Lots of overtime
One early sign a project is slipping its schedule is teams working a lot of overtime. This is a particularly important indicator because assigning or encouraging overtime is the fastest fix the project manager has, as well as the one that attracts the least attention.

Generally speaking, a project running according to schedule should have little or no overtime. In fact, Standish Group's Jim Johnson points out that the agile development process positively discourages overtime.

And as AtTask's Scott Johnson jokingly observes, "One sign the project is in trouble is that employee health goes down for everyone on the project." It's the result, he says, of too much overtime leading to too much caffeine, too many late nights and too much junk food.

Diversion of resources
Another sign of trouble is having resources, usually people, pulled off the project to work on something else. This can be anything from a panic response to another project gone sour to simple bits of "oh-by-the-way" work.

The problem is that, if you've budgeted your project properly, these diversions are cumulative. A few hours stolen here and there don't seem like much, but they can quickly add up. "That's going to cascade down to the things [the project team] is supposed to be doing," Scott Johnson warns. As a result, it's important to keep precise track of the people and money being shuffled to other projects.

Ratios trouble
Ratios are a standard financial management metric, but they are only beginning to appear in IT project management. According to Scott Johnson, a couple of key metrics for project management are the cost ratio and schedule ratio.

@Task software includes ratios that compare the budgeted time and money versus the time and money actually spent. "They allow you to show in a ratio where you should have been on cost and schedule versus where you are running to date," he says. "In a two-year project, you can know by week two that something is eating up costs or labour. It lets you know where you are versus where you think you should have been."

Metrics in general are vital to keeping projects on course. "In the absence of [clear metrics] you're relying on communication from project managers and others," warns Kapur. "That gets you in trouble because you tend to find out late that there's a problem." Milestones aren't met
"Small, discrete and often" are the guidelines for the milestones for a successful project.