Project progress spreadsheet vs. Project progress schedule

Experienced project managers use project progress spreadsheets and project progress schedules every day to make their projects more predictable. Do you know what the difference between these tools is? Maybe you are at the beginning of your project management career and do not know the difference. But learning to use project progress spreadsheets and project progress schedules will allow you to be more competent and skilled so your projects will get a higher probability of success. When you know definitions of both project progress spreadsheet and project progress schedule, you can better understand these project management tools.

Both tools provide an up-to-date status report on project work progress allowing project managers to measure effectiveness of time management and project management techniques that have been applied. However, project progress spreadsheet is a project management document that reflects actual progress of your project in terms of resources consumed and goals achieved. Project progress spreadsheet allows reviewing project tasks and tracking project activities by status, due dates, resource assignments, and costs. Usually this document is created by means of project management software that has a spreadsheet building function and supports user collaboration in order to allow permitted users to access and view project progress sheets.

Project progress schedule is a time management document that reflects actual process of the project in terms of working hours allocated to your project. Project progress schedule is used to plan and then track time-based characteristics of your project and can be a part of project progress plan. Project management software which features a time scheduling function is required to create, manage and share project progress schedules.

As you may see, project progress spreadsheets give you information for making estimations and assessing effectiveness of your project in terms of resources consumed and goals achieved while project progress schedules contain information about time-based characteristics of your project (like due dates, project progress timelines, time-frames, etc.) By using project progress spreadsheets, you can track project spending and resource allocations while project progress schedules will let you track project progress lines, schedules, calendars and project progress sheets of tasks.

Task Tree view and Task List view are two elements of the project progress dashboard for creating project trees and tracking project tasks. In VIP Task Manager, each task has "Status" field that shows progress per task. In Task List view you can review progress per task as well as total project progress bar – the software automatically sums up "Status" fields of all tasks. Task Tree view will help you create project progress spreadsheets. Task List view will help you track and report your project progress sheets. Task Tree view also allows developing project progress graphs (charts and diagrams) by using Charts Panel.

Scheduler view will help you develop calendars and project progress schedules. This project scheduling tool allows creating and tracking project progress timelines.