Learning how to keep projects on track is one of the biggest project management struggles that is also a core essence of every project management effort in the end.
Industry stats say that 34% of all projects are completed on time and budget.
It doesn't have to be this way.
This high failure rate makes a project manager's job one of the most difficult in any industry. Most of the failed projects follow these 6 stages:
- Enthusiasm
- Disillusionment
- Panic and hysteria
- Hunt for the guilty
- Punishment of the innocent
- Reward for the uninvolved
To prevent a project from spiraling out of control, a project manager has to constantly monitor project progress, watch out for potential problems, and take corrective measures.
Planning a new project may take anywhere between a few days to a few weeks. But keeping a project on the right track takes at least five times more. This means project managers spend most of their time making sure everything's going right. This is how they do it.
Watching Out for Bottlenecks
The biggest hurdle to achieving more isn’t effort – it’s bottlenecks: resources that limit the output of the entire system.
For example, your marketing team might be able to prepare a thousand ad campaigns in a day, but if your creative team can only design a few landing pages, the number of campaigns you can launch is ultimately limited by the creative team.
If you don’t recognize the creative team as a bottleneck, backlogs will pile up. Departments clash, deadlines slip, and quality drops because creatives cut corners to keep up. That ripple effect hurts conversion rates and, in the end, undermines project success.
One way to ease the strain is to redeploy existing resources when a backlog grows too big. A marketer can help with copy, or a developer might step in if QA is overloaded with testing tasks.
But how do you know when help is needed?
By intentionally limiting work in progress (WIP).
Limiting tasks prevents pileups that lead to bottlenecks.
At first, it feels counterintuitive – after all, you want people busy, right? But too much simultaneous work creates chaos. Developers multitask, tackling bugs while waiting on QA. This overload snowballs, and soon QA is buried under partially finished work that can’t be released.
Think of competitive rowing.
The coxswain coordinates the rhythm of rowers so the boat moves smoothly. If one rower outpaces the rest, the boat slows down instead of speeding up. The same happens in projects: making one team ultra-efficient can bury other teams under excess work, documentation, or approvals.
Limiting WIP doesn’t magically boost total output because you’re still constrained by the bottleneck. What it does give you is:
Better lead times (from task start to completion).
Constructive frustration – when people run out of tasks, it’s a clear sign to streamline processes or justify more resources.
Improved quality – long lead times lead to higher defect rates. Research shows that a sixfold increase in average lead time can cause more than 30 times the defects. The culprit? Too much work-in-progress. Reduce it first, then limit it.
ActiveCollab makes this easier. You can track how many tasks sit in the In-Progress list and spot bottlenecks early.
The Workload report highlights when someone has far more tasks than everyone else – giving you a chance to reassign work or dig deeper into the issue.
Another way to prevent bottlenecks is to design the team with balance in mind. Start by calculating how many features you expect, how many each role can handle, and hire accordingly.
Say your project needs designers, developers, and testers. Designers complete 5 features per week, developers finish 3, and testers can check 10. To balance the flow, you’d need 6 designers, 15 developers, and 3 testers.
This setup minimizes bottlenecks, leaving you to monitor whether the output meets expectations.
Of course, digital projects are tricky to estimate – even defining what counts as a “feature” can be ambiguous.
Still, this pre-optimization gives you a strong baseline.
As work progresses, you’ll spot which teams under- or overperform and adjust resources where needed.
In software projects, beware of the mythical man-month: adding more developers to a delayed project can make it even later. That’s why resource management and allocation must be deliberate.
Sometimes, you simply can’t add resources. Developers skilled in legacy systems are scarce, or App Store approval times can’t be shortened.
In those cases, design the process around the bottleneck. If a senior developer must review every task and you only have one, they become the bottleneck.
The priority is to keep them busy at all times.
Idle juniors cost less than idle seniors – especially when seniors hold the keys to throughput.
Finally, remember that not all work items are the same size. A bottleneck can run dry if large tasks move too slowly into their queue. When they arrive all at once, the pipeline clogs again. Smart monitoring with right project tracking software helps you balance flow, prevent these jams, and keep your path to project success clear.
