Effective project management depends on your ability to track and measure performance. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the secret weapon for project managers, helping them identify bottlenecks, monitor progress and drive success.

Compare Top Project Management Software Leaders

Article Roadmap

• What Are Project KPIs?
• Top 5 Project Management KPIs to Watch
• Tips for Using KPIs Effectively
• Next Steps

In this article, we unveil the top five project management KPIs to turbocharge your projects and steer them towards victory. Get ready to embrace data-driven decision making like never before!

What Are Project KPIs?

Project management Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measurable metrics that project managers use to evaluate the performance and progress of their projects. These KPIs provide valuable insights into various aspects of project execution, such as timelines, budget, resources, scope, quality and stakeholder satisfaction.

By tracking and analyzing these KPIs, project managers can make informed decisions, identify areas for improvement and mitigate risks, all of which promote successful project outcomes.

If projects are like voyages on the open sea — they sometimes feel as labor-intensive and chaotic! — then KPIs serve as a compass, guiding project managers towards effective management strategies and helping teams stay focused on project goals.

Project KPIs generally fall into four categories:

• Timeliness: These KPIs track how well your project and its dependencies adhere to their timelines, including deadlines, milestones and estimates. In addition to making sure things are done on time, you can also use these to identify where things are going off-course.
• Budget: These KPIs give you insight into your project’s finances. Are you staying within your budget, or are costs putting you over?
• Quality: These KPIs measure how well your project progresses, in terms of both the quality of dependencies and deliverables as well as stakeholder and team member satisfaction.
• Effectiveness: These KPIs measure how well resources, like time, money and personnel, are allocated, helping identify what’s making or breaking your project’s success. Are you using what you have as effectively as you could be?

Why Use Project KPIs?

Carefully monitoring project KPIs and incorporating them into your strategy can help your team in many ways. Here are some benefits you can reap from making the most of your KPIs.

1. Measuring project progress: Project KPIs provide a quantifiable way to measure the progress of your project. By monitoring KPIs, project managers can assess if the project is on schedule, identify any delays and take necessary corrective actions to keep things on track.

2. Identifying project bottlenecks: KPIs help project managers pinpoint bottlenecks and understand the areas that are impacting project efficiency. By identifying these bottlenecks early on, project managers can address them promptly and avoid potential roadblocks down the line, especially as deadlines and milestones approach.

3. Making data-driven decisions: KPIs provide project managers with objective data to make informed decisions. Instead of relying on intuition or assumptions, project managers can use KPIs to analyze trends, assess risks and determine the best course of action for their projects.

4. Monitoring resource utilization: KPIs help project managers track resource allocation and utilization. This allows them to identify if resources are being effectively utilized, identify any potential resource constraints and make adjustments as necessary.

5. Enhancing stakeholder communication: KPIs provide project managers with concrete data to communicate project progress and performance to stakeholders. By providing transparent and accurate information, project managers can build trust, manage expectations and ensure they’re in alignment with stakeholders’ objectives.

Compare Top Project Management Software Leaders

The Top 5 Project Management KPIs

There are many KPIs you can consider, from the more broad performance metrics to the extremely granular. The best KPIs to track for your team can vary depending on the unique needs of your organization and projects. But some KPIs are crucial for every project manager to track, and can benefit any team.

Here’s our list of the top five project KPIs to watch.

1. Schedule Performance

Schedule performance measures the timeliness and efficiency of project execution in terms of the planned schedule. It evaluates how well you adhere to the predetermined timeline and meet scheduled milestones and deadlines.

This KPI is typically calculated by comparing the actual progress against the planned schedule. The key metric used in this KPI is the Schedule Performance Index (SPI), which compares the earned value (EV) of completed work to the planned value (PV). An SPI value greater than one indicates that the project is ahead of schedule, while a value less than one indicates delays.

By monitoring the schedule performance KPI, project managers can identify potential delays, adjust project plans, allocate resources appropriately and take proactive measures to bring the project back on track, ensuring timely completion.

2. Cost Performance

Cost performance assesses the effectiveness of project cost management and controls. It evaluates how well a project adheres to its planned budget and monitors cost variances.

The key metric commonly used in this KPI is the Cost Performance Index (CPI), which compares the earned value (EV) of completed work to the actual cost (AC) incurred. A CPI value greater than one indicates that the project is under budget, while a value less than one indicates cost overruns.

The cost performance KPI makes it more possible to assess the financial health of the project, identify potential cost overruns or savings, track budget utilization and make informed decisions to control project costs. By closely monitoring this KPI, project managers can take corrective actions to optimize resources, adjust project plans if necessary and ensure that the project remains within budget.

