As a project manager, understanding project metrics is important because they affect project outcomes. Project metrics can be grouped into two areas. Those are productivity metrics and quality metrics. Productivity metrics include project milestones, project tasks, duration, and projections. Quality metrics include the number of changes, issues, and cost variance. Project management tools like Asana, Spreadsheets, and JIRA help you to track and measure project progress effectively and efficiently.
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What Are the Project Metrics?
Data is the collection of facts that can be used to make decisions. Every project has many types of data. Therefore, you can use project data to determine progress and efficiency. However, keep that in mind💡 Project data varies from project to project.
As a project manager, you should start to figure out how the project data impact the team’s daily activities and throughout the project phases success of the project. That is done by using various types of project metrics.
A metric is a quantitative analysis that can help to track and assess a project objective. On the other hand, metrics are grounded on selected goals.
As a project manager, you can categorize project metrics into areas. Those are,
- Productivity metrics
- Quality metrics
Productivity Metrics
Productivity metrics are also crucial metrics in managing a project. With productivity metrics, you can track project effectiveness and efficiency of your project. As well as productivity usually measures the progress and output of the project.
Productivity metrics include metrics like,
- Project Milestone
- Project Tasks
- Projections
- Duration
Quality Metrics
Quality metrics are also crucial metrics in managing a project. Quality metrics help to achieve acceptable outcomes for the project.
Quality metrics include metrics like,
- The Number of Changes
- Issues
- Cost Variance
Important💡 Every project has a start date and end date. As a project manager during this time, you can identify three prime flows of your project as follows.
According to the picture, when achieving acceptable outcomes for your project, the project’s progress must be managed perfectly according to the project’s inputs. So as a project manager, you can use project metrics to measure the overall process of your project. By using project metrics, you can ensure project success without any problems.
What Are Examples of Project Metrics?
Project metrics can be categorized into two areas. Those are productivity metrics and quality metrics. According to that, the following are examples of productivity metrics in a project.
# Example 01
- Project Milestones
The project milestones are a crucial point in any project schedule that demonstrates project progress and typically shows the completion of the project deliverable or phase. As a project manager, you can use tools like Gantt charts or Smartsheet to track and visualize the project milestones.
# Example 02
- Project Tasks
The project tasks are activities of the project. Those are crucial because the project’s tasks should be accomplished within the estimated time by the project managers. Therefore, they should empower their team members to achieve the project tasks. As such, project managers can use tools like Asana.
However, project tasks and milestones are crucial productivity metrics in any project. They can help to stay within project constraints. A milestone is created by a set of activities. On the other hand, a milestone may be the completion of one main deliverable or phase of the project. Therefore, they are bound together for the success of a project.
# Example 03
- Projection
Projection is another crucial productivity metric of any project. As a project manager, you can use this metric to analyze current project information to predict future outcomes. Through that, you can get various actions according to the predictions.
As a project manager, you can use tools like Spreadsheets to analyze current productivity data and get projections about future productivity trends.
# Example 4
- Duration
Duration is also a crucial productivity metric in any project. It includes the total time to complete a project from start to end. Duration can be used for the project tasks. And it can be broken down into hours, days, weeks, months, and years by the project managers.
As a project manager, you can use tools like JIRA and Asana to monitor the duration of a project alongside certain milestones.
The following are examples of quality metrics in a project.
# Example 01
- Cost variance
The cost metric is a crucial quality metric of the project. It demonstrates the difference between the actual cost and the estimated cost. Simply put, cost variance compares what you plan to spend vs what you actually spend.
As a project manager, you can use tools like JIRA, Workfront to track and measure activities and give understandable results. By using these tools to track project activities, you can stay within project constraints.
# Example 02
- Issues
Issues are crucial metrics when managing a project. Project issues are real problems that may arise when performing project activities.
As a project manager, you can use tools like Workfront or JIRA to track project issues and generate project reports. It will help you understand your team’s ability to resolve them quickly.
# Example 03
- Number of changes
The number of changes is another crucial metric in a project. Changes show irrelevant things from the initial requirements of the project. As a project manager, you can use tools like Spreadsheet or Microsoft Excel to measure the number of changes in your project.
Why Are Metrics Important in a Project?
Project metrics are important when managing a project. As a project manager, you can use various project metrics to get acceptable outcomes for your project. The following are the importance of the project metrics.
- To staying within project constraints
Project constraints mean the scope, budget, and time of the project. Understanding project constraints is important because they affect project performance. As such, you should use project metrics to manage them. Then you can stay within project constraints and enhance the project’s effectiveness and efficiency.
- To staying within project constraints
With project metrics, you can analyze your project’s current information while you can predict future outcomes in your project. That is crucial because you can get valuable information about the project. It also helps your project succeed.
- Analyzing the health of the project
As a project manager, you can analyze the project’s overall processes through metrics. It will help you and your project teams to stay within project constraints.
- Stay within the project budget
With metrics, you can analyze and control project budget. It will help you to stay within project constraints. As well as you can continuity project quality of your project.
- Identifying project issues
As a project manager, you can identify project issues by using project metrics. When issues arise, it will affect the ability to complete a task. A task is crucial because it can impact the project milestones. When a project milestone is delayed, it will negatively impact project resources, budget, and schedule.
Conclusions
Project metrics are crucial when managing a project. It can group into two areas those are quantitative metrics and quality metrics. Project management tools like Asana, JIRA, and Workfront track project activities and provide understandable results. As such, you can measure the overall health of your project.
