why monitor?
A Studio's dream is bringing in a movie production under-budget and before a deadline. The only way complex process involving multiple persons at perhaps multiple locations can achieve this is by careful and systematic monitoring of progress. This allows a team to successfully budget their time, resources, and skills to achieve their goal.

The same principle holds true for the design and creation of a web site. By continually checking your team's progress, they will not only get to celebrate their milestones, but they will be able to swiftly make adjustments when (not if) the unexpected happens.

how is it done?
The Studio cannot provide an exact formula for monitoring progress, but we do provide some suggestions as well as some additional resources that your team can explore. We describe three different aspects of monitoring your team's progress:

• Checklists are a means to evaluate your project while it's still in the developmental stages. A completed checklist insures that all documents and project activities are complete and accurate before moving on the next step. Therefore, the final task for most activities should be to go through a checklist and verify that each step has been completed. Each checklist should be signed and dated by the team member who completed it. This type of verification and record-keeping will provide accountability, keep the project on track, and help eliminate errors.

  As you proceed through the Studio Guide, we will provide several examples of checklists that you may use or adapt. You will likely have to develop your own checklists as well, and there should be a checklist for each major activity in your work.

• Journals are a record of personal experiences on the project. This may be a group jorunal and/or one done as individuals. Each member is encouraged to make a weekly journal entry describing major activities or accomplishments, short and long range planning, or personal reflections about their experiences on the project. How you journal is less important; you may keep them in paper format or electronic.

  Journaling provides a historical record that individuals might refer to when writing a final report to summarize or evaluate their over-all experience on the project. Once your project is completed and perhaps becomes an International Blockbuster, journals are also critical should there become a need to create a "Making of __________" documentary about your project. Team journals can also be used to create public announcements about your project-- a way to generate interest as your web project develops.

• Portfolios are collections of samples that provide concrete evidence of your project's development. The team portfolio should include specific project documentation such as the checklists mentioned above, preliminary concept sketches, story boards, and prototypes of your web project. The Studio suggests from the start that you build in a plan to digitize all planning materials as you proceed through your project, and store them in a special area of your web site.

	RESOURCES FOR MONITORING PROGRESS example of a basic checklist. a web form that can be used to generate team journal reports example of journal report created by web form example of checklist that could be used to guide completion of the journal report form general resources for progress monitoring.

what's next?
By now you should have decided what types of progress monitoring your team will do. Make sure that you set up a preliminary web space for your electronic portfolios.

Now is the time your team needs to get their minds together and agree upon the purpose and scope of their web project-- defining your project.