Good teamwork is the base of any successful project. The key to effective teamwork is the engagement of the project manager. The fact that many managers still don’t track even a single performance indicator with their team members is quite surprising.
Considering that the effectiveness of a team member’s performance is directly correlated to the project’s success, managers need to track metrics that will help them improve that performance. Collecting and measuring data might seem like a tedious job but it is essential if you want to make it work.
Why You Need Team Members Performance Tracking?
You might be hesitant at first about measuring team performance and you are not the only one. The devastating revelation is that some project managers find that performance measurement is a waste of their time.
Such a discouraging attitude mostly comes from not being aware of the importance of metrics. If the managers disregard the metrics in the team’s performance, the team members won’t be able to see how tracking their performance can improve their productivity.
So, let’s take a look at some of the reasons which support the relevancy of team member performance tracking:
- Improve productivity by assigning appropriate roles – Through performance tracking, you’ll find out who likes to do what and which role fits them best and appoint them appropriately.
- Create a transparent work environment – Transparency between the team members will support better communication, collaboration, and inspire the employees for improvement.
- Identify the slackers – Not everyone shows the same effort and commitment and knowing who works more and who less will help you to take appropriate actions and improve the project’s performance.
- Improve overall profitability and productivity – When you are aware of current profitability and productivity you’ll be able to increase it.
Hopefully, these benefits paint a clear picture of why tracking metrics is so important.
Even though there are many different metrics you can track, here are a few main ones that you should definitely keep an eye on.
Presence Metric
As much as people claim that they work better individually, such people can be detractors. Taking the work home or separating themselves from the rest of the group are usually signals for lack of commitment.
The essence of the team’s performance is working as a team and presence along with cooperation is what you should put an emphasis on.
While this can be a difficult metric to track, it is essential for improving productivity.
Your performance table should include the presence metric and you should keep track of it daily.
Cost-Efficiency Metric
The Cost Performance Index (CPI) or the cost-efficiency metric will determine the relation between earned value and the actual cost.
Gregory Perry, a project manager for content localization at PickWriters recently talked about the importance of measuring CPI. “This metric is valuable because it will reduce your financial risks and highlight any irregularities in the team’s performance. Meaning, that you’ll be able to spot when some team members are going over the budget for their portion of the project,” explains Gregory.
The way to determine this metric is to simply compare the value of performed work the cost of accomplishing that work.
Commitment Metric
Commitment and productivity go hand in hand. There is no doubt about it. So, if you want to increase your team’s productivity on a certain project, you need to keep track of their commitment.
The best way to do that is to focus on their hourly commitment. The amount of time they spend working on the project will show their commitment.
If you work with a remote team, you can use time trackers. They are safe and realistic indicators of how much time each team member invests in the project.
The Quality of Work Metric
Along with the commitment comes the quality of work. These two metrics are intertwined and correlated.
Someone can spend hours and hours working on their part of the project but if their work lacks quality it won’t improve productivity nor profitability of the project.
In order to track the work quality metric, you need to have some knowledge of each team member’s assignment.
By talking with them about their progress and checking on their work, you’ll be able to see whether they need to improve their work quality or is it satisfactory.
This doesn’t mean that you should stand over their head and watch over their every move. All you need to do is to spear a few minutes to check what they are doing and more importantly how they are doing it.
Requirements Metric
Whether your team members are meeting their requirements or not is a notable success factor when it comes to project management.
During the project’s progress, the product alone will help you determine if the employees are meeting the set requirements.
Test the product and check if it’s meeting the functional and non-functional requirements. The design of the product or actions which need to be taken fall under functional requirements while the product’s qualities such as usability are the non-functional ones.
Considering that each team member has its part in the project after you measure the requirement metric you’ll know which requirement isn’t fulfilled, that is which team member needs to improve its work.
Employee Satisfaction Metric
Satisfied employees will work harder than unsatisfied ones. Why is that? Well, they’ll certainly give their best to keep the job they love in the environment where they feel content.
Depending on the degree on which the employee is satisfied with their position or workload, their performance will be better or worse.
To calculate the Employee Satisfaction Index (ESI) you need to create a survey and let your employees fill it out.
Then, to get the Employee Satisfaction Index in percentage divide the total point score by Total questions and multiple by a 100.
ESI (%) = (Total point score/Total questions) x 100
Conclusion
Every part of the project from sales to marketing depends on how your team performs its tasks. Even the best leaders can succeed on their own but they need a good team to achieve project success. The key to a good team is measuring their work and motivating them for improvement.
Measuring the team’s performance through these metrics will help you spot the weak points and handle them on time. Not only will you improve the overall productivity but you’ll also show the employee’s how commitment leads to a better team relationship and effective team performance.
