Affinity Software |
|||
|
Project tracking doesn't have to be complex or time consuming. Here, free for you to use for whatever you like, is a simple spreadsheet that can be used to track progress Vs estimates. It is heavily influenced by an article you can find over here. The spreadsheet To use it enter your list of tasks in the first column. If youve got more than one person involved you will want to add another column containing the name of the person responsible for that task. We typically try not to involve multiple people in implementing a project unless absolutely necessary which is why we dont already have a 'person' column. For each task estimate the number of hours you think it will take. Note that thats hours and not days or weeks. If you're thinking in terms of anything bigger than hours you have precisely 0 chance of being at all accurate. Copy the original estimate column into the current estimate column. Note that the value also appears in the time remaining column. When you do work on this project add the date etc to the 'done detail' sheet. Also add the hours work to the value in the hours done column on the first sheet. Notice that the value in time remaining is reduced accordingly. Using this simple system youll always know how many hours you've done on each task and how many are remaining. Ah, but what about when you run over schedule? If you get 2 hours through a 4 hour task and realize that there is actually 3 hours remaining you simply raise your current estimate from 4 to 5 hours. Hours remaining will then go from 2 to 3. In this way you're also able to track the actual number of hours worked Vs your estimates from the beginning of the project which should hopefully let you improve your estimating in future. One final thing. On the first sheet in the cell A20 is your rate. This is really only applicable to those of you who charge themselves out by the hour. If you do set it to your rate. If not set it to 0, 1, 100000 or whatever makes you happy. |
||