20 Important Project KPIs Every Project Manager Must Track Regularly

Important Project KPIs Every Project Manager Must Track

What is KPI?

Key performance indicator (KPI) is a measurable value that indicate how well an individual, department or organization or an entity is achieving its important business objectives or goals.

KPIs can be of different types, applicable to different goals such as strategic goals or operational goals. There are different KPIs for different industries and even they differ from one company to another or one department to another.

Why KPIs Are Important?

Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) is very important for a defined period of a project for a project as well as for an individual, department or organization. Tracking KPI numbers tells you whether you are making progress or not by how much. Without KPI you wouldn’t know whether you are progressing towards your goals or not. Knowing KPIs numbers, you can correct the course and align your efforts to meet the goal.

How to Identify & Define KPIs?

There are certain thumb rule to identify and defining KPIs. Let’s look at those.

1. KPI should be clearly linked to important goals which are crucial for the organization/department
2. Tracking KPI should clearly answer whether an individual/department/organization is on right track or not
3. KPIs should be transparent to those individual, department; those should help them learn and improve
4. Selected KPI should be controllable – meaning, it should not have elements which are beyond control of individual or department or orgnization; e.g. just to make the point – rainfall, economy growth rate, etc
5. KPI should be such that it should make people accountable for the result – which can be qualitative or quantitative in nature
6. For each KPI, organization should have target level or number so that the performance of an individual or department can be tracked against it.

KPIs in Project Management World

Let’s look at KPI in project management context used to meet project goals.

The KPI in project management context can be look at as

Key: Represents the important aspect that if it is achieved, can deliver project successfully or otherwise.

Performance: Represents the trend for set of figures or statistics of important project aspects that can be measured, managed/controlled during the lifecycle of a project

Indicator: Represents metric of current state or expected state of important aspect of project

There are many KPIs for tracking project performance but those are typically club them in following categories

• Project Schedule KPIs
• Project Budget KPIs
• Project Quality KPIs
• Effectiveness KPIs (Combination of above three)

Let’s list down some of the KPIs applicable in each of these categories that every project manager should track regularly.

Project Schedule KPIs

1. Schedule Performance Index (SPI)
2. Schedule Variance (SV) Project KPI
3. Planned Hours vs Actual Hours
4. Planned Duration Vs Actual Duration
5. Achieved Milestones vs Overdue Milestones
6. Overdue Tasks
7. Percentage of Schedule/Tasks Complete

Project Financial KPIs

1. Cost Variance (CV) Project KPI
2. Profit Margin (%) Project KPI
3. Cost Performance Index (CPI)
4. Planned Value of a Project (PV)
5. Actual Cost of a Project (AC)

Project Quality KPIs

1. Number of Incidents Reported
2. Number of Unresolved Incidents
3. Number of Customer Issues
4. Number of Unresolved Customer Issues

Project Effectiveness KPIs (Combination of above three)

1. Earned Value of a Project(EV)
2. Resource Utilization
3. Planned Hours vs Actual Hours of a Project
4. Planned Hours vs Billable Hours of a Project
5. Percentage of Used Budget of Allocated Budget

In next post we will see how one can set up processes and systems to identify as well as track these KPIs on a regular basis, and know which all kpis for project manager can be defined and tracked.

Looking for a project management software, we have compiled a list of best project management software tools.

Additional readings about project management, leadership

• Case Study: What Happens When Project Team Has Dual Reporting
• Avoid These 10 Most Common Mistakes That Leads to Project Failure
• Back2Basics: Ultimate Project Management Guide: Project Planning
• 8 Reasons to Decide Whether Your Organization Needs Project Management Office
• Compare the best project management software 
• All in one project management software

Your life can be become easier with the right project management system. ZilicusPM is the right PM tool for you and your team. Get started now.

Do you know ZilicusPM project management software offers comprehensive project planning, project tracking, project collaboration capabilities such as

• Gantt Chart
• Time Tracking
• Budgeting and Cost Management
• Resource Planning and Management
• Issue Tracking
• Risk Management
• Change Management
• Meeting Management
• Stakeholder Management
• Project Portfolio Management
• Project Reporting
• Document Management to help you manage and deliver projects better?

About Zilicus

Zilicus offers the best project portfolio management tool ZilicusPM, with robust project management tools capabilities and easy ways to track project management KPI,

Know more about project portfolio management, Gantt chart, best project management tool, project management office, project management tips, project planning guide, project risk management, project scope management, effective project management, project manager guides and know more about Project Portfolio Management Software, Project Management Software Guide.