An improved mechanism for tracking the execution progress of a task is disclosed. In one implementation, the execution progress of a parent task and one or more child tasks is monitored. The parent task spawns the one or more child tasks, and the child tasks execute concurrently with the parent task. In addition to monitoring the execution progress of the tasks, an overall execution progress value is determined for the parent task. In one implementation, the overall execution progress value is determined based, at least partially, upon the execution progress of the parent task and the execution progress of at least one of the child tasks. By taking the execution progress of the child tasks into account, the overall execution progress value reflects not just the progress made by the parent task itself but also the progress made by the child tasks that it spawned.