Work in progress management

The definition: a piece of work that has been started, and it is not yet finished, but it has already incurred a capital investment from the company. It is a very important organizational process as it stands for controlling such tasks to make sure they will be delivered and completed on-time, on-quality and on-budget. That process includes the following conceptions and practices:

• Controlling– we need to control definition of when, how and what we are going to complete (work scope) to avoid its creeping, as well as what results we require to obtain at the end of these efforts;
• Work-in-progress tracking – as far as company has invested certain business resources into completion of this task, these resources are no longer available as raw materials or free funds, while not yet fully transferred into sellable product or useful result, so that the amount of these  resources and attempts on their processing should be accurately controlled;

• Calculation – while the activity is still in progress it should be controlled for efficiency which the allocated funds and resources are used with. This practice refers to ongoing calculation of costs, time and other metrics making sure that the work is going towards completion according to the plan, and no reserves should be additionally engaged;
• Meetings – these are meetings where the work stakeholders attend to consider information from on-site and administrative reports, to clarify and discuss work’s current status, and to resolve possible problems;

• Work-in-progress vs. work-in-process:
  • “Work-in-process” as a term can be used to define the company’s products which are in its inventory but are incomplete yet, so that they are held in inventory until they get completed and ready for sale or use;
  • Work-in-progress sometimes is used as a synonym; however it is rather referred to long-term capital investments, such as construction of buildings;
• Work-in-progress report template – this tool can be used to collect and process necessary data pieces to control essential indicators characterizing the status of work-in-progress. Such a report can be stored in the company’s archives to be applied every time a typical or recurring project occurs.

Work in progress tracking software:

VIP Task Manager is client-server software that can be used for planning and controlling endeavors of a company. It provides you with three sharable interface modes – Task Tree to plan and supervise your projects and business activities in a categorized manner; Task List which is like a spreadsheet (so it can be used like an Excel template) where you can list your working tasks and calculate different work-related matters such as costs (special formulas in custom fields), and Calendar for displaying time-related matters.