose is to ensure that stakeholder needs, expectations and influence are clearly understood and effectively managed. A well-developed stakeholder management plan enhances communication, reduces project risk and improves the chances of project success by keeping stakeholders informed and engaged.

1. Stakeholder Identification

Stakeholder identification involves determining all individuals, groups or organizations that could affect or be affected by the project. This early step ensures that no important stakeholder is overlooked and helps tailor engagement strategies to suit different interests and levels of influence.

The main tools and techniques that are used to identify key project stakeholders are:

• Project kickoff meeting: An initial meeting where stakeholders are introduced, and project scope and expectations are discussed to identify key participants.
• Expert judgement: Leveraging the experience and knowledge of subject matter experts to identify less obvious stakeholders.
• Stakeholder register: A document or database used to list stakeholders, including their interests, influence and contact information.
• Brainstorming: A collaborative technique where team members generate ideas to identify potential stakeholders from various project angles.

2. Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder analysis is the process of assessing each stakeholder’s interests, level of influence and impact on the project. It helps in prioritizing stakeholders and shaping effective communication and engagement strategies.

The main tools and techniques that are used to analyze key project stakeholders are:

• Salience model: A method that categorizes stakeholders based on their power, legitimacy, and urgency.
• Stakeholder grid: A matrix that plots stakeholders by influence and interest to determine communication strategies. This can be used in various ways, such as a power/interest grid, power/influence grid and influence/impact grid.
• RACI matrix: A tool used to define stakeholder roles—Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed—in project tasks.
• Stakeholder cube: An expanded version of the stakeholder grid that includes a third dimension like attitude or engagement level.
• Influence diagrams: Visual tools that show the relationships and influence pathways between stakeholders.

3. Stakeholder Engagement Objectives

This section outlines the specific goals of engaging with stakeholders, such as keeping them informed, gaining their support or mitigating resistance. These objectives help guide communication tactics and track engagement effectiveness throughout the project.

4. Stakeholder Engagement Strategies

These are the customized plans and actions used to achieve the stakeholder engagement objectives. Strategies vary by stakeholder type and might include regular meetings, one-on-one sessions, surveys or public forums depending on their role and influence in the project.

5. Communication Requirements

This part defines how information will be shared with stakeholders, including formats, frequencies, channels and responsible parties. Clear communication plans ensure consistency and transparency in stakeholder interactions.

6. Roles and Responsibilities of the Team

Clarifying which team members are responsible for stakeholder engagement ensures accountability. This section outlines who will maintain the stakeholder register, manage communications and address stakeholder concerns throughout the project.

Stakeholder Management Plan Example

This stakeholder management plan example shows how a midsize residential apartment construction project secures cooperation from investors, regulators, contractors and neighbors.

Beginning with a stakeholder register that captures each stakeholder’s influence and concerns, the plan progresses through analysis, objectives, tailored engagement tactics, and clear communication protocols. Ongoing monitoring, defined responsibilities, and practical tools ensure that relationships remain productive as the build advances from permitting to handover. The example offers a practical blueprint that teams can adapt to similar construction endeavors.

To download this stakeholder management plan example, click the image below.

Stakeholder Management Plan Template

Creating a stakeholder management plan seems overwhelming, which is why we’ve created an easy-to-use stakeholder management plan template for Word that allows you to gather the most important elements of a stakeholder management plan. You can use it to create a stakeholder management plan like the example above.

5 Steps for Writing a Stakeholder Management Plan

Because there are many different types of stakeholders, you’ll want a well-rounded stakeholder management plan. Follow these five steps to make sure all of the bases are covered.

1. List Your Stakeholders

The first step to any good stakeholder management plan is knowing your stakeholders. They are usually sorted into two groups: internal and external stakeholders.

Internal stakeholders are easy to identify. They are typically those within the organization that have a key interest in the completion of a project. They are usually department heads, such as heads of Marketing, IT, Development, Operations and more. These stakeholders can affect the project either directly or indirectly by influencing the direction of their department on the given project.

External stakeholders are not typically part of the organization itself but are made up of investors, users/customers, the media, neighboring businesses or governmental oversight authorities.

2. Prioritize Your Stakeholders

As we previously mentioned, prioritize which stakeholders are going to have a bigger influence over the project, and also note at which stage their influence becomes lesser or greater.

Start by considering how to manage the stakeholders on your project, and then start prioritizing their demands and goals. Understand that those priorities can flex at different project points. For example, at certain points, say, during a website design project, the stakeholder with a special interest in the design will have their goals prioritized. Then, as you move into the development phase, the stakeholders with a special interest in development will have their goals elevated over design.

3. Interview Your Stakeholders

Working with new stakeholders can be tricky at the start—some are easier to manage than others. Depending on the type of project, there will either be many voices from outside the company with different personalities and demands, or many voices inside the company with competing goals. Here are some example stakeholder interview questions to ask to get sorted:

• Why are you interested in this project?
• What are your expectations for this project?
• If you have a team involved, what do you expect from them?
• Which deliverables are you most interested in?
• What inspired you to get involved in this project?
• What do you hope this project changes after launch?
• How quickly do you see this project rolling out?
• If you feel positively about this project, why?
• If you have worries about this project, why?
• Do you prefer in-person meetings, phone meetings or email?

You’ll want a solid understanding of whether or not your stakeholders feel positively or negatively about the project, and at what stages their perspectives might shift. Also, identify which ones have a stronger set of views and which ones are more flexible and open to compromise. This will help to mitigate any possible stop gaps down the road.

4. Develop a Matrix

A quick mock-up of a quadrant to sort your findings will help you easily distinguish those with high interest, high priority versus low interest, low priority. It will also help to sort all those in between.

For example, those with a high interest but a low priority are typically your best confidants. They’re ready to get work done and will cheerlead your project on. Those with low interest and high priority might be your squeakiest wheels—keep the lines of communication open with them, but keep a firm boundary so as to not spend all your time focusing on them.

They say the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so remember that even those in the low priority, low interest or high priority, low interest still need to be continually communicated with to ensure that their voices are heard throughout the project.

Related: How to Deal with Difficult Stakeholders

5. Set & Manage Expectations

Setting and managing expectations is the meat and potatoes of your stakeholder management plan. In fact, it’s the very thing that could make this initiative a success.

Once you’ve outlined your matrix and have identified priorities and interests, create your project plan. Clearly identify which stages each key stakeholder will be involved in, and timelines by which their feedback is needed. Include a schedule of office hours for them to easily reach you so that they can have time provide feedback either in a private setting or in a group. As always, be realistic, transparent and honest at every project phase—your stakeholders can tell, and will thank you for it.

Making and maintaining a stakeholder management plan is greatly simplified with the help of project planning software. With ProjectManager.com, you can make project timelines with the Gantt, communicate in a central location, attach files to tasks and track progress in real time. All of these factors combine for an easy stakeholder management experience, where everyone stays informed and targets are met. To learn more about how our software can help you, watch the video below:

Who Makes the Stakeholder Management Plan?

Typically if the entire project—stakeholders and all—are internal, then the project manager is the one that completes the process of a stakeholder management plan. However, if the project is dealing with external stakeholders and an external client, then the primary contact at your client’s organization will be the one to complete this process.

Why is a Stakeholder Management Plan Important?

No project exists in a vacuum—although that would make any project so much easier to execute. But stakeholders play a key role in making your project happen. They believe in the project and are devoting time, money and resources to your project.

Stakeholders help make it an extremely easy process by contributing funds, resources, materials, tools, expertise and more. But without proper management, they can also make it an extremely clunky process with a lot of messy red tape along the way. You know what they say about too many cooks in the kitchen.

Communication Benefits

Stakeholder management plans are also important from a PR perspective. Consider this—stakeholders don’t work alone; they hear about the project progress from other resources and stakeholders involved. It’s important that their interests are kept intact, and that you don’t find yourself facing the furrowed brow of a frustrated stakeholder who has heard some bad news.

Keeping that line of open communication is the most important step to a good stakeholder management plan.

Related: Free Communication Plan Template

The Risks of Not Having a Stakeholder Management Plan

Again, stakeholders make the world go round. They’re your investors, customers, neighbors, producers. They can be your biggest cheerleaders or can make the project slow to a crawl.

Since stakeholders usually involve multiple key contacts across many different avenues, it’s important to communicate with them effectively and efficiently. Without having interviewed them ahead of time or gauging their priority or interest, you could end up spinning your wheels trying to validate the requirements of a stakeholder with low priority and low interest, leaving those with a high priority feeling frustrated at the process.

Worse yet, you can set your organization up for a lack of funds on the next project or a poor customer experience. Don’t leave your organization vulnerable to a lack of resources, funds or time.

What Documentation is Needed?

Start with the steps outlined above, and then check in routinely. This can mean weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly, depending on the project scope or timeline.

Document all levels of communication, too. That way, other project members know the latest feedback from key stakeholders and can pivot or include their updated requirements into the project.

This will also ease the worries of upper management and keep them posted on the progress of the client and how each stakeholder is coming along. This ensures that even low priority, low-interest stakeholders are getting their fair share of involvement in the project.

Free Stakeholder Management Templates

We have more than just a project stakeholder management plan template for immediate and free download. There are over 100 free project management templates for Excel and Word that cover all aspects of managing projects. Here are just a few that are related to stakeholder management.

Stakeholder Register Template

Download this free stakeholder register template for Excel to record essential information about all stakeholders involved in a project. It serves as a central reference to identify, assess and manage the interests, influence, and expectations of people or groups that can affect or are affected by the project.

Stakeholder Analysis Template

Use this free stakeholder analysis template for Excel to identify and evaluate the individuals or groups that have a stake in a project. It helps assess each stakeholder’s influence, interest, expectations and potential impact on the project, enabling project teams to develop effective engagement and communication strategies.

Stakeholder Map Template

The free stakeholder map template for Excel is a visual tool used in project management to plot stakeholders based on their level of interest and influence (or power) in a project. It helps project managers and teams quickly identify which stakeholders need the most attention and how to manage communication and engagement effectively throughout the project lifecycle.

ProjectManager Can Help with Your Stakeholder Plan

The best way to make a stakeholder management plan is with a project management platform where you can execute communication, project planning and more all in one place.

With ProjectManager, you’ll get access to dashboards that provide real-time updates and live reporting for stakeholders. Not to mention in-depth project reports, like status reports, variance reports and more that can be customized to give stakeholders exactly the information they need, when they need it.

ProjectManager is an online project management software that gives you everything you need to plan, execute and track your projects. Whether it’s a project plan, resource management plan, stakeholder management plan or simply a task list—ProjectManager.com gives you the tools to succeed. See for yourself and start a free 30-day trial today.

The post How to Make a Stakeholder Management Plan appeared first on ProjectManager.

But even the most charismatic and self-reliant people are not working in a vacuum. Team management is always instrumental in any major project. The truth is that teamwork is the shoulder on which all major successes rest. Whether that be the building of the pyramids in Egypt or the dominance of Apple in the marketplace.

But don’t take our word for it. There are many teamwork examples throughout history. We cherry-picked 12 of our favorite inspirational examples of teamwork as it applies to a variety of circumstances. It won’t be long before you’re won over by the benefits of teamwork and collaboration.

If you’re looking to level up your teamwork capabilities, see how ProjectManager’s award-winning software can assist you. Regardless of how your team prefers to work, ProjectManager can help facilitate real-time collaboration. From Gantt charts to kanban boards to task lists, we have a range of project management tools to keep you productive during all stages of your project.

1. The Beatles, Live in Hamburg

Everyone knows the Beatles. They defined the 1960s, moving from the Mersey Beat that made them a boy band that the girls loved to folk and psychedelic rock, inventing new genres seemingly with ease. Their music is the soundtrack of an era and continues to influence musicians to this day. But those are the flowers that grew from the dirt. That fertile soil that nourished and sustained them was far from their Liverpool home.

During the very early 1960s, before any radio play and Beatlemania wasn’t yet a word, they were the house band for a ruckus portside bar in Hamburg, Germany, called the Kaiserkeller. There they had to play for hours and hours, stretching three-minute pop songs into 20-minute jam sessions. It was in this crucible, that the four soon-to-be mop tops bonded musically. It was through live performances that they learned to put on a show, according to George Harrison on the Beatles Anthology DVD. This is clear evidence that the Beatles’ success can be attributed to such teamwork examles along their career.

