Any project manager works with four components: cost, schedule, time and quality. A bit more challenging goal is to enchance business organization and resource distribution. The majority of undertakings utilize such elements as labour, money, and tools to deliver something of value and meet objectives. To work with projects successfully one need to handle quite a few things. A few of them are listed in the next paragraph:

- Goal setting and reviewing progress.

- Handling negative possibilities. The majority of projects feature a this or that level of risk.

- Assigning and supervising resources.

- Determining the products of the project.

- Managing what is happening: assigning tasks, controlling execution.

- Making sure that the products of the tasks are up to standard.

- Dealing with change. Change is constant. The majority of tasks occur in time, so the element of dynamics has to be properly considered.

- Speaking with people doing the project.

To handle these issues you can employ pencil and a notepad or probably MS EXCEL. But you get quite a few benefits if you choose to employ project tracking software:

- It makes scheduling easy. Duration can be calculated by the program depending on the workload information. Each worker can have their own calendar. It also simplifies tracking progress on various tasks.

- Coordinating a few projects with various prerequisites. Executives can use productivity tracking software to facilitate portfolio of projects analysis.

- Critical path becomes nicely observable. The critical path is made of jobs that directly influence the actual duration of the project. If a task on the critical path takes more time than the manager planned, the whole timing of the project will be altered. Whereas other activities that are not on the critical path can last longer or shorter and not change the timing of other activities in this project.

- Disseminating data among the team members. Complex projects require communication. Groupware productivity tracking software enables everybody to be on the same page every time.

Should you always choose task tracking software?

Similar to any other tool, project tracking software has its limitation. The most suitable time to use such programs is when you work on a few large projects. Small projects can be supervised using MS Excel which allows you to save on overhead costs of managing fairy complicated software.