Project Dashboard: Managing Project KPIs

Project Dashboard, if designed correctly, it will become very powerful tool for the organisation to act pro-actively and appropriately.

To design it correctly, the dashboard should have the following elements:

1. Objectives of the KPIs
2. Tolerance range (eg. Red, Yellow or Green; High, Medium or Low; Excellent, Good, or Bad, etc)
3. Target Audience in mind
4. Relevant measurement (measurement value that should be shown together in one chart or dashboard item)

Basically, the dashboard should tell you: I should be happy or I should be upset. What should I do if I am upset with the measurement result.

Example of possible questions to be asked when designing the Project Dashboard:

Note: Project Dashboard is usually focussing on individual projects

1. Are we on time?
2. Is our budget sufficient for us to complete the project?
3. Are our requirements stable?
4. Is the quality of our deliverables good?
5. How fast we resolve issues?
6. Who are the contributors to delay?
7. How much more budget do we need to complete the project?

 When individual dashboards are functioning stably, the executives (senior management) may want to have Corporate wide Project Portfolio Dashboard. Then when designing the Corporate wide Project Portfolio Dashboard, the possible questions will be coming from Corporate perspective, for example:

1. Which customers that are affected by project delay?
2. Which project that is not having sufficient budget to complete the project as of now?
3. Which project manager that is responsible for those projects that are in trouble (schedule delay, cost overrun, having issues not resolved, etc)
4. Resources from which department or solution team that are involved in those issues (delay, additional cost involved, unresolved issues, etc)

When designing the corporate or project dashboard, the designer should consider the perspective of the target audience, for example:

1. What are their concerns?
2. Based on what they need to react?
3. How can they trace down the culprit or source of cause (root cause)?

All the information provider for these KPIs should come from an integrated or online Information System. You can't achieve this if all those information is saved inside the PC of each project manager. There are many project management IS (Information System) out there in the market, some even open source. Of course, you have to consider the cost of implementation and the challenges in implementing it. It will be a separate topic when we talk about implementing it. But, first things first: Do you care about your project or the projects in your organisation?