Project Dashboards
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
In today's busy organizations, project and program
managers need to know exactly how the projects they're responsible
for are doing.
But they also rarely have the time to read through
detailed status reports covering all aspects of the project.
Perhaps Project A is on time and on budget,
but is it going to deliver all of the functionality that your
sponsor needs?
Or maybe engineers have been working overtime to
ensure that every last bug has been ironed out. But how can you
find out what this overtime has done to the budget?
From this "time versus information" dilemma
grew the concept of the Project Dashboard. Just as a car's dashboard
provides immediate and up-to-date information about the speed of
the vehicle, the amount of gas in the tank and the temperature of
the engine, a Project Dashboard provides immediate and up-to-date
information about the status of a project. A common and easily understood
approach to using the dashboard is to use red, yellow or green symbols
that quickly identify whether the thing being measured is in good
shape (green), requires attention (yellow), or is critical condition
(red).
With a Project Dashboard you no longer have
to wade through 3 different reports to determine whether the production
department received the widgets it needed, and got permission
to hire its new employees. Instead, if the widgets had arrived
but a decision on staffing was pending, you would see that the
Materials gauge was in the optimum zone and that the Human Resources
gauge was registering in the warning zone:
With the overall simplicity of a dashboard, you need to remember
that dashboards are not, in and of themselves, a panacea. The
end product is only as good as the inputs. A dashboard is only
an effective tool if firstly the right things are being tracked
and secondly, the classifications being made are well-judged.
Tip 1:
It's easy to descend into a quantitative and analytical
mess with Project Dashboards. At root, managers want a simple,
quick way of seeing whether there are problems they need
to address. Reliance on a quantitative approach gives people
a way of "wriggling out" of their accountability
for reporting this. As a "client" of the Project
Dashboard, you need to insist that the people reporting
to you are personally accountable for their Project Dashboard
judgment calls.
Tip 2:
If you're a client, beware false positives.
Make sure you allocate time to go into detail on individual
cases, so that you can confirm to yourself that classifications
are fair and reliable. Otherwise you risk being disastrously
hoodwinked! On the other hand, make sure that people don't
waste your time by flagging up trivial issues as needing
attention. Make sure people take responsibility for solving
these themselves!
How to Use the Tool
Follow these steps to use the Project Dashboard:
Step One: Assess your goals and expectations for the dashboard.
Why you are you using it? What should it tell you? Here are some
examples:
How far off my budget am I?
Are we on schedule in meeting project milestones?
Do we have the resources we need in place?
What is the status of the various ongoing
tasks?
Are the project risks controlled?
Step Two: With the person reporting
to you, agree what should be shown on the Project Dashboard, and
how this should be represented. If you're monitoring a business,
perhaps there are key indicators that you watch that show you
what's going on? Or if you're responsible for a project, perhaps
you want to monitor individual streams of activity within the
project, keep a sharp eye on the critical path, or monitor other
aspects of it?
Also agree how information will be represented,
and the sensitivity with which information is represented: For
example, you may not be at all worried if people slip a couple
of days behind on a task, just as long as they catch up. And just
seeing a list of twenty items monitored may be enough, rather
than having to scan a 30 page dashboard.
Whatever you decide, keep it as simple as possible,
and make sure that the people reporting to you remember the purpose
of the dashboard – to keep you informed, and alert you to issues
you need to resolve.
Step Three: Make sure that people are held personally accountable
for their Project Dashboard judgment calls. You need to know:
Who, precisely, is responsible for making
the judgment call; and
Who can override this judgment call.
Step Four: Work with the Dashboard.
Get experience with it. Add or eliminate measures as you find
you do or do not need them. Increase or reduce the sensitivity
of reporting. Get people used to making good judgment calls. And
make sure you leave enough time to validate the information being
reported.
Key Points
The Project Dashboard is a useful technique
for quickly communicating the status of projects that you're responsible
for. It quickly shows you whether individual parts of the project
are on course, are worrying, or are in serious trouble.
As with any simplification of reality, it's
vulnerable to confusion and misreporting. It's therefore essential
that you avoid excessive complexity, and insist that people reporting
information to you are accountable for their reporting, and that
you regularly allocate time to assure the accuracy of people's
reporting.
