Tracking is not the same as recording
Plenty of tools record a project faithfully and still leave you asking people how it is going. The work is all in there — every task written down, every list tidy — but nothing in the record separates the tasks that are moving from the ones that quietly stopped three weeks ago.
That gap usually comes from one design choice: tracking hangs off a status field somebody has to maintain by hand. The field is accurate on the day it is set and decays from then on, so the tracker ends up reporting how diligent the team is at updating it.
Read from the work, not from a status field
In Otper there is nothing separate to maintain. A card's stage is the list it is sitting in, its owner is whoever is assigned to it, and its dates live on the card. Moving a card across the board is the status update, so what you get back describes the state of the work rather than the state of somebody's bookkeeping.
Project tracking software is only worth opening if it tells you something you did not already know. Everything below is derived from card activity your team is producing anyway.
What it tracks
| Signal | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Stage | Which list a card is sitting in right now — the state of the work, read from where it actually is. |
| Owner | Who is carrying it, shown on the card face and available as a grouping in board, List and Gantt views. |
| Dates | Start and due date on the card, drawn as a bar on the timeline. Undated work is listed as unscheduled rather than hidden. |
| Bottlenecks | Average days cards spend in each list, ranked, so the stage absorbing the time is named rather than guessed at. |
| Overdue | Every card past its due date, who is on it, and how many days it has been. |
| Delay risk | Open cards already running longer than your team's own median completion time, or with less time left than that median. |
| Stuck work | Cards with no activity for seven days or more — usually a blocked handoff nobody escalated. |
| Throughput | Cards created against cards completed per day, week or month: is delivery keeping up with intake? |
See how each measure is derived, or how dated work is drawn on a timeline.
Catching drift before the deadline
The useful moment in tracking a project is not the day something is late. It is the week before, while there is still room to act. Three signals do most of that work:
- Work that stopped — cards with no activity for seven days or more. A stalled card is rarely a hard problem; it is usually waiting on a person who does not know it is waiting on them.
- Work running long — open cards measured against your team's own median completion time, not an industry benchmark that has never seen how you work.
- Stages that absorb time — if Review holds cards for four days on average, that is where your deadlines are being spent, and chasing individual tasks will not fix it.
Ownership is what makes any of those actionable. A flagged card with a name on it is a conversation; a flagged card without one is a search. See how ownership is recorded.
What this deliberately does not do
An honest tracker should be clear about its limits, because some of them are real reasons to choose something else. Otper does not compute a percent-complete figure for a project, an on-time-delivery rate, or baseline-versus-actual variance — each of those needs an estimate typed in up front, and a number derived from a guess reports the guess.
It also does not model task dependencies or a critical path, and it will not forecast a completion date. If your work genuinely depends on dependency chains or earned-value reporting, a heavier tool is the right answer. What is here is measured state, and the signals that something is drifting.
Starting without a budget conversation
The Free plan costs nothing and covers unlimited projects with up to three teammates, so a small team can track a real project before anyone approves a purchase. Team size is usually the limit that decides, rather than the number of projects — so count the people who need access, then read the plan comparison for which reports come with which plan.
Who uses it
Project managers who would rather open a board than assemble a status deck. Small teams with no dedicated PM, where tracking has to cost almost nothing in daily effort or it stops happening. Operations leads running several projects side by side. Anyone whose real question is not "what is on the list" but "what has stopped moving, and who do I talk to about it".
Common questions
Is Otper free to use for project tracking?
There is a Free plan at no cost covering unlimited projects and up to three teammates, which is enough for a small team to track real delivery. Team size is the limit that usually decides it, so count the people who need access and check the pricing page for what each plan includes.
Do I have to update a status field for tracking to work?
No, and that is the point. A card's stage is where it sits on the board, its owner is whoever is assigned to it, and its dates are on the card. Tracking reads that state, so moving a card is the update — there is no second field to keep in step with reality.
Can I track more than one project at once?
Yes. Scope a report to one board, several, or everything you have access to, and compare boards side by side in the same view. Each project keeps its own board, so the detail stays separate while the roll-up stays available.
Does it show a percentage complete for a project?
No. Otper does not compute a percent-complete figure or an on-time-delivery rate, because both depend on an estimate someone typed in rather than on what happened. What it reports is measured: how many cards finished, how many are open, what is overdue, and where work is waiting.
Will it tell me when the project is going to finish?
It will not forecast a completion date. It shows throughput — the rate at which work is actually created and completed — and flags open cards running longer than your team's median. Drawing a conclusion from those is a judgement you make, with the evidence in front of you.
Can I get the tracking data out?
Yes. Export the selected boards and date range as CSV or PDF, or query the same reporting data through the GraphQL API if you want it in a dashboard of your own.
Related features
Automated status reporting for delivery teams
Throughput, bottlenecks and overdue work, generated from real card activity.
Gantt chart software built from your board
The same cards, drawn on a timeline. One set of dates, never two.
Task ownership software
Responsibility lives on the card, and stays attributable afterwards.