The magic of the Beatles is that four individuals learned through intense and extended live sessions to play as one, to anticipate each other and develop an almost intuitive communication. That set the stage which allowed their songwriting gifts to flourish. It was teamwork, plain and simple, that gave the Beatles the musical chops to develop their potential.

2. The Miracle on Ice

The United States upset victory over the Russian hockey team in the 1980s Olympics was called the “Miracle on Ice” for good reason. The Russian team had dominated the sport for as long as anyone could remember, and in the United States, hockey has always been a second- or third-tier sport. How the 25-year-old team captain Mike Eruzione got his team to bring home the gold and beat the odds-on favorites, the seasoned Soviet team is a most inspirational teamwork example.

Related: Teamwork Quotes: The 25 Best Quotes About Working Together

As a child, Eruzione never thought of himself as a star player; he thought of himself as a team player. He believed success was due not to individuals excelling as much as everyone on the team carrying their own weight and having a strong work ethic. Although at Boston College he didn’t make the cut and was placed on the B team, he was told not to lose confidence.

It was those early lessons in teamwork that helped him gain the respect and trust of the Olympic hockey team. He understood that there were a lot of egos on the team that had to be put aside for the good of the team. Everyone had to feel they were contributing. The backup goalie, Steve Janaszak, never played in the Olympics, but he was as important to the win as anyone. Do you believe in miracles?

3. Apollo 11 Moon Landing

One of the most historic examples of teamwork is the Apollo 11 1969 mission. While the world focused on the three astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, the former two who walked on the moon, most remember only Armstrong and his famous line upon being the first human being to set foot on the satellite: “This is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

However, behind that momentous moment are years of research and teams of people working diligently to do what no one had done before. Mission planners worked for two years prior to launch, studying the moon’s surface using satellite photographs in order to discern the best site for a lunar landing.

Related: See how NASA Uses ProjectManager

According to NASA, there were an estimated 400,000 people involved in making the moon landing possible. This included teams of scientists, engineers and technicians, many who had not worked in aerospace before. To make for a more cohesive team, the astronauts worked with many of these groups, making the human connection that is the blood of any team. So considering all of this, the Apollo 11 moon landing was one of the most massive teamwork examples of the 20th century.

4. Wikipedia

The digital age is defined by teamwork, and one new media company illustrates that more than any other. Wikipedia is everyone’s go-to when they need a quick answer. It’s the library of the internet, a collaborative engine of knowledge that is constantly evolving.

There were once encyclopedias that collected the world’s knowledge, but these are static volumes that are only updated every number of years. Also, what is printed between their covers is not up for debate. If you have a problem with what’s listed, you could write to the editors and maybe even get a response.

But Wikipedia changed that whole paradigm by recruiting an army of volunteer writers and editors who put the facts into its website. This simple but effective and massive example of teamwork is almost incomprehensible in its scope and yet runs surprisingly well. There are mistakes, but the site is built in such a fashion that these anomalies are quickly discovered. Teamwork is essential for Wikipedia because, in a sense, everyone who has ever landed on the site is part of the team.

Related: 30 Fun Team-Building Games for Work

5. The Starbucks Expansion

It might be a joke now (how there’s a Starbucks on every block and soon occupying every storefront), but it wasn’t always like that. In fact, the dominance of Starbucks was never as sure a thing as it looks in retrospect or over its company timeline. Back in the early 1990s, Starbucks chairman and CEO Howard Schultz had opened a few hundred new stores across the United States, but the business was not successful.

The ambitious expansion was hitting problems concerning customer service and a lack of communication between various levels of the company. The company might have brewed a winning cup of joe but their customer service and employee engagement were staler than a pot of yesterday’s coffee.

In 1995, Howard Behar became the president of Starbucks and with him came advancements in company culture. He cultivated a work environment that met the employees’ needs, which in turn inspired them to better serve their customers. It was his belief that it was not the coffee they were selling but the customer experience, which gave Behar the mission statement to rally his teams to work together more effectively.

6. D-Day

D-Day, or the invasion of Normandy, retaking Nazi-occupied France, was the turning point of World War II in Europe. Many things went into the success of D-Day. There’s the logistics management of aligning so many troops and equipment while keeping the whole operation a secret. Naturally, it was also a strategic win for the Allies. But all these parts worked together only because of teamwork.

The beaches of Normandy, which was the spearhead of the invasion, were boobytrapped and obscured by wooden stakes, metal tripods and barbed wire. Casualties were high on that day June 6, but if it wasn’t for beach-cleaning teams they would be higher, according to D-Day: The Battle for Normandy by Antony Beevor.

From the generals on down to the grunts, everyone who sacrificed their lives for the greater good did so because they worked together as a team for ideals that are more important than individuals, which led them to leave their imprint on history, making it one of the most significant teamwork examples on this list. It’s almost impossible to understand how people could place themselves in harm’s way like that, but teamwork makes us bigger in more ways that we can count.

Related: 10 Strategies to Motivate Your Team

7. The Iliad

This oral epic attributed to the Greek poet Homer, which was put down in writing sometime in the 8th century B.C., might be historical, or it might not. It’s hard to say. Historians have debated whether there was in fact a Trojan War or not. So, why include this? Because it might be the granddaddy of all inspirational tales of teamwork.

For one thing, the Iliad shows how difficult teamwork can be and how essential to success it is. The epic underlines the many ways teams can fail and how important it is to steer them to those narrower avenues that lead victory. In the story, Agamemnon disrespects Achilles, his best warrior, taking his slave girl as his own. Needless to add, this creates a great deal of conflict between the two allies. The erosion of trust between the two leads to tragic ends.

Related: The Dangers of Self-Serving Bias at the Workplace

The Iliad is many things, and to simplify it as merely a parable about teamwork would be to do the classic a disservice. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be read and appreciated on many levels, including what it can tell us, in the most dramatic ways, about teamwork examples and the importance of not acting selfishly and risking the loyalty of the team.

8. The Growth of Marvel Comics

We’re not talking about the teamwork of fictional Marvel comic creations, such as the Avengers, X-Men or the Fantastic Four, though we could. But more interesting than the superheroes are the super-talented teams that worked to create the comic books that have gone on to movie stardom.

There were writers, like the famous Stan Lee, who often came up with an idea that the penciler, someone like Jack Kirby (Captain America, the Hulk, etc.) or Steve Ditko (Spider-Man and Doctor Strange) would then block out in pages of dramatic sequential drawings. Then the boards would go to a letterer and inker before a colorist would add the primary colors. These would then be sent to a printer, distributed and sold at the local drug store or comic book shop.

Each step of this process had to be carefully planned among all parties, of course, but there would also be a collaboration between writers and artists as they developed characters and conflicts to add drama to the stories. Teamwork kept the gears well-greased and their work has since elevated “silly kids stuff” into the mythology of the future.

9. The Constitution of the United States

The Constitution of the United States is a foundational document of our democracy. It is also a prime example of teamwork. The then 13 states, all of which would have to ratify the constitution to make it the law of the land, were not united. There was no central government and the risk of the new nation falling apart was even more of a concern than it is today!

Debates raged over such things that we today take for granted like how long a president’s term should last. For four months delegates debated, until on September 17, 1787, the 39 delegates signed the historic document. Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. Now voters in each state had to approve. But the delegates did their job and the people ratified the Constitution in 1789. Because of its significance and the number of people involved, the creation and ratification of the Constitution is without a doubt one of the best teamwork examples in United States history.

10. The Wright Brothers

Wilbur and Orville Wright’s journey to invent the first successful powered airplane is a classic teamwork example of overcoming daunting challenges. Rather than working in isolation, the brothers combined their unique strengths–Wilbur’s strategic vision and Orville’s practical engineering skills–to solve the complex problems of flight. Their partnership was characterized by constant communication, mutual respect and a willingness to learn from failure, allowing them to refine their designs rapidly and efficiently.

Their collaborative approach extended beyond the workshop, as they studied the work of others, shared findings and supported each other through setbacks. In 1903, their teamwork culminated in the first controlled, powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, revolutionizing transportation and changing the course of history. The Wright brothers’ story is a testament to how trust, shared determination and complementary skills can turn an ambitious dream into reality.

11. The 2010 Chilean Miners Rescue

In August 2010, 33 miners were trapped 2,300 feet underground after a catastrophic collapse at the San José mine in Chile. The situation was dire, with the world watching anxiously as the miners’ lives hung in the balance. Immediately, a massive collaborative effort began above ground, involving engineers, geologists, medical personnel, government officials and international experts. They formed a unified command center, pooling knowledge and resources to devise a rescue strategy that had never been attempted before. Each team brought its unique expertise and together, they brainstormed, problem-solved and made critical decisions under intense pressure and scrutiny.

Below ground, the miners themselves demonstrated a remarkable teamwork example, rationing supplies, maintaining morale and supporting one another through the ordeal. After 69 days, all 33 miners were brought safely to the surface, an outcome made possible by extraordinary collaboration at every level. The Chilean miners’ rescue remains a testament to the power of teamwork in overcoming seemingly insurmountable challenges, showing how unity, trust and shared purpose can save lives and inspire the world.

12. Charles Plumb and the Parachute Packer

Charles Plumb, a U.S. Navy jet fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, completed 75 combat missions before being shot down and captured. Years after his release, Plumb was approached by a stranger who recognized him and revealed, “I packed your parachute.” Plumb realized that, while he was celebrated for his flying skills, his survival depended on the meticulous, unseen teamwork of others–like the sailor who packed his parachute with care and precision.

This encounter profoundly impacted Plumb, reminding him that every achievement is built on the collective efforts of many, not just the visible few. It’s a teamwork example that highlights the importance of recognizing and valuing every team member’s contribution, no matter how behind-the-scenes. True teamwork means understanding that everyone’s role—big or small—is vital to the group’s ultimate success and survival.

How ProjectManager Helps With Teamwork

ProjectManager is award-winning project management software that prioritizes teamwork. Regardless of how your team prefers to work, from Gantt charts to dashboards, our software can do it all. The best part is that data automatically populates across the software across project views, making it easy to collaborate and stay connected with your team.

Teamwork is not having one person force their way on the others: it’s about being open to compromise. All parties involved must find common ground and work together because the end result is something all can benefit from. Just like the Constitution, which has been amended over the years as times and attitudes change, teamwork must be a fluid process, not etched in stone, but always open and willing to improve.

Teamwork is inspiring! It exhibits our ability to overcome personal issues for a collective objective. ProjectManager is online project management software that fosters teamwork. From collaborative scheduling features like an online Gantt chart to Kanban boards to sharing workflow with teams, ProjectManager makes teamwork fun and easy. See what your team thinks by taking this free 30-day trial.

The post 12 Inspirational Teamwork Examples appeared first on ProjectManager.

What Is a Time and Materials Contract?

A time and materials contract is a legally binding agreement that outlines how an employer will pay a contractor for the time and materials they spent on a project. A time and materials contract is commonly used in construction project management, though it’s also used in product development and other types of projects.

This means the contractor tracks the time and materials its crew or subcontractors use. Then they use this data to bill the employer appropriately over the course of the project.

To track time and costs, project owners and contractors should use project management software like ProjectManager. With ProjectManager, you can use Gantt charts, project calendars, timesheets and real-time project dashboards to keep track of time and costs for an effective application of a time and materials contract. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

What Should Be Included in a Time and Materials Contract?

Now that we’ve learned what a time and materials contract is, let’s go over the key elements that should be part of any time and materials contract.

1. Agreement Overview

This section outlines the parties involved, the type of contract and basic project details such as the property location and scope. It serves as the formal start of the contract and establishes the identity of the owner and contractor, setting the stage for the terms that follow.

2. Recitals

Recitals provide background context for the agreement. They explain why the contract is being entered into, the nature of the project and the rationale behind using a T&M contract rather than a fixed-price model, ensuring both parties are aligned from the start.

3. Scope of Work

This section defines what work the contractor will perform. It includes tasks, deliverables and any exclusions or limitations. Having a clear scope reduces misunderstandings and provides a framework for managing expectations, controlling cost and assessing the impact of any future changes.

4. Labor Costs

One of the most important steps when creating a time and materials contract is to identify the different tasks that need to be executed so that your project is a success. Then, based on that, you’ll need to estimate the time that will take to execute the work so you can understand what your project timeline looks like.

Once you have a clear picture of your project scope, you can begin to estimate costs. In your time and materials contract, you’ll need to define labor categories for each type of tasks, such as plumbing, masonry or electrical work. Then determine an hourly rate for all types of work and include them in the contract.

