I. What is a Project Management Dashboard?
First, we have to understand the tool. In fact, a Dashboard is another name for a progress report. That means that for Project Management, the Dashboard helps people to have a better overview of the project. Dashboard reports allow managers to get high-level overview of the business and help them make quick decisions
The dashboard can be created through different applications: Excel or other software.
A project management dashboard gathers many information together. Then the dashboard represents information in order to have a better overview.
Information that are necessary to create a Project Management Dashboard are:
Resources are essential to reach the project goals. Human resources, equipment,
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In fact a project can become quickly a money pit. That is why the initial budget has to be established before the go live of the project and it has to be a follow-up of this budget at every milestone.
Here is the example of a project management dashboard:
http://cache.chandoo.org/images/pm/img/project-dashboard.png
II. What is this tool for?
Then, in order to create a Project Management Dashboard, you have to understand the usefulness of this tool. There are many reasons for the use of a project management dashboard, but the most important are:
To have a better overview of the project and establish a good planning (time, cost, resources) and to create milestones. Provide interactive summary of a management report.
Given that the dashboard is a kind of planning that people update, it can give you information anytime on how the project is going (time, cost, resources).
Then you can anticipate the issues that are coming and find, eventually, other solutions. Also, it consolidates, aggregates, and arranges measurements in a visual representation.
III. How to build a Management Dashboard?
1.
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Top management or project sponsors or team members or other departments?
What are they interested to know? Day to day issues or High-level stuff or Plans or Budgets?
What is the frequency for updating the dashboard? Weekly, Bi-weekly or Monthly or Once in a blue moon?
After this preparation, come the steps of creation.
2. Steps of the creation of a Project Management Dashboard
Step 1: Make an outline sketch of the dashboard
Based on the above answers, you vaguely know what should go in to the dashboard. Based on this, you should make an outline sketch of the dashboard with the information you want on it (vital facts about the project, activities, issues, project plan snapshot, burn down of deliveries, project timelines).
Step 2: Get the data to be placed on dashboard
For our dashboard, we need the following inputs:
Overall project status and progress
List of on going activities and issues
We will derive other inputs from the following:
Project Plan Gantt Chart: will provide us the project plan
Project Timeline Chart: will give us the timeline chart
Burn down chart: will give us the project deliverable
...among multiple companies, due to calendar scheduling. The difference between dashboards and scoreboards were the different styles of key performance indicator the two type of report formatted. And how (IAL) can use wiki in their favor by implementing cloud computing on their website.
Overview dashboards for all report sets. For navigation consistency, it is required that a chart from each report set to be displayed on this dashboard
objectives vital to the successful completion of the project (history would prove otherwise). In addition,
Project monitoring and controlling activities go along with Project Execution Process group so that while the project being done the status of the project and be controlled by the appropriate level of oversight and corrective action.
Being the present manager and being appointed by the government at the feasibility stage I am asked to write a report in order to outline the activities required to successfully manage this major project and to ensure that it is completed on time and within budget.
1. Think about the audience for the dashboard. The most effective dashboards only target a specific type of user and just display data specific to that ‘use case’. For example, if we develop an
Vlasic, Bill. "Designing Dashboards with Fewer Distractions." New York Times: B.1. Jul 06 2013. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 7 Nov. 2013
It allows the users to summarize and enter data sets from one chart to another making this a tech skill. Companies today are looking for this skill on your resume as well as an overall understanding of the other functions and features that excel has to offer.
“Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind” a famous quote about our goal by Seneca. It is a metaphor about the achievement goal and objectives by good planning skills. One has to plan for what one wants to achieve and where one wants to go. One of the most important things is to have good planning, before taking any project the first think you should do is to create project plan. Planning can be defined as preparing a sequence of action to achieve specific goals and objectives. According to Kerzner (2009), “project planning is desirable that the project manager is involved from project conception through execution. It must be systematic, flexible to handle, closely disciplined through reviews and control and capable of accepting multi functional inputs (pg. 412)”. The importance of planning a project is to describe the work so that it will be easily identifiable to the project team member.
It enables an organisation to plan future activities by considering a number of questions such as: What are our Strengths? How can we build on them to ensure that we offer a better product than our competitors? What are our Weaknesses? How can we eliminate them? What are our Opportunities?
Monitoring, Review and Revision of Plan - ensures that it remains current. In addition, the monitoring process is backed up by full managerial accountability for the success of the plan.
Kent Beck, the project leader will find using the WBS to make complex projects more manageable as it is designed to help break down projects into manageable chunks that can be effectively estimated and supervised. By creating a WBS include several benefits. For example it can help assist with accurate project company, helps with assigning responsibilities, shows the control points, project milestones, and allows for more accurate estimation of the triple constraint (cost, risk, and time) therefore helping to explain the project scope to stakeholders.
Project management involves all activities that encompass scheduling, planning, and controlling projects. A successful project manager ensure that an organization’s resources are being used both efficiently and effectively. Most projects need to be uniquely developed require a sense of customization and the ability to adapt to any posed challenges. The scope of effective project management includes defining what the project is and what is being expected to be accomplished. Projects are imposed to fulfill a certain need and project managers must have the ability to create the proper definition. Goals and the means used to attain those goals have to be clearly stated. Project Managers must also have the ability to plan
The first and most crucial step is to create a solid plan. Plan should include the techniques, tools and data that are going to used in the project. The responsibilities of all the members should be distributed at this step. The utilization of resources and budgeting of the project should be done here. Management tools such as probability and Impact Matrix, FMEA are useful at this point.
The importance of project management cannot be overstated. For starters it is important that project management provides a flexibility and structure. Project management creates flexible and well-structured business organizations by combining two organization needs perfectly. The organizational needs are determined by making the organization adaptable due to constant changes in the business, secondly organization is extremely important for creating structure. What is most important is that