A friend of mine launched a cool plugin for Microsoft Project. It's called Tap on the Shoulder. The idea behind it is that you can integrate MS Project with any email system to send out notifications to your team when tasks start and end. It's a really cool idea and helps Project get closer to the feature sets of some other tools. There's a free trial, so you should be able to give it a try before deciding to spend $49 to get a license.

If you use Project to track your team's progress, this should help keep you on track.