5. Material Costs

It’s important to understand that there are different types of costs associated with the material requirements of your project. Here are some examples:

• Direct materials: The term direct materials refers to those raw materials that are directly used in the project. In the case of construction project management, it refers to the concrete, paint, wood and other materials that result in the finished building.
• Direct and indirect costs: You can also specify other direct and indirect costs related to incidental services, material handling costs and other material-related labor costs that aren’t listed under the labor categories you’ve defined in your time and materials contract.

6. Time and Materials Terms

This section breaks down how the contractor will be paid: hourly labor rates, materials markup, equipment charges and subcontractor costs. It includes invoicing procedures, documentation required and optional cost caps. It is the financial heart of the T&M contract and ensures transparent cost tracking.

7. Schedule

This section lists key project dates, including estimated start and finish times. It defines the contractor’s work hours and provides a framework for understanding the project’s timeline. While flexible, it helps the owner track progress and stay informed about any delays.

8. Change Orders

This outlines the process for handling changes in scope, cost or duration. All changes must be agreed upon in writing. This section ensures that additional work, adjustments or unforeseen requirements are formally documented to avoid disputes and maintain clear communication.

9. Contractor Responsibilities

Details what the contractor is expected to provide, including labor, materials, tools and site supervision. It also covers legal and safety responsibilities such as securing permits and maintaining a clean, hazard-free site. This section clarifies the contractor’s obligations throughout the project.

10. Owner Responsibilities

Specifies what the owner must do, such as providing access to the property, approving materials, and making timely payments. It helps avoid delays and conflicts by outlining the owner’s role in ensuring smooth execution of the work.

11. Insurance

This section requires the contractor to carry appropriate insurance, such as general liability and workers’ compensation. It protects both parties in the event of injury, damage or legal claims, and often requires proof of coverage before work begins.

12. Warranties

Outlines the contractor’s warranty on materials and workmanship, including its duration (typically one year). It ensures the owner has recourse if defects appear after completion, promoting accountability and quality workmanship.

13. Termination

Explains how either party can end the agreement, with or without cause. It includes required notice periods and payment terms for work completed up to termination. This protects both parties if the project needs to be stopped early.

14. Dispute Resolution

Describes how disagreements will be resolved—usually through mediation, arbitration or court—along with the legal jurisdiction. This section helps prevent legal escalation by encouraging negotiated solutions and specifying the process to follow if disputes arise.

15. Miscellaneous

Covers general legal provisions, such as the entire agreement clause, amendment process and severability. It ensures that the contract is legally complete and that any changes must be documented in writing and signed by both parties.

16. Signatures

The final section includes signature lines for both parties. By signing, each party agrees to the contract’s terms. It also includes printed names and dates, making the contract official and legally binding.

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Time and Materials Contract Example

To better understand how a time and materials contract works, let’s explore a real-life example. Below is a T&M contract between a homeowner and contractor regarding the construction of an in-ground swimming pool and patio area.

1. Agreement Overview

This Time and Materials Agreement (“Agreement”) is made on May 12, 2025, between:

Owner:

Maria Coleman
123 Oakview Drive
Austin, TX 78702

Contractor:

BlueWave Pools LLC
987 Contractor Lane
Austin, TX 78704

Project Description:

Construction of an in-ground swimming pool and patio area at the Owner’s residence.

2. Recitals

The Owner wishes to hire the Contractor to build a pool area. Both parties agree to a Time and Materials basis due to the potential variability in labor and materials.

3. Scope of Work

The Contractor will:

• Excavate and prepare the site
• Install a 12×24 ft concrete pool with basic filtration system
• Pour concrete deck and install pavers
• Install fencing and lighting around the pool
• Final cleanup and inspection

Excluded: Landscaping, pool heater or permits not specified above

4. Time and Materials Terms

• Labor: $75/hour per crew member
• Materials: Charged at cost + 15% markup
• Equipment Use: Flat $250/day for excavation equipment
• Subcontractors: Charged at cost + 10% markup
• Billing: Weekly invoices due within 10 days of receipt
• Documentation: Invoices will include timesheets and receipts

Not-to-Exceed (Optional): $30,000 unless approved in writing by the Owner

5. Schedule

• Estimated Start Date: May 20, 2025
• Estimated Completion: June 30, 2025
• Work hours: Mon–Fri, 8 AM to 4 PM

6. Change Orders

All changes must be approved in writing using a Change Order Form. Changes may affect cost or schedule.

7. Contractor Responsibilities

• Provide labor, tools, and equipment
• Secure permits if specified
• Maintain a safe and clean worksite

8. Owner Responsibilities

• Provide access to the site
• Approve invoices and pay promptly
• Make timely decisions on finishes or material choices

9. Insurance

The Contractor shall maintain general liability and workers’ compensation insurance and provide a certificate upon request.

10. Warranties

The Contractor warrants workmanship for 1 year from project completion.

11. Termination

Either party may terminate this agreement with 7 days’ written notice. The Owner shall pay for all approved work completed up to the date of termination.

12. Dispute Resolution

Disputes will be resolved by mediation in Travis County, Texas. If unresolved, litigation may proceed under Texas law.

13. Miscellaneous

This document is the entire agreement. Any changes must be in writing and signed by both parties.

14. Signatures

Owner:
Signature: ______________________
Name: Maria Gonzalez
Date: ______________________

Contractor:
Signature: ______________________
Name: David Lee, Manager – BlueWave Pools LLC
Date: ______________________

When Should You Use a Time and Materials Contract?

Again, a T&M contract is ideal for a project without a clear or accurate estimate of the time and costs involved. There’s no point in using a fixed-price contract unless there is a way to determine the cost. And a cost-reimbursable contract would be impossible to determine without knowing the exact time and materials required to execute the work.

However, a time and materials contract is advisable when the duration of the project is unknown, but there’s a fixed hourly rate for the labor involved. When using a T&M contract, contractors usually add a markup of between 15 and 35 percent.

Therefore, a time and materials contract would be an option for the construction bidding process when dealing with unpredictable scenarios. It is only possible to enter into such an agreement when both parties agree on the conditions, though this is true of all contracts. More importantly, a T&M contract is ideal when there’s a need for flexibility, or you’re new to the industry and can’t make accurate estimates of costs and duration.

Time and Materials Contract vs. Other Construction Contracts

Construction contracts set terms and conditions whenever a project owner hires a contractor to execute construction work. However, construction projects vary in terms of size and complexity, so there are different types of construction contracts to better accommodate the needs of both parties. Let’s see what are the main differences between a time and materials contract and other common construction contracts.

Time and Materials Contract vs. Fixed Price Contract

As mentioned above, there are two main types of payment plans in contract administration. T&M contracts are used when plans are not precise enough to use a fixed-price contract (because there is no definite price for the work.) Instead, contractors are reimbursed for any materials purchased and given a day or hourly rate for their labor.

In contrast, a fixed-price contract is based on a predetermined total cost for the entire project. It works best when the scope is well-defined and unlikely to change. While fixed-price contracts offer predictability for the owner, they may include risk contingencies in pricing. T&M contracts are preferred when unknowns exist, such as during renovation projects, where hidden conditions may emerge.

Owners often favor a time and materials basis when flexibility is needed, but both parties should still include cost controls, such as not-to-exceed limits or scheduled check-ins, to ensure accountability. Selecting between these models depends on how well the scope, timeline and resources are understood at the outset.

Time and Materials Contract vs. Cost-Reimbursable Contract

Beyond T&M and fixed-price contracts, there’s a third type of construction contract called a cost-reimbursable contract. This is when the owner pays the contractor for the actual cost of the work. That includes direct and indirect costs, such as materials, equipment and anything else, including salary, that must be paid to get the job done. Contractors will add a clause, such as a fixed fee or some incentive, to make a profit.

Unlike T&M contracts, cost-reimbursable contracts provide a broader allowance for expenses, often including overhead and administrative costs. They’re frequently used in large-scale or public projects where it’s difficult to estimate total costs upfront.

While both models offer flexibility, cost-reimbursable contracts typically require more detailed cost accounting and are subject to stricter auditing and reporting requirements. The inclusion of incentives or target-cost mechanisms can help align contractor performance with the owner’s goals. Choosing between the two often depends on the complexity and duration of the project, as well as the owner’s preference for control and risk allocation.

Time and Materials Contract vs. Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) Contract

A guaranteed maximum price contract sets a maximum price to be paid by the employer to the contractor for a project, regardless of the time and costs. Therefore, the contractor assumes responsibility for delays and all extra costs. However, this shouldn’t be the case, as contractors can use construction project management software to make accurate project estimates and have a good understanding of project timelines and budgets.

GMP contracts offer a hybrid structure that blends aspects of cost-reimbursable and fixed-price agreements. They provide cost transparency while protecting the owner from budget overruns. Often, any savings under the GMP are shared between the owner and contractor as an incentive. This arrangement encourages efficiency and fosters collaboration.

Compared to T&M contracts, GMP contracts involve greater risk for the contractor but offer the owner more financial certainty. They’re commonly used in design-build or fast-track projects where work begins before the full scope is finalized. While more complex to negotiate, GMP contracts can strike a balance between flexibility and cost control when structured correctly.

Pros & Cons of Time and Material Contracts

Let’s take a moment to look into the benefits and problems with time and material contracts. Depending on the situation, they could be just the kind of contract that works within a construction project. They can just as easily be a detriment and the cons might outweigh the pros, leading an organization to seek one of the other contract options.

The Advantages of T&M Contracts

• It’s easy to respond to changes in the project
• Delays and roadblocks can be dealt with easily
• Negotiations are set at the beginning of the job

The Disadvantages of T&M Contracts

• Tracking time and materials can be difficult
• Contractors have little incentive to work efficiently
• Contractors have to front their own costs

Best Practices When Writing a Time and Materials Contract

When entering into any contract, it’s important the agreement is in writing. Both sides need to agree on the terms and sign off on them. This is especially true of the time and materials contract, as it can end up with the employer bleeding money without construction daily reports. As mentioned earlier, having a maximum price is a recommended safeguard.

When working with any contractor, ensure that they’re licensed by the Contractors State License Board and that the work they’re doing is within the scope of that license. Working with unlicensed contractors opens up liabilities that can impact the project and even the whole organization. This is also true for business licenses or business tax registration if required in the jurisdiction of the project.

One problem with T&M contracts is they can result in more lawsuits than a fixed-price contract. It’s important to know the risks and consequences involved with contracting with third-party workers. There can be issues with back taxes and other IRS penalties, back pay and damage to the organization’s reputation.

Request for Proposal (RFP) Template

This free RFP template helps you specify all the information that construction contractors will need to include in their construction bids including the scope of work, timeline, budget and other details that will later be used in the time and materials contract.

Free Construction Project Management Templates

Project management and construction management are complex disciplines. That’s why we’ve created dozens of project management templates to assist project managers while they plan, schedule and track projects. Here are some construction project management templates to help you save time.

Construction Estimate Template

A very important part of construction project management is time and cost estimates. That’s true for project owners, contractors and subcontractors, whose profitability depends on accurate project estimates. This free construction estimate template is a great tool to start documenting your construction costs.

Construction Schedule Template

Creating a realistic project schedule is key for success in construction as materials, equipment and labor need to be available at the right time to avoid extra costs or delays. This construction schedule template is a simple tool to get started with construction scheduling.

Construction Proposal Template

Project owners decide which is the best contractor for their project by analyzing their project proposal. Use this free construction proposal template to create a proposal that will stand out in the construction bidding process.

How ProjectManager Helps Keep Track of Time & Materials Contracts

Time and material contracts may be right for you. But if you’re going to use one, it’s crucial you closely track the time and materials used by your contractor. This way you’re only paying for work that has actually been done. ProjectManager is award-winning construction project management software that can monitor the time your contractors work on the job and track the materials they use, all in real time.

Easy Time Management

It’s easy to onboard contractors to our tool, and security settings make sure they’re only able to access those parts of the software you permit them to use. One feature that helps you track their work is our timesheets. When contractors submit their timesheets, they’re sent to the authorized approver and locked to keep the data secure.

Plan with Gantt Charts

Use our Gantt chart view to plan and schedule your project. You can assign and keep track of contractors’ work, as well as track expenses. Once you have a schedule and budget, set the baseline to compare the actual progress and costs to your plan. If you notice contractors spending too much time or money, you can address the issue before it becomes a problem.

