In this 2 part tutorial, we will learn how to design a project portfolio dashboard. Part 1 will focus on user needs & design. Part 2 on Excel implementation.
Background: Project Portfolio Dashboards
As you may know, we sell a set of Excel Project Management templates. These templates help plan, track, manage & report a project right from Excel.While these templates good, they have one limitation. They work for one project at a time. Many customers have asked me if I come up with a project portfolio dashboard that can tell what is going on in a set of projects in one view.
And that is where we begin.
Who uses a Project Portfolio Dashboard?
Program managers, group project managers, IT directors, Project owners & CXOs are the target audience for a project portfolio dashboard. These are the people that oversee multiple projects and want to know what is going on with each of them a high level.To keep our design task reasonable, we can also say that,
- Project portfolio consists of at least 5 projects.
- The dashboard is updated once a month or so.
What should Project Portfolio Dashboard communicate?
When it comes to a portfolio of projects, the users will not be interested in minute details of each project. Rather, they want to know what is going on, where the attention should be focused, how the plan vs. actual performance is, how money is spent etc. In other words, high level details followed up option to drill down.As per my experience, our dashboard should communicate:
- Program overview
- Total projects, budgets, teams
- Program health indicators – Progress, budget vs. actual, time to complete, un-addressed risks
- A summary of all projects
- Project progress %s, budget vs. actual spend
- Team sizes, outstanding issues, risks & tasks
- Drill down view of individual projects
- Weekly plan, task level progress & budget
- Critical issues, risks by project
- Contact details
- Management comments
How should our Dashboard look like?
Based on above details, we can design a rough sketch of our portfolio dashboard. This sketch will guide us when we implement the dashboard in Excel.Here is a design I came up with:
The numbers correspond to section 1, 2 & 3 in “What should they communicate” above.
How should our dashboard behave?
Because this dashboard contains a lot of data and is used by top management, it makes sense to define its behavior too.Lets keep these points in mind when implementing the dashboard:
- The data entry for this dashboard should be easy & track-able
- Reason: lots of data, so users need to be alerted if data entry is incomplete. Also, one set of users enter the data, while someone else views the report.
- The dashboard should allow for drill down to know more
- Reason: top managers & project sponsors like to ask questions. So, we should allow for interactive drill down, but still present vital stats up front.
- The dashboard should be printable
- Reason: Project sponsors & steering committees have lots of members, often from different parts of a company. And they like to view static version (print out, pdf) when discussing.
Next steps: Implementing the dashboard in Excel
That is all for this installment. In the next part, we will learn how to create a project portfolio dashboard using Excel.Meanwhile, explore our Project Management using Excel section to learn more.
Do you use Project Portfolio Dashboards?
When I was working as a business analyst, I used to design such dashboards for some of our clients. Later on, as an Excel consultant too, I have developed few different versions of portfolio & program dashboards. The hardest thing with designing these dashboards is that they have just too much of data. A very high level summary will not do because executives & project sponsors always ask follow up questions like, “So why is this project spending more than $x?”, “What is our mitigation strategy for this risk?”, “Who is handling this issue?” etc.But with a bit of balancing act, we can design a good portfolio dashboard that is not too bloated and not too simplistic.
What about you? Do you use or develop such dashboards? What is your experience like? What would you like such a dashboard to communicate? Please share your ideas and suggestions using comments.
More on Project Management using Excel
If you are a project manager or analyst, chances are, you are using Excel to manage portions of your project. At Chandoo.org, you can find lots of resources, tips & templates for this. Check out,Preparing & tracking a project plan using Gantt Charts
Team To Do Lists – Project Tracking Tools
Project Status Reporting – Create a Timeline to display milestones
Time sheets and Resource management
Issue Trackers & Risk Management
Project Status Reporting – Create a Timeline to display milestones
More on using Excel for Project Management
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