3. Productivity

The productivity project KPI measures the efficiency and effectiveness of a project team or individual in terms of accomplishing project tasks and delivering desired outcomes. It typically assesses the output generated from resources like time, effort, and costs invested in the project.

More granular productivity KPIs could include metrics like the number of tasks completed, work hours spent, deliverables produced or value generated. By monitoring productivity KPIs, project managers can evaluate the team’s performance, identify improvement areas and allocate resources more effectively.

4. Resource Allocation

Resource allocation measures the effectiveness and efficiency of how resources, such as personnel, equipment or funds, are allocated and utilized throughout a project. Tracking this KPI helps project managers evaluate whether resources are being distributed optimally and aligned with project needs, assessing factors like resource availability, allocation accuracy, utilization rates and alignment with project priorities.

By paying attention to how resources are utilized, project managers can identify areas of overallocation or underutilization, ensure resources are deployed appropriately, and mitigate risks associated with resource shortages or bottlenecks. Ultimately, this KPI aims to ensure that resources are allocated in a manner that maximizes project efficiency and success.

5. Stakeholder Satisfaction

Stakeholder satisfaction measures how happy project stakeholders are with the project and its deliverables. This might include clients, team members, end-users, and any other individuals or groups impacted by the project.

This KPI evaluates how well your project meets stakeholder expectations as far as delivering value and addressing their needs and requirements. You can assess stakeholder satisfaction through surveys, interviews or other feedback collection methods.

Monitoring stakeholder satisfaction during and after project completion allows project managers to proactively manage stakeholders’ perceptions, build strong relationships and increase the probability of project success.

Compare Top Project Management Software Leaders

Tips for Using KPIs Effectively

Project KPIs are only as good as the strategies you use to monitor and incorporate them. Here are some tips for creating and using your KPIs effectively.

1. Make them clear and focused. Your KPIs should be S.M.A.R.T. — Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.

2. Pick them with purpose. Just because you can track it doesn’t mean you should. Narrow down the KPIs you track to the most essential and informative metrics — the ones that will help you the most with what you’re trying to achieve. Everything you measure should provide some kind of value. Otherwise, you’re wasting precious time and resources tracking what you don’t need.

3. Make them goal-oriented. Whether you’re working with historical information from past projects, or setting out on a whole new venture, having a clear goal in mind can help you shape your project management strategy, including what KPIs you track. This will provide a clearer and more objective idea of what success or effectiveness looks like.

How Project Management Software Can Help

If the process of tracking — let alone actually using — your KPIs sounds overwhelming, you’re in luck. With robust automations and reporting tools, the right project management software can take a lot of the burden off of your shoulders, structuring your data in ways you can analyze and utilize.

Here are just a few ways project management software can help.

Centralized Data Management

The software allows project managers to store KPI data in a centralized database, making it easy to track and access KPIs in real time. This eliminates the need for manual data collection and helps keep all team members and stakeholders up to date.

Dashboards in Wrike, for example, provide a 360-degree view of your projects, helping you get full visibility and insight into every stage.

Automated Data Visualization

Software can generate informative visualizations, such as charts, graphs and dashboards, to present KPI data in a clear and easily understandable format. This enables project managers to quickly identify trends, patterns and potential issues.

Compare Top Project Management Software Leaders

Real-Time Monitoring

Most project management platforms can provide real-time updates on KPIs, ensuring project managers have instant access to the most up-to-date information. This allows for timely decision-making and proactive intervention when needed.

ClickUp’s monitoring tools give you real-time, comprehensive insight into workloads at both the team and individual levels, as well as how each project dependency is progressing.

Alerts and Notifications

You can configure your PM software to send automated alerts and notifications when KPIs deviate from desired thresholds. This helps keep project managers aware of any potential risks or issues, and makes it possible to take immediate action.

Solutions like Asana provide configurable in-app notifications as well as alerts through related channels like email. Interactive task design makes it easy to keep assignees accountable and ensure team members are up to date.

Forecasting and Predictive Analytics

The software can store historical KPI data, allowing project managers to perform retrospective analysis and identify trends, patterns and performance benchmarks. Historical data can also be leveraged to forecast future trends and needs, and formulate more effective project strategies.

Compare Top Project Management Software Leaders

Next Steps

Using project management KPIs effectively can provide a strategic, structured approach to managing projects, ensuring their successful completion. When you monitor the right KPIs, you always know where your projects stand, preparing you to tackle each stage of the lifecycle with confidence.

Remember, project management isn’t one-size-fits-all, and adapting to the specific needs of each project is crucial. If you need more help managing your projects, you might want to consider adopting project management software for your business. Check out our free comparison report to see how industry-leading products in PM stack up.

So, how do you assess project success? Do you think using project management KPIs can make a difference for your business? Let us know in the comments!