Track Data with Live Dashboards

There’s also a live dashboard that tracks a high-level view of the project’s progress and performance. It automatically collects real-time data and calculates it into project costs, time, variance and more. Whatever type of contract you use, our tool makes sure your contractors are working efficiently.

Related Content

• Types of Construction Contracts: Pros, Cons & Best Practices
• Construction Documents: Types of Construction Drawings
• How to Make a Construction Plan
• How to Make a Construction Schedule
• Best Construction Scheduling Software

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Aggregate planning is a technique to create an equilibrium between demand and capacity. It’s something every company that is producing something needs to know. Let’s take a look at what aggregate production planning is and some aggregate planning strategies.

What Is Aggregate Planning?

Aggregate planning is a method for analyzing, developing and maintaining a manufacturing plan with an emphasis on uninterrupted, consistent production. Aggregate planning is most often focused on targeted sales forecasts, inventory management and production levels in the mid-term (3-to-18-month) future.

Note that production planning is not just goods, but services as well. Aggregate planning defines the necessary production inputs for a good or service (including facilities, workforce, raw materials and inventory levels) to maintain consistent delivery dates, all while keeping costs down.

This doesn’t apply solely to individual production lines or the manufacturing of one product. It will cover all the jobs being done at a facility or across several facilities. This allows manufacturers to get the most out of their resources even if there are different demands for products and changes in customer orders, the supply chain or other variables.

Project management software facilitates aggregate planning. ProjectManager is award-winning software that helps manufacturers manage costs and resources to allow for uninterrupted production. Planning on our powerful Gantt charts helps to control costs and resources associated with production runs and reallocate those resources as necessary to keep production lines running smoothly.  You can even track the planned effort against the actual effort in real time. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

Who Is Responsible for Aggregate Planning?

Typically, operations management or a sales and operations planning team (S&OP) is responsible for aggregate planning. Operations managers develop and implement the aggregate plan to balance production capacity with forecasted demand. They help oversee decisions about production rates, workforce levels, inventory and outsourcing.

The S&OP team is cross-functional and includes representatives from different departments such as sales, marketing operations, finance and engineering. They work collaboratively to align demand forecasts with the company’s capacity and strategic objectives.

How to Create an Aggregate Plan

To create an aggregate plan, you must first determine the number of units that are produced over a specific time frame, which is the capacity, and the number of units needed, which is the customer demand.

Here are some of the factors to consider when trying to create consistency in your process:

• Pricing Strategies: When demand is low, reduce the price to match capacity. You can also do the reverse; when demand is high, increase the price.
• Advertising/Promotion: Marketing and promotional activities can impact the demand for your product or service.
• Back Ordering: Delay delivery until demand catches up with capacity.
• New Demand Creation: Create another demand to supplement an existing one.
• Workforce: You can lay off or hire employees to meet the demand or respond to a lack of it. Overtime, subcontracting or use of a temporary workforce is also an option.

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Production Schedule Template

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What’s the Purpose of Aggregate Planning?

As stated, the goal of aggregate planning is figuring out the level of production, inventory and workforce required to respond to fluctuating demand in the medium term. With this information, a business can assess when demand will spike or wane, and ensure it has enough product to meet the moment. Aggregate production planning also lets manufacturers know what staff, materials, output rates, timeline estimates and budget costs they need.

Making forecasts saves the company from changing its production schedule quickly, which is not only expensive but also creates insecurity and uncertainty. With aggregate planning, you can make a fairly accurate forecast of demand and capacity in the medium term.

Resource Management

In other words, you’re working on short-term resource allocation. This reduces the risk of overproduction, which wastes resources, depresses prices and can lead to oversaturation of your product in the market. By reducing production during periods of weak demand, you save money on labor and materials.

Cost Savings

Aggregate planning helps companies achieve their financial goals and improve the bottom line. It allows for maximum utilization of the available production capabilities while meeting customer demand and reducing their wait time, as well as reducing the cost of stocking excess inventory.

Good Data is Required

Aggregate planning forecasting is not a magic bullet, though. It’s only as good as the data you collect (and the people you use) to forecast. People have biases, and they can misread economic indicators or use faulty forecast models. There are always unknowns, too, such as material price spikes, implementation of new policies, changing interest rates. Not to mention labor; alterations in labor conditions can cause unrest in your workforce.

3 Types of Aggregate Planning Strategies

Success depends on having the following inputs: an aggregate demand forecast for the period you’re planning for, evaluating capacity management (including using subcontractors, outsourcing, etc.), and the existing operational status of your workforce. All this will lead to greater accuracy, and therefore, a greater likelihood of success.

You can achieve this by applying a variety of aggregate planning strategies. There are three main ones that organizations have used:

1. Level Strategy: The goal of an aggregate planning strategy is to keep the production rate and the workforce level. This requires strong forecasting of demand to know if production levels must be increased or decreased as customer demands grow and shrink. This aggregate production planning strategy will keep your workforce steady but can increase your inventory and backlog.
2. Chase Strategy: As the name implies, you are chasing market demand. The production matches demand, and excess inventory isn’t held over. This is part of a larger lean production strategy, which saves money by waiting until an order is placed. However, productivity and quality can be reduced, and it can negatively impact the morale of your workforce.
3. Hybrid Strategy: There is a third alternative, which is a hybrid of the previous two strategies. This keeps the balance between the production rate, workforce and inventory levels, while still responding to demand as it changes. This alternative offers a bit of flexibility that can satisfy demand while working to keep production costs low.

Best Practices for Making an Aggregate Plan

Whatever strategy you choose, there are some things to keep in mind when using aggregate planning. For one, you want to figure out the demand and capacity for each period. These two should match one another, though this might require overtime or sub-contracting to achieve.

You’ll also want to identify any policies, be they union, departmental or companywide, that can impact production levels. Cost is also important, obviously, so you’ll want to determine fixed and variable costs as well as direct and indirect labor costs.

It never hurts to have an alternative plan just in case. These plans should also follow the same best practices for making an aggregate plan. If you come up with one that meets your objectives, you might discover it in fact costs less and should be your primary aggregate production plan.

Three Things to Avoid in Aggregate Plans

While we’ve covered the best practices and types of aggregate planning strategies, let’s review three things to avoid when making aggregate plans.

1. Ignoring Demand Variability and Forecast Inaccuracies

Don’t treat demand forecasts as absolute, as you’ll end up creating a rigid plan that doesn’t account for the inherent variability or inaccuracies in these forecasts. Instead, the plan should be flexible. For example, use strategies like flexible workforce options (temporary staff, overtime) and regularly adjust the plan based on actual demand and updated forecasts.

2. Creating Unrealistic Capacity Assumptions

When teams overestimate the available production capacity or ignore limitations on equipment or labor availability, it makes plans impossible to execute. This results in missed deadlines, reduced quality and frustrated employees. Instead, base capacity assumptions on realistic assessments of resources.

3. Developing the Aggregate Plan in Isolation

Ignoring input and buy-in from key departments such as finance, marketing, sales and human resources can result in a plan that doesn’t align with sales targets, financial constraints or workforce capabilities. Ideally, foster strong communication and collaboration between all relevant departments and gather stakeholder feedback.

Free Aggregate Planning Templates

Finding the right balance between demand and capacity is easier with the right tools. Here are some free project management templates that can improve aggregate planning.

Production Schedule Template

An accurate production schedule can outline what needs to be produced, when and by whom or with what resources. Use this free production schedule template for Excel to better balance supply and demand.

Capacity Planning Template

Download this free capacity planning template for Excel as a streamlined way to determine how much production capacity is needed to meet the demand for products. It helps balance the available resources to meet customer demand or the project’s capacity needs.

Inventory Template

This inventory template for Excel makes it easy for managers to see all inventory details in one place. It helps monitor stock levels, manage the reordering process, track inventory turnover and more.

How ProjectManager Helps with Aggregate Planning

Work management software helps you reign the variables in your aggregate planning and let you manage your production to keep capacity matched with demand. ProjectManager is a cloud-based software that gives you better insights into your manufacturing process, workforce and budget because it delivers real-time data.

Managers understand that aggregate planning is all about resources. You can use the Gantt chart to plan production, filter for the critical path and set a baseline to always have project variance available to view. Set up your budget, then manage costs. Your resources’ costs are automatically calculated as your team logs their hours worked. The Gantt chart has a timeline, which provides a visual of the whole production cycle.

Keeping track of your team, their hours and availability is key to a successful aggregate production plan. With ProjectManager, you can set your teams’ workdays, holidays and PTO. You can also view all the tasks assigned to them on a Team Page. Then, you can switch over to the color-coded workload chart. From there, you can re-allocate their work to balance their workload and help them work more productively.

Another of ProjectManager’s work views is the kanban board. This visual workflow tool lets your teams manage their backlog, while you get transparency into where they are in the production cycle. Aggregate planning is all about matching capacity to demand.

With the board view, you can see potential roadblocks and re-allocate resources to keep the team working. ProjectManager is fast, flexible and provides the visibility needed for project planning, resource management and capacity planning.

ProjectManager is award-winning software that gives teams collaborative platform, and gives managers transparency without getting in the way of their workforce. See how it can help you meet demand, whether you’re working on one or dozens of projects at once. Try ProjectManager today for free.

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The process of controlling management is essential for any business to remain viable. When you monitor with software and control the process of your manufacturing, you’re able to see what works and what isn’t working.

What Is Controlling Process in Business Management?

The controlling process in business management is when managers set, measure and refine their business operations and manage cost control.

By using a controlling process, a company can navigate changes to the supply chain, customer demand and other variables that impact a company’s livelihood. It’s a critical task in keeping any business solvent.

Through the process of controlling in management, a company can accurately tell if plans are moving in the right direction and are fully implemented. If those plans aren’t working and take the company off-track, they can right the ship and stay on course.

Project management software helps you measure performance. ProjectManager is software that does this in real time. You can see the difference between your planned and actual effort with ProjectManager’s live dashboard. The dashboard collects production data, automatically crunches the numbers and then displays the result in easy-to-read graphs and charts. Try ProjectManager today for free!

Who Is Involved in the Controlling Process?

A range of individuals and groups are involved in the controlling process, but the specific people involved can vary depending on the company’s size and structure. Usually, management such as the executive team, the CEO and the department managers are involved. They work to set the overall strategic goals and business targets, and are responsible for monitoring their team’s performance.

The finance department, including the CFO and financial analysts, is also involved as they help ensure the controlling process offers relevant and reliable information for strategic decision making and financial reporting. While not directly involved in controlling, employees across departments may contribute to this process by offering data related to their role, following established budgets or providing feedback.

Controlling Process Steps in Business Management

There is a five-step procedure for controlling processes that will help you set, measure and tweak your business activities—whether that’s production, packaging, delivery or another business process.

If you’re not applying a controlling process, then you’re not really managing your business processes. You can’t lead your workforce without controlling the process.

For organizational control that leads to fulfilling your company’s goals and strategic plans, follow these five steps:

1. Set Performance Standards

You need a goal for your business, but you also need guidance for your team to keep them working towards that goal. Without such standards, it’s possible that they’ll move away from the plan, whether intentionally or not.

Standards are like goals tasked to a specific department or team member. They must achieve these standards through cooperation, teamwork and a collaborative effort. To ensure these standards are being met, though, you must-have criteria to measure them by.

By setting up rules you can measure with, you can judge or rate performance to keep the results standard. This helps management understand how production is progressing, and whether it’s on track or needs adjustment. Having standards to base performance on means that work doesn’t have to stop to get a picture of how it’s progressing.

There are two groups of standards: tangible (or specific) and intangible (or abstract). The former is measurable; you can see it and count it. The latter cannot be seen nor counted. A tangible standard would be time, cost, profit, expenditure, output, etc. Intangible standards are a manager’s performance, a worker’s attitude and so forth.

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Status Report Template

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2. Measure Performance

Setting a standard makes it possible to measure performance using a control function. Through this measurement of performance, you can quickly catch and correct any deviation from the plan before it goes off-track and runs production into the ground.

Measurements are easier when dealing with tangible standards that can be seen and counted. This is naturally more difficult with intangible standards. By definition, intangible performance is difficult to measure in an information system, as you cannot quantify it.

One way to make up for this shortcoming is by looking at a manager’s performance through the eyes of their team. What is the team attitude like towards their work? Is morale high? How are communications between the team and the manager? Is the team loyal to each other, their manager and the company?

