Computer software packages are intended to increase the speed and effectiveness of project monitoring. Monitoring can serve to maintain high morale on the project team as well as to alert team members to problems that will have to be solved. List them in the project Action Plan - what is being done, when, planned level of resource usage for each task, work package, and work unit in the project.
First task is to examine the project plans in order to extract performance, time and cost goals.
Monitoring should concentrate primarily on measuring various facets of output rather than intensity of activity. Given all this, performance criteria, standards, and data collection procedures must be established for each of the factors to be measured. These goals should relate in some fashion to each of the different levels of detail. Data must be identified that measure achievement against these goals, and mechanisms designed that gather and store such data. Monitoring can be useful to motivate team members, and alert team members of potential problems.