What’s Involved in Tracking?

Mostly, tracking is exactly what you think it is — finding out from those working on the project just where things stand and then entering the information in your Project file. What kind of information do you enter? Well, you enter details such as the actual start date, the actual finish date, and the actual duration of a task. You enter actual time that is worked by resources and actual costs that are incurred. Project uses the information you provide to adjust both the schedule and the project’s costs, and you can see the adjustments by using various views. If Project determines that you’re running late on a task, you see dependent tasks moved into the future. And, Project adjusts projected total costs using a combination of actual costs and remaining estimates.

You can read more about monitoring progress later in this chapter in the section “Viewing Progress.”