Although these are intangible standards, together they paint a picture of the manager’s performance. All of those questions speak to the ability of the manager to successfully manage their team. Draft the standard for measuring what teams do, what is their expected performance, etc. You can collect this data regularly by reports, whether weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly.

3. Compare Actual Performance Against Performance Standards

Once you have a baseline for how your teams are performing when manufacturing, packaging, delivering, etc., you can compare the actual to the planned performance and determine the extent of the deviation. This is called variance, or the difference between actual performance and goals. Schedules can be immensely helpful when it comes to analyzing variance.

ProjectManager has online Gantt charts that allow you to set concrete milestones and project phases, so you can see at a glance if you are ahead or behind schedule. Plus, the Gantt updates in real time as your team completes their work. Take a free trial and build a schedule in minutes.

The manager must look at this data and accept or reject the outcome. This depends on the deviation and the impact on the business. If everything is going as expected, that’s great, but it’s more likely that there will be deviation of some sort. It’s up to the manager to determine if that gap is one that can be ignored or acted on.

4. Analyze Deviations

This brings us to the next step: where you analyze data using the acceptable limits. If standards weren’t met, the manager must then figure out whether more control is required—or if maybe, the standard itself should be changed.

If there is a gap between planned and actual performance, the next step is figuring out what is causing it and what the extent of it is. Then, you have to determine how this deviation is impacting the business. If the difference is only a small one, then it’s probably okay to ignore it. But if the gap reflects gains, appointing workers, changing or repairing equipment and other critical issues, it must be addressed. A gap analysis template can help in that decision-making process.

5. Take Corrective Actions

Once you have analyzed the deviation and determined its cause, the manager will have to set up a plan in which corrective measures, critical point control and other means are used to resolve the issue. This is to reduce the deviation and ensure the standard is met. This might involve changes to processes and/or behaviors.

Some situations discovered in a controlling process might require corrective action to save the business, while others might just be a below-standard performance that needs correcting to improve processes and bring production back on schedule. Therefore, actions might be needed immediately because of the urgency.

Corrective actions include a variety of activities. For example, you might change how certain business operations are carried out. However, some operations and performances might not be able to change and may require more resources. For example, hiring more team members might be the solution to correct the deviation you’ve discovered.

It’s important that managers monitor and control the process from start to finish. That includes not only the controlling process but any actions planned to resolve the deviation or reset the standards. An understanding of the controlling process shows if plans are being met and, if not, what actions need to take place in order for them to be met.

How to Get Buy-in From Your Team for the Controlling Process

For the controlling process to be effective, the team needs to buy into it. This often revolves around focusing on communication, transparency and involvement. For example, the top management team can explain why certain controlling measures are put into place and how they benefit the overall business. When team members can understand how their work impacts the bigger picture, they are more likely to understand the importance of their work.

As performance standards are apparent in the controlling process, it’s ideal to share the results openly and honestly. This can help build trust and show those in the business that data is being used constructively.  Teams need the right training and support to hit their performance standards. Make sure they have the knowledge and skills to understand the controlling process, any relevant KPIs and how their work contributes to the bottom line. If needed, offer training on software or tools that can help with data collection and reporting.

Templates to Help the Control Process

Project management templates are one of the most helpful tools a project manager can utilize during the control process. Here are a handful that can help.

Quality Control Template

Download this free quality control template for Excel for a standardized way to establish and maintain production standards. It details quality assurance measures and methods of accountability to ensure the delivery of quality products.

Operating Budget Template

Cost control is integral to the control process. Use this free operating budget template for Excel to forecast revenue and expenses over a period. It helps map out the expected costs for the quarter or year ahead, resulting in a more accurate budget.

Corrective Action Plan Template

If plans aren’t moving in the right direction, a company should take action. Download this free corrective action plan template for Excel to outline and develop the action items that can correct errors, reduce risks and improve processes.

How ProjectManager Helps With the Control Process Steps

ProjectManager is onlind work management software that manages plans and monitors performance in real time to help managers make more insightful decisions. Multiple project views make it easy for hybrid teams to use the tool how they want, no matter where they are, what they do or their level of expertise.

Track Progress on Gantt Charts

Setting performance standards can be done on ProjectManager’s interactive Gantt charts. Milestones can be set, tasks assigned and priority and other tags added to better organize the standards. A baseline is set to capture the plan, which can then be used later to compare the actual performance with the standards and goals set. Then, the manager can share the Gantt with the team and stakeholders.

Measure Performance on Dashboards

Measuring actual performance is more accurate with ProjectManager’s cloud-based reporting software. It collects data in real time and displays them on the live dashboard, which also can be shared with stakeholders. Reports are a way to dig deeper into the data. Teams can deliver status reports to update their performance as they execute their tasks, and managers can generate reports on variance, workload, timesheets and more.

Manage Workload and Reallocate Resources

Resource management tools help you analyze and take corrective action. Workload is one of the standards that can slow down production if too few team members are tasked with too many tasks. ProjectManager’s color-coded chart shows you who is overallocated, and then you can reallocate resources right from the workload chart. Once the workload is balanced, production will increase as will team morale.

ProjectManager is award-winning software that helps with controlling processes. It has features to help you plan, monitor and report on performance. Multiple project views make it accessible to anyone from management to team members. It’s perfect for hybrid teams looking to improve their work management. Try ProjectManager today!

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Project management software that’s collaborative and offers unlimited file storage, such as ProjectManager, is a given. Our tool can organize your documents and make them accessible to the project team on any of our multiple project views. For example, the list view allows teams to share files and comment on tasks in real time to foster better communication. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

What Is the Meaning of PMIS?

A project management information system (PMIS) is how a project’s information is organized. It collects and uses project information through one or more software applications. These programs help project managers plan, execute and close their projects and allow them to organize the flood of information so they aren’t drowning in data.

There are different types of PMIS software, but most share feature sets that include tools for scheduling, work authorization, information collection and distribution, etc. Some also have automated gathering and reporting on key performance indicators (KPIs), while others are simply a collection of files.

What Is a PMIS Used For?

A PMIS is made to support all aspects of project management, including the information that’s necessary to monitor or collect. This includes integration management, project scope management, project cost management, project time management, project quality management, project communications management, project risk management, project procurement management and project stakeholder management.

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Essential Features of a PMIS

That’s a lot of information to keep track of, and when managing a project, it’s crucial to be able to immediately pluck the required information from all that data. A PMIS is an important tool that gives you instant access to the signal in the noise. The information is also critical for future projects to help reduce risk, improve efficiencies and estimate costs.

If a PMIS captures all project data and stores it in an organized way, it must also be retrievable, searchable, categorizable, shareable and analyzable. To achieve this, a typical PMIS has a series of tools.

• Project Scheduling: Computes early and late schedules, slack times and the critical path
• Project Resource Management: Includes resource loading, leveling, allocation, etc.
• Project Budgeting: Costs associated with individual tasks for more accurate budget estimation and generation.
• Project Tracking: Analyze and control cost and performance, update existing plans as actual against planned data changes and provide what-if scenarios for the project manager.
• Project Reports: Creation of graphs, reports and charts of collected and analyzed data that can be shared with stakeholders and team members.
• Integrations: Some PMIS will access data from different projects for multi-project analysis, integrating with other systems, such as payroll, inventory, etc. The easier a PMIS is to use, the less time and money required to train.

What Is a PMIS Report?

A PMIS report is a document that a Project Management Information System (PMIS) generates to provide data on project performance. It delves into various aspects of a project to help project managers and stakeholders identify potential issues, monitor progress and make informed decisions.

Typically, a PMIS report contains information on the project status such as the overall project health, key milestones, deliverables and percentage completion of tasks. It also compares planned vs. actual start and finish dates, Gantt chart visualizations and critical path analysis. Other areas of a PMIS report may include data on cost performance, resource utilization, risk management, issue tracking, quality control, change control and communication. The purpose of this document is to provide an overview of project performance and how it aligns with strategic goals.

How Does PMIS Work Throughout the Project Life Cycle?

A PMIS has different functions depending on the phase of the project. At a basic level, a PMIS should offer the possibility to track your project scope, time and costs. A robust PMIS should include a wide variety of project management software features you can use as you go through your project life cycle.

ProjectManager has advanced resource management, time tracking, work management and project management features that you need from a PMIS plus real-time collaboration features, dashboards, reporting and more. Here’s how you can use an advanced PMIS to manage your project life cycle.

Project Initiation

During the initiation phase, a project manager uses a PMIS to establish a preliminary budget including cost estimates and resources. A PMIS used in conjunction with other tools can help schedule the project. In terms of approval, a PMIS helps to define the scope of work, assists with preparing the bid and can be used when presenting data to decision-makers.

Project Planning

When planning a project, PMIS helps with scheduling details including task and critical path analysis. It supports cost management planning including WBS analysis and integration of control processes. PMIS also proves beneficial to the project manager when resource planning in terms of availability and level. It can also help establish a baseline for project scope, schedule and cost.

Project Execution

Once the project has been executed, the PMIS collects, organizes and stores data as it comes in from the project team. This data can then be compared to the baseline projections. The PMIS helps with cost and schedule forecasts to determine if changes are required mid-project. Materials management, cost collection, performance measurement and, of course, reporting are all supported by PMIS.

Project Monitoring & Control

A PMIS should have all the cost management, resource planning, task management and time tracking features you need to make sure the project execution is going as planned and nothing affects your project schedule or budget. In case an issue does affect your project plan, you can use a PMIS to find all the information you need to mitigate that risk and adjust your project plan.

Project Closure

Especially when closing out a project, a PMIS is a great help. It helps review requirements to make sure the project has met all its goals and objectives. It also organizes the information collected over the course of the project for performance review, productivity analysis, final reports and keeps an archive of historical data for future projects.

PMIS Example: A Construction PMIS

Let’s look into a construction PMIS as an example. Let’s say there’s a new commercial office building that was built in October of 2024. The construction PMIS may include sections such as the following.

Project Status Summary: On track with minor schedule variances

Key Milestones

• Foundation completion: October 8
• Structural steel erection: 80% complete (delayed by 2 days due to steel delivery)
• Exterior wall framing: 20% complete

Issues

• Steel delivery delay (resolved with alternate supplier)
• Minor delay in concrete pour due to unexpected rain (mitigated by extended work hours)

Schedule Performance

Planned vs. actual

• Structural steel erection, planned finish date Oct. 23, actual finish Oct. 26
• Exterior wall framing, planned start Oct. 15, actual start Oct. 16

Schedule variance

• Structural steel erection: +3 days
• Exterior wall framing: +1 day
• Critical path: Structured steel erection, exterior wall framing, electrical rough-in are currently on the critical path
• Include a Gantt chart that shows planned vs. actual timelines for each task

Cost Performance

Budget vs. actual

• Total budget: $10,000,000
• Total actual cost: $6,500,000
• Budget remaining: $3,500,000

Cost variance

• Steel deliver delay: +$50,000 (premium for alternate supplier)
• Concrete pour delay: +$10,000 (extended work hours)

Earned value analysis

• Planned value (PV): $6,800,000
• Earned value (EV): $6,500,000
• Schedule variance (SV): -$300,000
• Cost variance (CV): -$10,000

Resource Utilization

Labor

• Steelworkers: 95% utilization
• Concrete workers: 100% utilization (due to extended hours)

Equipment

• Crane: 80% utilization
• Concrete pumps: 90% utilization

Materials

• Steel: on-site inventory sufficient for next week
• Concrete: deliveries on schedule

Risk Management

• Identified risks: severe weather (mitigation: weather monitoring, contingency plans)
• Material price fluctuations: low risk (mitigation: locked-in supplier contracts)
• Realized risk: steel delivery delay, rain delay
• Risk mitigation status: steel delivery (resolved), rain delay (resolved)

Issues

• Steel delivery delay
• Status: resolved
• Impact: 3-day project delay, $50,000 cost increase
• Action: alternate supplier sourced

Rain delay

• Status: resolved
• Impact: 1 day delay, $10,000 cost increase
• Action: extended work hours

Communication

• Weekly project meetings with stakeholders
• Daily site progress reports distributed to the team
• Client informed of steel delivery delay and mitigation plan

This is a simplified version of a real-world construction PMIS report. In reality, it would delve into more granular data and visualizations, but it illustrates the core components and how they track and maintain a construction project.