Controlling Quality
When faced with a lot of work, people tend to cut corners intentionally. But sometimes, the quality suffers without anyone noticing it.
For example, a developer may see 100+ console errors when they start working on an app and may subconsciously think “If no one cares about compiler warnings, it means sloppy work is tolerated and I can cut corners in order to get home by 5pm”. When faced with a decision to make something good or to meet the deadline as long as it compiles, they'll always choose the latter because that's all management cares about.
This hurts long-term projects the most (making it easy to call them complex projects eventually...). Overlooking one issue leads to overlooking more issues, which snowballs into a tech-debt ridden project that, the longer you work, the more it costs.
You probably heard about the mythical 10x developer who can accomplish 10 times as much as work as an average one. They do exist, but the chance of you having one on your team are next to nothing. If you have a someone who accomplishes way more than anyone else, better investigate. Chances are, you have a tech-debt loan shark.
How to spot tech-debt loan sharks?
They prefer to copy/paste than to spend time on DRY
As long as it works, how or why is irrelevant
They care more about finishing a task today than to make next week's task easier to finish
They don't care how their work affects the overall design
They don't write tests
They complain when there's no documentation but don't bother producing it
It's easy to lose focus on quality. Project managers spend most of their time thinking about budget and deadlines because they're the most visible and easy to quantify, analyze, and communicate. What gets measured gets done. Non-technical people don't get upset over spaghetti code like developers do - but missing a deadline or going over budget is another matter.
When quality takes a back seat, it hurts your position on a competitive market. In the past, building something took a lot of work so selling was easy. Today, it's the opposite. The market is oversaturated with low-quality work and the trend will become even steeper.
To make sure the quality is good, involve a client from start to finish. They have the largest stake and should approve each major task and decision. But if they care more about the bottom line (and pay accordingly), you don't have any obligations to care about quality. You can't have something fast, good, and cheap at the same time - you can only pick two.
Keep in mind that an app with documented and maintainable code costs 5 times less to develop further so you do have a financial incentive, only the reward is farther away.
Focusing too much on the quality can hurt you. Always do a quick cost/benefit analysis before you ask “can we make this better/faster/stronger”. If it takes a lot of work to make something perfect, but it doesn't make an impact, move on. There are only a finite number of things a team can do, so focus on those that matter the most.
Think of finishing a project like sweeping a floor.
You clean most of the dirt fairly quickly, but the last few specks of dust are impossible to remove. So you keep cleaning until you're left with an amount of grime you can live with, put the broom away, and get on with other chores.
Working With People
A project manager’s role is to follow the project plan closely and guide others on what to work on and when. When deadlines start to slip, it’s their job to step in, adjust priorities, and see what can be done.
Much of project and task management is really about managing people. But since you don’t usually have direct authority, you need to lead, inspire, and influence through other means.
Bad project managers often fall into this cycle:
- Ask everyone for status updates
- Get ignored
- Scramble to join the next project just to avoid being fired
Worse still, some make promises without proper project tracking. For example, a manager might ask a developer for a timeline, then assure the client it will be delivered sooner, only to complain when the deadline is missed. Others might not even consult the developer, promise unrealistic delivery dates, sign the contract, celebrate early – and then leave the team to figure out the impossible.
Another major pitfall is measuring success with the wrong metrics.
Take progress charts. Work often accelerates near the end, making the chart look like a hockey stick. Wanting a “healthier” curve, a manager may introduce incentives, like bonuses for closing tasks earlier. Suddenly, team members pester each other just to close tasks quickly. Productivity plummets, because everyone is chasing their own bonus. The chart looks slightly better, but the real cost is collaboration and quality.
The same issue arises when success is measured purely by schedule, quality, and features. You might ship on time, with zero bugs, and every promised feature, yet still end up with a mediocre product – because none of those features deliver real value.
In both cases, you get what you asked for, not what you needed. Counting irrelevant numbers and creating flawed incentives only encourages people to game the system. The result backfires.
