F1: M., researcher EUR
Often through agreed KPIs. But in new collaborations KPIs are difficult: they push you into a linear route, while collaboration is not linear. I prefer a “dynamic learning agenda” (DLA): identify barriers that stand between you and the shared goal and work on bridging them. Ideally you combine measurable KPIs with qualitative objectives. The most important thing is the conversation: not whether something is checked off, but why it was or wasn’t achieved—because that learning moves the collaboration forward.
F3: M., Digi
Monitoring progress is important, but it’s not happening as well as it should yet. I spend time calling people for updates, but it would be much easier if progress were quickly and clearly visible — both for reporting to the client and for keeping my own overview.
Measuring impact matters too, especially in a one-year project where you need to know whether you’re on track and where to adjust. And since we want to keep running this program with different topics, evaluating how we worked — how effective the process and outcomes were — is essential. The biggest value there is internal: learning how to improve. But it’s useful for the client as well.
F4: M., Digi-ICTU
Staying informed across work packages happened mainly during the full-day meetings, where each team gave an update. In between, there was little cross-package contact, and almost nothing was documented — notes stayed in people’s heads or on their own computers. With so much staff turnover, that’s a real problem. I always advocate for shared, accessible notes, and we had a shared Teams environment, but sharing notes still wasn’t the norm. When I asked for notes from a meeting I missed, the answer was often “I’ll just brief you” — while I knew they’d been typing along the whole time. Updates to the steering committee happened quarterly, with each work package submitting a short text on progress. That was essentially the only document where updates were consistently visible to everyone.
F5: A., PBA
Progress is monitored both quantitatively, through KPIs, and qualitatively — including internally, by assessing whether your own organisation is actually getting what it needs and whether there are any unintended consequences, like doors being opened or closed.
F6: A., Signalen - VNG
the roadmap is being built based on community input — municipalities filled in which functionalities they actually use, which helped prioritise what needs to be in the MVP for migration to be possible. That process also helps Amsterdam step outside their own way of working and see how others operate.
F7: L., PBA
Because she is working for small organizations, she does this, but she imagines in bigger organisations, there are specific partnership and programme managers that monitor progress and make strategic decisions based on this. She mentioned that as a facilitator, it is actually important to keep track of all the ‘private’ goals of the various partners. Even though a collaboration has in theory one goal that aligns with all partners, every partner is still going into the partnership wanting their own outcomes. If you’re not keeping track of what everyone’s getting out of it, then things can go wrong.
P1: H., researcher
The ones who manage a spreadsheet—and you see a lot of them in big departments with hundreds of small innovation projects. They keep a kind of scoreboard: who is doing what, how much time it costs, and then in that spreadsheet they try to prevent too many people from colliding with each other. And then you have the innovation manager who actually has a mandate—who is more managerial/leading. That person will take a different course: they will focus less on whether everything is administratively recorded on paper, and more on whether it leads to value and whether it’s actually adopted. What they need is a platform—a platform to get in touch with people and align. That’s talking, not just receiving information. So you need to meet regularly—physically or online—to establish: where are we? Then you can see progress and whether new opportunities are emerging. Core message: the best way to track progress is through direct, regular contact — not through administrative tracking systems.
P2: L., more F not really PM
We also work with impact mapping. We reason back from a goal — like accessible care — and ask: if we do these activities, what do we actually influence? Things like TRL increase or investor-readiness. We try to measure that, though we don’t do it for every project because it takes a lot of time and we track it all in Excel ourselves. Every quarter, per sector, we review where each project stands and how much capacity we have. That balance is sometimes tricky — once you’re deep in execution, it’s hard to let go, but if you can’t let go, you can’t pick up new things either.
P3: L., not really PM
We keep track of progress mainly through our meeting structure — a daily board five times a year, meetings with school directors and team leaders, fixed agendas that also serve as a reminder to check in on things. Grant accountability requirements also force you to monitor carefully. also interim of course. You also just want to know the progress. Or they have a question. we are organising company visits, and other communication varies per person — WhatsApp, Teams, calling, emailing — it can be all sorts of ways, really. We don’t have a fixed system for that with reports or colour codes or anything like that.
P5: S., PM RWS
We currently have more than 400 innovations in the portfolio. Every six months we ask people for an update to keep the overview current. We started with SharePoint and Excel, but we’re now building a much better application — partly because steering groups got really enthusiastic when they saw what you could do with it. They wanted it back every six months. The new application tracks things like: who submitted it, who is leading it, which partners are involved, what phase it’s in, which Rijkswaterstaat objectives it contributes to, cost-benefit analysis, and when it’s expected to move toward production. It’s primarily for internal use, which is also a deliberate choice. We work a lot with the private sector, and there’s intellectual property involved — companies don’t want everything about what they’re working on to be publicly visible. So at a higher abstraction level we might signal that we’re working on many types of sustainable asphalt, but the 40 specific variants underneath — that stays internal.
P6: M., PM Novum
The PM monitors progress through defined project phases in which projects are actively tracked, supplemented by automatic notifications when a phase runs on too long or when no new work has been scheduled under a project for an extended period. Team members provide a brief monthly status update on where they stand, potential bottlenecks, and anything noteworthy. In addition, he reviews all ongoing projects together with the team in a three-weekly portfolio meeting. An explicitly mentioned wish relates to trend research. This is currently included in the portfolio, but not yet in a way he is satisfied with. They have discovered that trend research also follows a phased approach. He wants to incorporate the phasing of this trend research into his portfolio and make the interim decision points more concrete. This is, however, a matter of priority and time, and they intend to take it further at a later stage.