Advantages of Using an Online PMIS

While there are manual project management information systems, the benefits of using an online or cloud-based system are numerous. With an online project management information system, the speed, capacity, efficiency, economy, accuracy and the ability to handle complex projects are supported. Of all these benefits, speed is the most practical.

Related: 20 Free Project Management Templates for Excel

Once the data is collected, it can then be adjusted to reflect the results a project manager needs with great speed and accuracy. A manual program is never going to match that nor can it create and revise project documents, plans, schedules or budgets as quickly. What once took days or longer is now completed in a matter of seconds.

Project managers and their organizations can store large amounts of data with a PMIS. That data is also easily accessed, prioritized and summarized as needed. And unlike a manual system which is large and requires many support personnel, an online PMIS requires far less support and space.

With these factors, there’s also a cost-benefit. The cost advantage of digital over a manual PMIS is usually significant, especially when considering storage and processing. And if inputs are correct, the chance of errors greatly diminishes with a cloud-based PMIS.

Try ProjectManager as Your PMIS

ProjectManager is project management software with the features to make a great PMIS. The real-time dashboard gives an up-to-date view of project metrics, crunching numbers for you and creating vivid and easy-to-read charts and graphs that can be printed out for presentations or shared digitally. They can also be filtered to reflect just the data you need to show to your team or stakeholder.

Unlimited Project File Storage

Because the software is cloud-based, there’s a great deal of file store to archive your documents, images and other files. Now they’re all in one place, which keeps them safe, organized and accessible when you want them.

Efficient Task Management

Communications between team members are also saved, but they’re not on email or lost in a long text narrative, both of which can waste valuable time searching for the right piece of information. Instead, with ProjectManager, those conversations are organized at the task level using our task management tools, including attaching the relevant documents, so everyone knows where to find them.

PMIS is essential to manage the massive amounts of data that swarm around every project. ProjectManager is a cloud-based project management software that has the features a project manager needs to collect, organize, analyze and archive all that information. It’s easy to use and the whole team can collaborate. What are you waiting for? Try ProjectManager for free with this 30-day trial.

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A burndown chart helps agile project management teams keep track of what’s been done, what needs to be done and how much time is left in the project. While a burndown chart is traditionally a visual tool, it can also act as a list that outlines the work to be done and what percentage of it is complete.

What Is a Burndown Chart?

A burndown chart is a project management chart that shows how quickly a team is working through a customer’s user stories. This agile tool captures the description of a feature from an end-user perspective and shows the total effort against the amount of work for each iteration or agile sprint.

The quantity of work remaining appears on a vertical axis while the time that’s passed since the beginning of the project is placed horizontally on the chart, showing the past and the future. The burndown chart is displayed so everyone on the agile project management team can see it and updated regularly for accuracy.

Types of Burndown Charts

There are two burndown chart variants: a sprint burndown and a product burndown. A sprint burndown is used for work remaining in the iteration, while a product burndown illustrates the work remaining for the entire project plan.

Sprint Burndown Chart

Sprint burndown charts usually track progress within a single sprint, usually 1-4 weeks. It shows the remaining work for that specific sprint to help the team monitor progress and ensure they’re on track. The horizontal axis represents the days within the sprint and the vertical axis represents the remaining work, such as story points or hours.

Product Burndown Chart

Product burndown charts offer a broader view of the project’s overall progress. It tracks the remaining work for the entire product or a specific release that covers multiple sprints. The horizontal can represent sprints or iterations, while the vertical axis represents the remaining work in the product backlog.

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Components of a Burndown Chart

Although the specifics can vary, it’s common to see the below sections of a burndown chart.

Axes

A burndown chart has two axes, x and y. The horizontal axis represents time while the vertical axis displays user story points. The rightmost point of the chart indicates the start of a project or agile sprint while the leftmost point shows its end.

Ideal Work Remaining Line

As its name suggests, the ideal work remaining line indicates the remaining work that a team has at a specific point of the project or sprint under ideal conditions. Project managers use past data to estimate this baseline and draft a straight line across the burndown chart. The ideal work remaining line should always have a negative slope.

Actual Work Remaining Line

The actual work remaining line indicates the remaining work a team has at any point of the project timeline. Unlike the ideal work remaining line, this is not an estimate, but rather a realistic depiction of the team’s performance. The line is drawn as the team progresses and completes user stories. Actual work remaining lines are usually not straight as teams work at different paces as projects are completed.

ProjectManager is online software that offers multiple project views to help you collect and track your burndown chart. Our list view captures your tasks and shows how much work is left before tasks are complete. This real-time data access allows team members to comment and share files as needed. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

Burndown Chart vs. Burnup Chart

A burndown chart and a burnup chart are very similar—they have the same components, achieve the same purpose and are used for agile project management. But there’s one major difference.

On one hand, the burndown chart keeps track of the remaining work by removing user stories from the vertical axis as they’re completed while the burnup chart adds user stories to the vertical axis as they get done.

How to Read a Burndown Chart

The burndown chart has several points. There’s an x-axis, which is the project or sprint timeline. The y-axis is the work that needs to be completed in the project. The story point estimates for the work that remains are represented by this axis.

The project starting point is the farthest point to the left of the chart and occurs on day zero of the project or iteration. The project endpoint is farthest to the right and marks the final day of the project or iteration.

Ideal Work Remaining Line

There is an ideal work remaining line which is a straight line connecting the starting and ending points. This line represents the sum of estimates for all tasks that need to be completed, or in other words, the scope of the project. At the endpoint, the ideal line crosses the x-axis and shows there is no work left to be done. This line is based on estimates and therefore is not always accurate.

Actual Work Remaining Line

The actual work remaining line shows the actual work that remains in the project or iteration. At the beginning of the project execution phase, the actual work remaining and the ideal work remaining are the same, but as the project or iteration progresses, the actual work line fluctuates above and below the ideal work line. Each day, a new point is added to this line until the project or iteration is completed to make sure it’s as accurate as possible.

If the actual work line is above the ideal work line, it means there’s more work left than originally thought. In other words, the project is behind schedule. However, if the actual work line is below the ideal work line, there is less work left than originally predicted and the project is ahead of schedule.

Burndown Chart Examples

A visual depiction of a burndown chart can help bring the concept to life. Below are two more examples to better illustrate a burndown chart.

Burndown Chart Example with Actual vs Ideal

In this burndown chart example, the blue ideal line shows how the project would progress if all things went perfectly. It marks the pace at which tasks should be completed to finish the project on time. The purple line is the actual line that represents the team’s progress. It shows if the team is ahead, behind or on schedule at various weeks throughout the project.

Burndown Chart Example with Estimated Line

This burndown chart example has the work that’s left to do on the horizontal axis, while time is on the vertical axis. There are three lines, each representing different types of progress. The green estimated line shows the estimated progress calculated using the due date and estimated hours.

The ideal line is the blue straight line that averages the number of tasks by the number of days. As time progresses, the volume of tasks decreases. The red line represents the actual progress and any outstanding tasks. As tasks are completed, the estimated hours decrease.

Who Uses a Burndown Chart?

Agile teams, including project managers and scrum masters, often use a burndown chart to track and manage projects. These charts help monitor the project’s progress against the planned schedule, allowing these roles to identify delays before they cause a major impact. Scrum masters may also use a burndown chart to communicate the project status to stakeholders.

Development teams also use burndown charts to visualize how much work remains and if they are on schedule to complete it. It fosters transparency and accountability, helping the development team to self-manage. Other roles that may use this tool include product owners or stakeholders.

How to Use a Burndown Chart in Agile & Scrum

Agile project management relies on agile sprints to plan and execute projects. These sprints are short iterations of work where a team accomplishes specific goals that are initially set during a sprint planning meeting. Burndown charts are ideal for agile project managers as they allow them to keep track of the work remaining, compare performance against a baseline and quickly determine whether they’re behind schedule. Here are some examples of how to use a burndown chart to help you manage an agile or scrum project.

• Create a work management baseline to compare planned vs. actual work
• Complete a gap analysis based on discrepancies
• Get information for future sprint planning meetings
• Reallocate resources and manage tasks to complete sprints on time

What Are the Benefits of a Burndown Chart?

The obvious benefit of a burndown chart is that it provides an updated status report on the progress of the project. Having a visual representation of this key data keeps everyone on the same page.

Displaying a burndown chart prominently for all to see keeps everyone involved and encourages the team to deal with issues before they evolve into problems. It should be the focal point of the workspace so that it helps direct conversation toward the project and its progress.

The simplicity of the burndown chart is also extremely helpful as it outlines the velocity history of the project. Velocity is an agile term that means the total effort estimates associated with user stories that were completed during an iteration.

What Are the Limitations of a Burndown Chart?

The burndown chart doesn’t reveal everything. For example, it only shows the number of story points that have been completed. The burndown chart doesn’t show any changes, for example, in the scope of work as measured by the total points in the backlog.

As a result, it can be hard to tell if changes in the burndown chart are due to completed backlog items or because of an increase or decrease in story points. Having a burnup chart resolves this problem by having a separate line in the graph for the overall backlog size.

However, neither a burndown nor a burnup chart offers any indication of which product backlog items have been completed. While a burndown chart might show progress, it may not represent whether the team is working on the right tasks. These charts are often a way to show trends rather than represent whether the team is delivering the right product backlog items. If you’d like to prioritize project tasks, you may use an Eisenhower matrix instead.

It Relies on Good Estimates

Another issue with burndown charts revolves around the accuracy of the ideal work line. Whether the actual work line is above or below the ideal work line depends on the accuracy of the original time estimates for the tasks. If a team is overestimating time requirements, progress appears on track or ahead of schedule. But if the team is underestimating the time requirements, it will appear that they’re behind schedule.

There’s a way to respond to this issue—incorporating an efficiency factor into the burndown chart. After the first iteration of a project, the efficiency factor is recalculated to allow for more accuracy.

How ProjectManager Helps With Sprint Management

A burnout chart is important but it’s not the only guide that scrum teams can reference. There are many other reports and tools that can improve the probability of success. ProjectManager is an online collaborative software with the features scrum teams need to manage their sprints better.

Real-Time Dashboards

If you need a high-level view of your project, ProjectManager has a real-time dashboard that tracks your sprint as it happens. Data automatically populates for the most accurate view of your project. Teams can make decisions based on current project data as opposed to referencing old data.

Robust Kanban Boards

Reporting on progress is only one part of what a scrum team needs. They also require tools that allow them to manage product backlogs and sprints. ProjectManager has this portion of the sprint covered too, with kanban boards that visualize workflows, collect user stories and prioritize tasks. Scrum teams will always know what to work on and when. The kanban boards feed directly into ProjectManager’s reporting features for total project visibility.

Product owners and scrum masters will also appreciate the kanban for its transparency in the sprint. When going through a sprint retrospectively, the kanban is an archive of what went right and what went wrong, allowing for future improvements.

Managers must keep their eye on the progress of a project. If they don’t, then they’re risking the successful completion of the project. A burndown chart is just one of the many tools that lead to project success. ProjectManager is a cloud-based project management software that any manager will want to have in their toolbox. It has features such as a real-time dashboard to monitor and report on progress, and an online Gantt chart to streamline scheduling and help with collaboration. Try it today for free with this 30-day trial.

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The way for a project manager to keep stakeholders updated is through reporting, specifically with a progress report. A project progress report sounds straightforward—it’s a report on the project’s progress. But how it’s structured makes or breaks a progress report.

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What Is a Progress Report?

A progress report communicates what has been happening in the project, over a set period of time, to stakeholders. It shows whether the project is on schedule, and if not, the report is used to start a discussion on how to adjust the budget and project resources to bring it back on track.

Therefore, you can say that the purpose of a progress report is to persuade stakeholders that the project is sound and moving forward as expected. It does this by showing the work-in-progress, which allows stakeholders the opportunity to make any change requests.

These suggestions can then be managed and worked out to prevent any negative impact on the project scope. Project managers can also use progress reports as a means to address issues that they’re having and, in doing so, set more realistic expectations for the stakeholders.

Progress Report vs. Status Report

What’s the difference between a progress report and a status report, given that they are both communication tools and provide stakeholders with vital information on the project? Both progress reports and status reports summarize where the project is at in terms progress, costs, issues and any other information that is helpful to stakeholders.