For example, measuring a tester’s productivity by the number of bugs reported incentivizes them to log as many as possible – even trivial ones. This leads to endless debates with developers and wasted time. Measuring completed tasks is just as misleading. It ignores the contributions of people who help others be more productive. The true “10x developer” isn’t the one closing the most tasks, but the one who lifts the whole team’s output.
Research shows incentives rarely improve collaboration. They might work in sales, where individual performance drives results, but projects depend on collective effort. Rewarding individuals in a team setting is almost always unfair.
The better approach? Drop individual incentives. Focus instead on maintaining healthy levels of enthusiasm throughout the project and rewarding team effort.
Motivation ebbs and flows during a project. At kickoff, excitement is high. Then the first roadblock appears, and enthusiasm dips. Push through, and you’ll hit an even bigger challenge that makes the team question whether to continue.
That’s when your role is critical: motivate the team to keep going when doubts creep in. By understanding the natural “enthusiasm curve,” you can anticipate these moments and prepare strategies to keep morale steady.
Finally, remember the 90/90 rule in software development:
The first 90% of the code takes up the first 90% of the time. The final 10% takes up the other 90%.
Managing people effectively means balancing optimism with realism – and using project tracking to keep both the project plan and your team on course.
Staying on Top of Projects
The three most important questions you always need answers to are:
- Who’s stuck?
- Who’s too busy?
- Who’s idle?
There are multiple ways to get these answers.
You could schedule a status meeting, but meetings are generally inefficient. A “quick” one-hour meeting with six people eats up seven work-hours when you factor in context switching. If the only goal is to get updates, there are better approaches.
Daily standups are a common option. They’re short and focused, which helps when you don’t yet have a solid system. But they aren’t foolproof – people can easily skip a few days, and keeping them on track requires strict time policing, which can lower morale.
A more sustainable strategy is to encourage the team to update tasks as they work. It may feel like a chore, but it’s far less disruptive than pulling someone aside for answers. With consistent updates, you can monitor progress by reviewing the project’s activity stream instead of chasing reports or interrupting work.
The daily Scrum questions can all be answered directly inside ActiveCollab without the meeting::
- What did I accomplish yesterday? Check the activity stream.
- What will I do today? Review the Team Timeline or run the Tasks report.
What’s blocking me? Encourage @mentions in comments, instant messages, or direct conversations with the project manager.
Reports are a project manager’s best friend, but they depend heavily on quality input. A burndown chart looks simple, yet creating it requires accurate data entry. If estimates and time logs aren’t entered, the report becomes useless. This is where effective project tracking strategies come in – because garbage in still means garbage out.
The best way to ensure reliable reports is by enforcing defaults. For instance, bug reports must follow a standard format, or they won’t be accepted. Each task should include an estimate and a label before entering the backlog. A task without time logs can’t be marked complete. At first, you’ll need to check compliance, but soon the habit forms. If you resist the temptation to update tasks for your team and instead teach them to do it themselves, the entire workflow becomes more productive.
When the data is good, reports become powerful. With ActiveCollab’s project tracking software, you can answer key questions instantly:
- What’s overdue? Run the Tasks report.
- What’s coming up? Run the Tasks report.
- Who’s overloaded or idle? Check the Team Timeline.
- What’s someone working on now? Look in People > Activity.
- What’s new? Browse project or Global Activity.
- Who has too many assignments? Run the Workload report.
You can even run highly specific queries. For example: “Which bugs tied to feature X were reported by the client last month but remain unresolved?” With the Tasks report, you’ll find the answer and can even save it as a preset for quick future updates.
Beyond task activity, reports also help you track time and budget:
- How much of the budget is spent, and where? Use the Project Budget vs. Cost report.
- How much time has each person logged? Run the Time Tracking report.
- Are our estimates accurate? Compare with the Estimated vs. Tracked Time report.
Armed with this insight, you can adjust in real time. Break down tasks if they consistently take too long. If the budget is burning faster than expected, discuss adjustments with the client.
This is also why bringing clients into ActiveCollab matters. They can track progress themselves, reviewing exactly where time and money went. This level of transparency builds trust, strengthens relationships, and increases the chances they’ll want to work with you again.
