Issue management is an ongoing process that goes parallel to the planned workflow throughout the project lifecycle. Having said that, project leaders often underestimate the necessity of issue tracking and management so they end up choosing a reactive approach when the problem arises. In that case, one becomes helpless and often observes the project cascading towards failure. On the other hand, if you practice the proactive approach of tracking the issues and working towards a solution it can efficiently save valuable time and essentially the project. Go through our issue tracking template which is useful for recording and maintaining the aforementioned issues and risks so that they don’t go unnoticed. It is designed to not only help you steer clear of the challenges today but also in the future.
Issue Tracking in Excel
Tracking issues has never been easier with powerful project management tools but the hassle for getting started consumes a considerable amount of time. Only for that reason, we advise you to opt for the free template for excel, because of familiarity with excel and its ease of use. Therefore, we have designed a template that is pre-built for you to save you the trouble and time of making it yourself. The template includes the fundamental issue tracking elements required for any business to efficiently track the problems.
Project Issue Tracker
Challenges are the integral parts of all the projects that you can tackle and win if you keep a record of every detail of the issues given in the template.
Issue Number
You can face multiple challenges emanating from a single project repeatedly if they are not resolved at the initial phase itself. Using a unique number or code to describe an issue will help you in the long run to maintain the records. A unique number helps everyone recognize the issue and fetch the relevant information at any time.
Description
The issue log template provides a dedicated column to mention concise details of an issue disclosing information of the utmost importance to everyone on the team. Apart from giving unique numbers to the project issues, describing them further is the next step.
Status
There are phases of undertaking an issue after it is recognized, for example, if the issue is being worked on (i.e. in-progress phase), yet to be opened(i.e. pending), or is solved.
Team
The column where you can mention the team responsible for solving the issue or from where the issue originated. In this manner, the responsibility of solving the issue is taken without any delay.
Priority
With the course of keeping the project timeline and solving the issues, prioritizing them can essentially help everyone work according to the timeline and solve the issues simultaneously.
Raised By
Mentioning the name of the member who brought an issue to notice ensures that a member or team opening the issue can consult them for more information.
Opened By
A team member who brings an issue to notice may not be the person who works on solving it. Hence, a description of who works on which issue keeps everyone aware of the happenings around the project.
Closed By
During the process of solving an issue, one or more people can get involved. Hence, jotting down the person’s name who closed the issue after validating the solution authenticates the process of issue management.
Opened On/Closed On
Keeping the track of time or date helps one track the issues properly and track the whole project efficiently. Marking the start and end dates add precise details of the time taken to solve an issue.
Notes
Some issues require more description along with the above-mentioned points about this pre-built log since many dimensions can be encountered while solving an issue that has to be mentioned. This column can be used to make footnotes that add more context to any issue while maintaining a log.
A simple issue tracking template can make the task extremely organized because you never know when a problem arises disrupting the workflow. In fact, with the nature of the issue, and the dynamics of the teams functioning around it can make it almost impossible to trace the origin without a descriptive log. Not to mention, you too, would have seen or heard about projects which failed because of unorganized issue tracking and not noticing the issue. However, we can avoid the risks when all it takes it an organization issue tracking template! Download your project issue tracker template clicking here…