Related: Free Project Report Templates

There is one key difference, however. A progress report is a picture of the project over a course of a specific period of time, while a status report only captures the moment in which it was initiated. The progress report offers a larger amount of data, while the status report shows data from a moment in time without the larger context.

Types of Progress Report

A progress report is a very versatile document that can be used to monitor the progress of a project, or simpler sets of tasks, procedures or workflows. Here are some of the most common types of progress reports.

• Project progress report
• Work progress report
• Daily progress report
• Weekly progress report
• Monthly progress report
• Quarterly progress report
• Annual progress report

What Should Be Included in a Project Progress Report?

A progress report can be one page or several, depending on the depth of detail you wish to convey. They can be delivered as a memo, in letter form, or as a formal report when presented to stakeholders.

Whichever progress report format you choose, stakeholders will want to see where the project is and where it’s going. Therefore, you should include a list of tasks, milestones and whatever progress was made. This leads to the larger goals of the project and what has been accomplished in terms of its objectives.

Let’s review some of the key elements that should be included in a progress report for monitoring projects or simply the performance of a team when executing business processes or tasks.

Executive Summary

The executive summary is a short but informative section that overviews the entire progress report. It highlights challenges, key accomplishments and the current project status. The goal is to provide stakeholders with a high-level understanding without them having to read the full document. Ideally, the document will include recent advancements, significant issues that could impact the budget or timelines and the overall alignment with project goals.

Project Objectives and Goals

The next section that follows in the progress report format is objectives and goals. Here, outline the benchmarks to measure success; the objectives define what the project wants to achieve while the goals are the broader visions that guide the purpose of the project. The objectives and goals are also helpful in identifying shifts in priorities or unexpected challenges that shifted the project’s focus.

Scope of Work

In a sample of a progress report, you’ll likely see the scope of work. Here, you’ll see the project boundaries including the expected tasks and outcomes. This helps maintain clarity on deliverables, timeframes and resources. If there’s a change in scope, be sure to reflect on them in this section to show any approved adjustments and how the impact the original scope.

Tasks Overview

The tasks overview section is an update on the progress of specific tasks such as what tasks are completed, delayed or ongoing. Each task status shows the current work pace to help keep stakeholders informed on the immediate progress. If there are any dependencies between tasks or blockers that are preventing completion, note them in the tasks overview section.

Project Milestones

Project milestones in a project progress report template show key checkpoints in the project’s lifecycle. This is the section to document the progress for each, including the anticipated completion and the associated dates. Milestones are the major project phases or significant events including the completion of planning or any critical approvals. Project managers should track milestones to gauge the pace of the project and any risks that could impact the timeline.

Project Deliverables

Project deliverables include tangible project outcomes or products. It outlines what has been delivered and what is still outstanding. All deliverables need to align with the project’s objectives as they act as indicators of progress, especially to stakeholders. The project deliverables section helps track the timeline and the quality of work.

Change Log

In the change log section, record any changes to the project’s budget, scope, resources or timeline to offer transparency. There should be an individual log for each detailed change, the reason behind it, the approval process and any implications on project outcomes. Having a thorough change log helps inform stakeholders of adjustments and provides accountability for project decisions.

Budget Status

The budget status is a financial overview that helps compare planned versus actual spending, tracking cost variances along the way.

Progress Report Sample

The best way to understand how a progress report works is to analyze a progress report example.

Executive Summary

The executive summary is an update on the progress made during the Oakwood Apartments construction project kickoff. Key accomplishments include finishing the foundation and starting framing on two of the three buildings. Challenges include delays in delivering the materials for plumbing and electrical systems which could impact future milestones. The team continues to focus on staying aligned with the timeline and coordinating next steps.

Project Objectives and Goals

The project’s objective is to build a residential complex with three apartment buildings totaling 90 units by the end of Q3 2025. The goal is to achieve milestones within budget and on schedule to result in high-quality builds that support durability and keep residents happy.

Scope of Work

The scope of work includes preparing the site, foundation work, structural framing, interior and exterior finishes and landscaping. It tracks progress in these areas in addition to any scope changes. This week, there aren’t new scope adjustments.

Tasks Overview

The following is a tasks overview chart to help better understand the breakdown of project tasks and what the status of each is.

Project Milestones

The project milestone chart outlines the milestones in the project, the planned date and the status of each. There is also room to leave any comments on each milestone.

Project Deliverables

In the project deliverables table, there is information about each deliverable, the status of each deliverable as well as the due date. Any comments can be left as well.

Change Log

The change log in the sample progress report is an opportunity to outline any project change requests accompanied by the date, description, approver and how it will impact the project.

Budget Status

The budget status a high-level overview of the project budget in various categories of the project costs. This include site preparation, foundation, framing, roofing, etc. It includes how much was spent, the remaining budget and any comments for context.

RAID Log

RAID stands for risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies. There is a description for each as well as a status and the action required.

Progress Report Template

If you’re running a project, you’ll have to produce a progress report periodically over its life cycle. To save time, it’s good to use a progress report template. ProjectManager has dozens of free project management-related templates on our site, including a free progress report template.

How to Write a Progress Report

Now let’s go through each of the steps that you’ll need to follow to make a progress report for a project, process or workflow.

Start with Identifying Info

Whether you’re using our template or creating one from scratch, your progress report should begin with project top-line information. From there, it goes into a summary of the project. Our template breaks those high-level topics into five: status, scope, schedule, cost and risk.

Summarize the Data

The summary is where you can compare the status of the previous progress report to the current one. This provides a clear indication that the project is moving forward as planned. Beyond that, there’s room for a summary to explore the topic in greater detail.

Dive Into Finer Details

Once you’ve identified the project and summarized its overall status, you can then go into greater detail about each topic. For example, listing tasks and their progress, going into any issues that might have arisen and looking into your budget allocation.

List Your Accomplishments

On our free progress report template, we end with an accomplishments box to capture any that were not collected above. Finally, there’s an expected accomplishment box, which is a way to set expectations for the next progress report.

Best Practicing When Making a Progress Report

When you’re writing your progress report, one way to make sure it’s effective is to think your stakeholders’ perspectives as you write it. You want to relay what happened over the period covered if anything blocked that progress and what is coming next.

Don’t Be Generic

Stakeholders want specifics. They don’t want you to go into details about how you accomplished something, but they want to know what was accomplished. They want metrics, not narratives. Your answers should be meaningful and avoid unnecessary details.

Know the Frequency

That is, if you’re working on a very long project, stakeholders might want a progress report delivered to them weekly or even daily. Find this out first and deliver your progress reports when the stakeholders expect them.

Break It Up

It’s a good idea to break your progress report into sections. This makes the report more readable. Having a section headlining informs the reader what to expect and helps guide them through the document.

Write Well

Use clear and simple language; avoid jargon that can confuse the reader. You want them to know what you’re saying immediately and not have to struggle through it (or worse, misunderstand) what you’re trying to convey.

Use Software

Having project management software can facilitate the reporting process. Depending on what tool you’re using, you can get real-time data and easy delivery to your stakeholders. This saves time and presents better data.

How ProjectManager Lets You Create Progress Reports

ProjectManager is award-winning project management software that organizes your tasks, teams and projects. Our features help you plan, monitor and report on every aspect of the project. Our cloud-based tool means that you’re getting real-time data to create more accurate and timely reports.

Stakeholders want to see the big picture and our one-click reporting tools make it easy to get them just the data they want to see. Our reporting feature lets you make instant reports on task, time, costs, timesheets, project variance and more. Plus, sharing it with stakeholders is easy!

To get an instant status report, use our dashboard feature. The real-time dashboard is constantly collecting data from your team and automatically calculating it to display in easy-to-read project metrics that show the percentage complete on tasks, how much time is left, team workload and more.

ProjectManager is a cloud-based tool that delivers real-time data to help you make better decisions. Project managers get transparency into every aspect of the project’s life cycle and teams are placed on a collaborative platform that fosters better work. See why organizations from NASA to Nestle use our tool and take this free 30-day trial today.

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Process optimization methods can help guide those tweaks and improvements. With process optimization, the ultimate goal is to help you be more efficient by adjusting certain aspects of your project or business—whether it be operating procedures, equipment and resources management or a control loop—to name a few.

But before we define process optimization, let’s start by defining a business process.

What Is a Business Process?

A business process is a set of tasks that are executed to deliver a product or service, or simply achieve a business goal. There are three types of business processes: management processes, operational processes and supporting processes.

You can visualize your business processes using mapping tools such as a flowchart or a Gantt chart. This will show you the sequence of tasks, the critical path, how they connect and their dependencies.

Gantt charts are an essential tool for any well-oiled machine, and without one, you could be missing visibility into key processes. With ProjectManager, work and project management software, you get access to our online Gantt chart so you can plan your optimized processes ahead of time, collaborate with employees, stakeholders, and investors and make adjustments as needed—all in real time. Get started today for free.

What Is Process Optimization?

Process optimization is the concept of optimizing a process as we outlined above. It’s a critical element of business process management along with process mapping and process modeling.

The goal of business process optimization is to reduce risks, streamline daily operations, improve worker output, increase efficiency, utilize resources more effectively and improve quality assurance.

It’s also important to understand how each business process interacts with one another in an organization to break down the barriers between silos and increase process collaboration. Once these details are considered, only then can you make fully informed project decisions.

Process Optimization Examples

Let’s go through some process optimization examples from different industries to better understand how business process optimization can help your business or project.

Process Optimization in Manufacturing

In a consumer-facing fabric shop, for example, you have workers that are sorting, folding, packing and measuring different yards of fabric. But if these workers have glaring inefficiencies in their process, then the rest of your facility can fall off course. By optimizing the sorting, folding and packing process, you can improve the business as a whole.

Process Optimization in Business Administration

Business administration is often made up of repetitive tasks. You can optimize these with process mapping, a systematic way of documenting the steps and time necessary to complete those administrative tasks. Process automation is a way to streamline that system and remove the human inputs to decrease errors, add speed and quality and reduce costs.

Process Optimization in Project Management

Project management can be streamlined through process automation. Business processes can be automated or customized to increase efficiency and reduce human error. Six Sigma is often used in project management as a means of improving processes. All this can free up your team to devote their attention to more important work.

Process Optimization Methods

There are several methods that can be applied to your work in order to optimize the process by streamlining the work, which in turn leads to fewer errors and savings in both time and cost. Some of those methods are listed below.

Six Sigma

Introduced by Bill Smith, an engineer working at Motorola, Six Sigma is a process to reduce defects when producing a feature or part. It is used in manufacturing to increase quality by identifying and removing those issues that cause defects. This is accomplished with quality management.

Kaizen

This Japanese term is roughly translated as meaning change for the better or continuous improvement. It, therefore, looks at ways to continuously improve processes while involving everyone in the organization. It does this by making the work environment more efficient, creating a team atmosphere, improving procedures, engaging employees and making the job more fulfilling. This concept of continuous improvement is key to lean manufacturing.

Value Stream Mapping

Value stream mapping is a lean tool that uses a flowchart to document every step in a process. It helps identify waste in the process and removes that waste to improve cycle times and the overall process. This is done by combining material processing steps with information flow and related data.

DMAIC

DMAIC stands for define, measure, analyze, improve and control. It’s a data-driven quality strategy that helps to improve processes. The five letters reflect the five phases that make up the process. DMAIC is part of a Six Sigma initiative but can be used as a standalone quality improvement tool.

SIPOC

Another acronym, SIPOC stands for suppliers, inputs, processes, outputs and customers. It’s used to summarize the inputs and outputs in processes by creating a table with SIPOC as columns. Six Sigma, lean manufacturing and business process management all use it to help with process improvement.

How to Optimize Business Processes

The best way to roll out your new process, track its success and tweak it is to follow the steps below. You can reveal which processes are bottlenecks in the project’s output and which ones are working seamlessly.

1. Research and Identify

Research and identify which of your processes are lacking. This can be done by interviewing staff members, workers, and leadership, as well as reading through records of the latest customer inquiries. Furthermore, collect and analyze data related to your processes. This can be as simple as tracking how long it takes for a worker to complete a task.

2. Map Out Your Processes

As we previously mentioned, this can be done by a flow chart or by a Gantt chart. Which resources might help to fill any gap needed? Which workers might help streamline the process better? By mapping this out, you can see where the holes lie within each process.

3. Reassemble Your Process

For ‘before-and-after’ presentation purposes, make a copy of your current chart and reorganize it based on which points would help improve the process if they were located at different points of each process. This should include any additional resources added as well as any new dependencies.