What to Do When Life Happens
Things change. No matter how carefully you define the project scope or how detailed your project planning process is, something will eventually go off track. That’s when you need to revisit the original plan and talk with the client about updating the statement of work.
When unexpected changes threaten the project, you can either:
- Stay optimistic and push the team to meet the original deadline, or
- Be realistic and adjust the plan to fit new circumstances.
The key is understanding that every project plan will need adjustments as you move forward and uncover new details. Don’t get so attached to the plan that you resist changes or pivots. Each adjustment is an opportunity to make the plan stronger.
For example, you might plan to reach point Z in two months. But along the way, you’ll almost certainly pass through points A and B, and you may even land beyond Z. Nothing is set in stone. It’s perfectly fine to pivot, as long as you communicate openly with the client and secure their agreement.
That’s why building buffer zones into your project planning process is smart. These checkpoints give you time to reassess and refine the plan, often after research or once a high-fidelity design is ready.
Frequent milestones also help keep things on track, especially for large projects. Relying only on big, long-term milestones makes it harder to notice issues until it’s too late. Smaller milestones give you a chance to reflect, catch problems early, and adjust before risks escalate.
It’s common to reach the project’s midpoint and hear someone say the deadline can’t be met because of a long list of blockers. If your client is involved and uses your project management tool – like ActiveCollab – they’ll already be aware of the challenges, and you can face them together.
When requirements shift – whether deadlines, budgets, or features – there will be paperwork. You’ll need to agree on a course of action with the client and add an addendum to the statement of work.
How can you tell a deadline is in danger?
- The most obvious way is when a team member tells you or at least gives a warning.
- You can also spot issues by reviewing the timeline weekly. ActiveCollab’s Project Timeline report is one of the most reliable project tracking tools for this. It gives you a clear overview of all your projects, with late tasks marked in red and upcoming ones in orange. You can then comment directly on overdue tasks to ask for updates.
- Another option is running the Estimated vs. Tracked Time report to see which tasks take longer than expected. Similar insights are also available in the Tasks report and Team Timeline.
When evaluating deadlines, remember that the final project deadline isn’t what matters most. The only deadline that matters is the next one. Miss the design deadline, and the development deadline slips – which means the launch will too.
One helpful perspective is to treat deadlines like time-limited challenges. This mindset reduces stress and helps the team approach problems with a constructive attitude.
So, what can you do when you know the deadline won’t be met?
Move the deadline
Increase the budget and hire extra contractors
Reduce the project scope
Whatever option you choose, it needs to be negotiated with the client.
Sometimes clients change scope at the last minute while demanding the same timeline. If you clearly defined scope and documented terms during the project planning process, this becomes much easier to manage. A written trace – whether in emails or comments inside your project management tool – provides proof and makes negotiation smoother.
Scope creep can also come from your team. A motivated teammate may add extra features or polish beyond what was agreed upon. While the intention is good, the problem is that the original plan didn’t account for that extra effort. In the end, something more critical may be delayed. This is why disciplined use of project tracking tools and clear scope management are essential.
Conclusion – ActiveCollab as a go-to for keeping projects on track
Keeping projects on track is never about luck – it’s about having the right system in place.
ActiveCollab brings clarity and structure to every stage of work, making it the ultimate tool for managing complex workflows without unnecessary stress.
With features designed to support both your team and your clients, ActiveCollab ensures that everyone stays on the same page. From project planning and workload management to time tracking and reporting, you always have a clear view of what’s happening across the entire project. Bottlenecks are easier to spot, resources are easier to allocate, and deadlines are easier to meet.
Instead of relying on scattered updates, you get a single source of truth. Tasks, budgets, and communication all live in one place, so you don’t waste time chasing information. This transparency not only boosts collaboration within your team but also builds trust with clients, who can see progress and understand where their investment is going.
The best part? ActiveCollab adapts to the way your team works, whether you’re running multiple client projects, scaling fast, or dealing with shifting requirements. By combining planning, collaboration, and accountability into one workspace, it gives you the confidence that nothing will slip through the cracks.
In the end, project success comes down to control and visibility. With ActiveCollab, you’re not just managing tasks – you’re driving momentum, protecting focus, and guiding your team toward seamless project completion.