Methods of Monitoring progress

Guys

What is the best method of monitoring progress ?

I use three methods

1) Static progress - where you update the bars with % complete only and draw a line from the progress date to indicate position on programme.

2) Critical path - where I update the actual starts etc as well as % complete. I also baseline the project to give a comparison.

3) Planned versus actual "S" curves

I use MSP for the first two and export the data to Excel for the last one

Andrew