4. Execute & Report

Kick off your newly minted process and record every piece of the process that’s improved or worsened after the intervention. Does it match your predictions or go against them? This is where you’ll find that out. Record and report every detail here to key stakeholders so you can make additional adjustments based on their feedback.

5. Automate & Document

No process works best when it’s constantly being tweaked and revised. So now that you have your new process in place, and it’s functioning at optimal levels, let it run its course and see how much worker output has improved. Document all of your findings and store them in a repository that you can easily share with key stakeholders and refer back to at future dates.

Related: What Is Stakeholder Management?

Challenges of Business Process Optimization

The key to effective process optimization is to make all of your decisions based on research and data. Be wary of changing things just to change them. Upsetting a process can have far-ranging consequences on your project or business, so be sure to map out any possible negative effects that can stem from your changes.

Additionally, as you’re interviewing team members and stakeholders, you may get a lot of suggestions—too many, most likely. Be sure to set parameters on who gets to make decisions on what and recognize subject matter experts versus those with an opinion. Every stakeholder’s opinion has some value, but you need to learn to prioritize that feedback and synthesize it into an effective action plan. Remember, you can’t please everyone all of the time.

Free Templates to Help with Process Optimization

Process optimization is essential to keep costs down and boost productivity. It’s usually fostered by using business process management software, but if you’re not ready to take that step, there are free templates that can help. ProjectManager has dozens of free templates for every phase of your project. Here are are few that are for process optimization.

Root Cause Analysis Template (Fishbone Diagram)

The free root cause analysis template for Word can be used to identify what issues are causing your process to not work out as planned. This is usually part of your larger quality management plan. The fishbone diagram shows the cause and effect, which helps you improve processes by finding what’s not working.

Gap Analysis Template

One way to optimize processes is by looking at where you are, and where you want to be and devising a plan to bridge that gap. The free gap analysis template for Excel is built for this purpose. It does this by capturing your current state and allowing you to define the future state you wish to reach. You can then figure out the gap percentage and the actions to close that gap.

Project Task Tracker Template

Once you have a plan in place for process optimization, you need to implement it and ensure you’re meeting those goals. The free project task tracker template for Excel helps you do that. It has a place for you to list all your tasks, any dependent tasks, who they’re assigned to, what the priority is, start date, planned end date and actual end date. You can even note its status to help you stay on schedule.

ProjectManager Can Help with Process Optimization

Optimizing a process is no easy feat—no matter if it’s a team of 10 people or 10,000. ProjectManager is work and project management software that can help you with process optimization. You can make your plan and use our multiple project views to allow your team to execute that plan how they want.

Use Kanban Boards to Visualize Workflow

One project view is the kanban board, which you can use to visualize workflow so you can maximize efficiency. The customizable columns on the kanban board display exactly where a task is in your process. Noticing that one column has too many tasks? You might want to start there with your business optimization.

Balance Your Team’s Workload

You can’t optimize processes if your team is overextended or not working at capacity. We have resource management features that monitor your team’s workload and show the results in a color-coded graph. Quickly see who is overallocated or under-allocated and reallocate tasks as necessary to keep morale and productivity high.

Automate Processes For Greater Quality

When you automate processes you eliminate human error. Our custom workflows allow you to create triggers that set off actions, such as changing the priority, tag, assignee and more. That also keeps teams focused on what matters. Meanwhile, you can set up task approvals so you control the quality of what’s considered “done.”

By monitoring your processes, you can see where things aren’t working and where there’s room for improvement. Our real-time dashboards automatically collect live data and display it in colorful graphs that track six project metrics. One-click reports go even deeper and can be filtered and shared with stakeholders to show the process optimization.

No business process is optimized without a little help, whether it’s input from stakeholders or online tools to get your charts organized. Assure your stakeholders that your new processes will give them the competitive edge they need. ProjectManager is an award-winning PM software dedicated to helping businesses optimize their processes and report on them. Get started for free.

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What Is a Project Planner?

A project planner is any tool that helps you keep track of time, costs and tasks through the execution of a project. Through the years many types of project planners have been created such as notebooks, project management software and more recently mobile apps. We’ll run through different project planner tools so you can decide what’s right for you.

ProjectManager allows you to create an advanced project plan. That means creating and monitoring your plan with advanced task, cost and time tracking features. ProjectManager is not only an excellent project planner but also a fully-featured project management software.

Must-Have Project Planner Tools

There are many project planners available online. From notebooks to project management apps, you’ll find many choices. They all have their pros and cons depending on your needs. Here we have compiled the most important features that you should look for when choosing a project planner.

Gantt Charts

If you’re planning a larger, more complex project, the go-to tool is the Gantt chart. This project planner tool looks like a spreadsheet on one side and a project timeline on the other. Tasks are listed on the left and then populate the project timeline to the right. This gives you a full view of the whole project plan across its life cycle.

The pros of using a Gantt chart are that it visualizes projects big and small, simple or complex, in such a way that you can see the big picture. It is a great way to organize a lot of tasks, sub-tasks and milestones so you can manage your plan daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or even yearly. This all helps you better control team, time and resource management.

Gantt charts are the gold standard project planner, and one that you should be familiar with even if you don’t choose to use it. Here are some Gantt makers to get you started.

• Ganttpro: Because it’s focused on Gantt charts, they do it well, with timelines, workload and schedules all easily defined. However, there are no reporting features.
• Celoxis: Supports large and complicated projects, even allowing you to link tasks from different projects. But it’s enterprise software and hard to learn how to use well.
• Trello: Trello doesn’t offer Gantt charts, but it’s possible to turn your Trello project into a Gantt chart using ProjectManager

Task Lists

This is also called a to-do list. It’s a way to collect all the work you have to do in a single place. They’re a great way to manage your tasks, whether they be daily, weekly or even monthly tasks. It’s easy and efficient. You can even break your tasks into sub-tasks to better organize them.

The list-style project planner could be offline like a notebook, but there are a lot of software tools that add efficiencies by putting your task list online. You can easily edit, filter and add tags to prioritize your work. Some lists even allow you to share with others to work better together. But best of all, a task list makes sure nothing falls through the cracks.

However, a task list is best when you’re not dealing with a whole project’s worth of work. Imagine opening up your task list and seeing an endless scroll? While some task lists give you features to prioritize, most are limited in how much you can structure them. This can make them confusing. Then there’s the fact that you want to integrate with your calendar or other tools, which might not be possible, leaving you jumping back and forth from one app to another.

Here are some task list programs that can help you plan your project include:

• Todoist: Window-based task management software, which is used for small personal task lists to larger business-oriented work.
• Google Keep: More a note-taking service, but a great place to collect your tasks and it’s Google, so it works with its other apps.

Project Calendars

Most of us have used a calendar at some point in our lives, we know they’re a time-tracking tool. But only a few know that project calendars are also an effective project planning tool. They allow you to keep track of all your project’s deadlines in one place, set goals and promote transparency.

Luckily you don’t need to buy a physical calendar anymore as there are many project planner apps equipped with project calendars. However, most of them are limited if you need robust project planner software for complex projects.

Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are useful for many disciplines. When it comes to project planning, Excel and other spreadsheet tools can be used to create basic charts, and task lists. This allows you to use them as a simple project planner.

However, there are many issues when sharing files, collaborating with your team and just communicating with them if you’re just using Excel as a project planner. That’s why alternatives such as Google sheets have been developed over time, but they’re not nearly as powerful as dedicated project planner software or app.

Kanban Boards

Kanban boards are a planning tool that helps project managers visualize workflow in the form of cards and columns. The kanban cards represent tasks and are stacked underneath columns that stand for the different stages in the production cycle. For example, a card might assign a task like fixing a bug in a software project. The columns would be to do, doing, test, done. The card moves from one to another as the team member assigned completes the work.

The advantage of using kanban is that it helps teams know what needs to be done and when, while giving managers a view into the process so they can track and reallocate resources as necessary to keep the work moving forward smoothly. It balances resources to capacity while improving that process regularly. This reduces waste as well as time wasted, efficiencies are increased and productivity improves.

Kanban boards are a nifty tool and can be a valuable feature in your project planning. Here are some kanban software options to try.

• Microsoft Planner: Microsoft Planner serves as a super to-do list app. It makes use of task cards in a kanban board interface.
• Trello: Created for collaborative teams, giving them boards, lists and more to keep their work well-organized and flexible, while prioritizing tasks.
• Kanbanery: A kanban tool that offers templates to get you started or customized board. Cards have multiple ways to note your progress as well as room for comments.

Project Planner Notebook

It might seem a bit old-fashioned, in this day and age, to use a project planning tool that isn’t online. But collecting your plan in a notebook is a tried and true method for managing a project. They can run from simple to very complex, but really—what else do you need but a pad and a pen to get organized?

Certainly, a project planner notebook is going to work best with smaller projects that don’t involve a lot of team participation. They can be ideal for keeping track of your own work; say, the tasks you’re assigned in a larger project. A notebook is best as a tool for one person, for the obvious reason that the information within is only between those covers and therefore not easily shared.

If you’re looking to get organized and use a project planner to get your personal work in order or manage those tasks you’re assigned on the job, try one of these:

• Ink + Volt Hardcover Notebook: Classic notebook with ribbon to mark your place and a simple lined page format.
• Poketo Pocket Planner: With bold colors and features that help you map, organize and complete projects, this project planner is open-dated yearly, monthly and weekly.

Hybrid Style Project Planners

If you’ve seen aspects of task lists, kanban and Gantt charts that appeal to you, you’re not alone. There’s no single way to plan a project, and most projects aren’t executed by one person. Therefore, having multiple project planners is a no-brainer. That’s why you’ll find many software options that offer two or more of these tools in their feature set.

Free Project Planner Template

If you’re not ready to try a project planner software or a project planner app yet, we have another alternative for you. You can use our free project plan template to help you plan all your projects. Just fill in the blanks and customize it as you need. In addition, you can use our free Gantt chart template for Excel to keep track of your project schedule.

Free Project Planner App

Need a project planner on the go? Download our free project planner app for Android and iOS. Check your project plan using your mobile devices anywhere, anytime.

Never miss important updates, get visibility into workflows and communicate with your team in real time. View and manage task details, including assignees, due date, priority, subtasks, and more from the mobile app.

What Makes ProjectManager the Best Project Planner?

ProjectManager is an award-winning project planner that offers multiple views to manage your plan across an array of features all dedicated to making you work smarter. It’s collaborative to the core and has a single source of truth so everyone is on the same page when executing the project plan. Customize workflows and set task approvals to make sure your plans are executed correctly while freeing teams to focus on what matters. Let’s dive into the features that make ProjectManager the best project planner tool for projects of all sizes.

Task Lists

Not only can you create a project easily by adding tasks or importing your task list from a spreadsheet, but you can prioritize, tag to make search quicker, filter by assignee and more. Columns can be sorted how you want and dragged to where you want. Once you’ve created your project in the task list planner it shows up in all the other project views too.

Kanban Boards

One of those views is the drag-and-drop kanban board. That means you can move cards with your cursor as you progress through the project cycle. The board visualizes those steps in the workload or allows you to organize by category. The boards are auto-populated with to do, doing and done columns, but you can customize them as you want.

Clicking the card shows task details, such as descriptions, due dates and files, and comments can also be added to help teams collaborate. Teams can even add their progress to keep everyone updated. Filter the board by progress or due date to stay on top of your plan.

Gantt Charts

The interactive Gantt chart maker takes all the pain out of traditional Gantt making and adds features to give you more control over your project plan. The Gantt shows your tasks in a waterfall timeline, allowing you to assign those tasks costs, resources and then team members to complete them.

Tasks can be dependent, meaning one can start or end until another starts or ends. Not identifying these tasks can lead to bottlenecks later in the project. The Gantt allows you to link these task dependencies to make sure they’re never forgotten. Milestones can also be added to mark the end of one phase and the start of another or just note deadlines.

Watch the embedded video to get an overview of the product and how it can help you plan your project.

If you’re looking for a cloud-based project planner that lets you work how you want, then you want ProjectManager. It has multiple project views that all work together, while monitoring and tracking your progress so you can stay on schedule. See how it’s the preferred project management tool for tens of thousands of teams working for NASA, the Bank of America, Ralph Lauren and more by taking this free 30-day trial today.

The post Best Project Planner Tools: Apps, Software & Templates appeared first on ProjectManager.