Tags:
Project Management, Skills
managers need to know exactly how the projects they're responsible
for are doing.
But they also rarely have the time to read through
detailed status reports covering all aspects of the project.
Perhaps Project A is on time and on budget,
but is it going to deliver all of the functionality that your
sponsor needs?
Or maybe engineers have been working overtime to
ensure that every last bug has been ironed out. But how can you
find out what this overtime has done to the budget?
From this "time versus information" dilemma
grew the concept of the Project Dashboard. Just as a car's dashboard
provides immediate and up-to-date information about the speed of
the vehicle, the amount of gas in the tank and the temperature of
the engine, a Project Dashboard provides immediate and up-to-date
information about the status of a project. A common and easily understood
approach to using the dashboard is to use red, yellow or green symbols
that quickly identify whether the thing being measured is in good
shape (green), requires attention (yellow), or is critical condition
(red).
With a Project Dashboard you no longer have
to wade through 3 different reports to determine whether the production
department received the widgets it needed, and got permission
to hire its new employees. Instead, if the widgets had arrived
but a decision on staffing was pending, you would see that the
Materials gauge was in the optimum zone and that the Human Resources
gauge was registering in the warning zone:
With the overall simplicity of a dashboard, you need to remember
that dashboards are not, in and of themselves, a panacea. The
end product is only as good as the inputs. A dashboard is only
an effective tool if firstly the right things are being tracked
and secondly, the classifications being made are well-judged.
Tip 1:
It's easy to descend into a quantitative and analytical
mess with Project Dashboards. At root, managers want a simple,
quick way of seeing whether there are problems they need
to address. Reliance on a quantitative approach gives people
a way of "wriggling out" of their accountability
for reporting this. As a "client" of the Project
Dashboard, you need to insist that the people reporting
to you are personally accountable for their Project Dashboard
judgment calls.
Tip 2:
If you're a client, beware false positives.
Make sure you allocate time to go into detail on individual
cases, so that you can confirm to yourself that classifications
are fair and reliable. Otherwise you risk being disastrously
hoodwinked! On the other hand, make sure that people don't
waste your time by flagging up trivial issues as needing
attention. Make sure people take responsibility for solving
these themselves!
How to Use the Tool
Follow these steps to use the Project Dashboard:
Step One: Assess your goals and expectations for the dashboard.
Why you are you using it? What should it tell you? Here are some
examples:
How far off my budget am I?
Are we on schedule in meeting project milestones?
Do we have the resources we need in place?
What is the status of the various ongoing
tasks?
Are the project risks controlled?
Step Two: With the person reporting
to you, agree what should be shown on the Project Dashboard, and
how this should be represented. If you're monitoring a business,
perhaps there are key indicators that you watch that show you
what's going on? Or if you're responsible for a project, perhaps
you want to monitor individual streams of activity within the
project, keep a sharp eye on the critical path, or monitor other
aspects of it?
Also agree how information will be represented,
and the sensitivity with which information is represented: For
example, you may not be at all worried if people slip a couple
of days behind on a task, just as long as they catch up. And just
seeing a list of twenty items monitored may be enough, rather
than having to scan a 30 page dashboard.
Whatever you decide, keep it as simple as possible,
and make sure that the people reporting to you remember the purpose
of the dashboard – to keep you informed, and alert you to issues
you need to resolve.
Step Three: Make sure that people are held personally accountable
for their Project Dashboard judgment calls. You need to know:
Who, precisely, is responsible for making
the judgment call; and
Who can override this judgment call.
Step Four: Work with the Dashboard.
Get experience with it. Add or eliminate measures as you find
you do or do not need them. Increase or reduce the sensitivity
of reporting. Get people used to making good judgment calls. And
make sure you leave enough time to validate the information being
reported.
Key Points
The Project Dashboard is a useful technique
for quickly communicating the status of projects that you're responsible
for. It quickly shows you whether individual parts of the project
are on course, are worrying, or are in serious trouble.
As with any simplification of reality, it's
vulnerable to confusion and misreporting. It's therefore essential
that you avoid excessive complexity, and insist that people reporting
information to you are accountable for their reporting, and that
you regularly allocate time to assure the accuracy of people's
reporting.
