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About this lesson

Learn how to create and use a project dashboard to communicate project status with both management and your project team.

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Quick reference

Project Dashboards

Project Dashboards are a quick summary of the project status and project health.  They are normally used for management communication and/or team member communication. 

When to use

Dashboards are a communication tool.  A dashboard is prepared as part of the communication plan.  They are the best practice for quick communication with stakeholders and management.  They are also very helpful for extended or virtual project teams.  However, the format and content would be different for those two applications.   

Instructions

The format for management dashboards normally follows a standard company template and focuses on “big picture” issues like project objectives and project-level boundaries.  These dashboards are updated prior to sending out the management communication.  The format for project team dashboards is usually derived from the project planning artifacts (schedules, task lists, etc.) and focuses on the daily progress and status of activities.  These dashboards are normally updated as part of a team meeting.   

Project management dashboard

  1. When the project plan is initially approved, the planning information is entered into the dashboard template.
  2. Periodically (based upon the organization’s communication policy - intervals vary from real-time to monthly) the dashboard is updated to reflect current project status and current project health. 
    1. Often the health is shown with Red/Yellow/Green indicators. 
    2. The organization will usually have a scale to use for determining which color should be used. 
    3. If no scale is provided, use Red for areas that cannot meet the project objectives, Yellow for areas that are experiencing problems but that the team believes they can solve, and Green for areas where there is an adequate plan and approach in place.

Project team dashboard

  1. When the project plan is completed, the project team decides which project planning artifact(s) it will used to track status and progress.
  2. At each project team meeting, team members report their progress and the status is shown on the project planning artifact(s).
  3. In some PMIS systems, these updates can be done in real-time.  The Team Dashboard is updated by the PMIS.

Hints & tips

  • Dashboards should be quick and easy to update – if it takes too long, no one will do it.
  • Dashboards are meant to communicate status and risk – don’t hide issues, expose them.
  • Graphs and charts are easier for people to understand than tables of data or bullet items of text – use charts as long as they are easy to create and update.
  • Don’t let your management dashboard become too cluttered.  If management can’t find the information they want, they will ignore the dashboard.
  • Keep dashboards current – then you are always able to quickly provide a project status. 
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  • 00:04 Hi, I'm Ray Sheen. One of the most effective tools used for
  • 00:07 controlling projects is a dashboard.
  • 00:10 Dashboards are displays of current project status or the health of the project.
  • 00:17 A good dashboard is structured so as to be easy to read,
  • 00:21 showing project information in a graphical display or chart, and often with red,
  • 00:26 yellow, or green status indications.
  • 00:29 Items like budget status, key deliverables, and milestones are shown.
  • 00:33 Dashboards are structured to communicate to specific audiences.
  • 00:36 The most common type of dashboard is a management dashboard
  • 00:39 which provides project summary information to the management.
  • 00:43 Other types of dashboards are team dashboards, which provide status for
  • 00:46 team members, portfolio dashboards,
  • 00:48 which show the status of multiple projects within the portfolio.
  • 00:52 Let's talk about the project management dashboard first.
  • 00:56 This is used to give senior management and stakeholders the status of the project.
  • 00:59 Often, the dashboards from several projects are compared to each other
  • 01:03 to identify common patterns and trends.
  • 01:05 For that reason,
  • 01:06 they often will have a standard format so that they're easy to compare.
  • 01:10 The dashboard focus is on project objectives and boundary conditions so
  • 01:14 that the management is aware of what the project is supposed to achieve, and
  • 01:18 any risks to the objectives or other areas of concern to the stakeholders.
  • 01:23 This enables management to say focused on the aspects of the project
  • 01:26 that they are most interested in.
  • 01:28 The dashboard is usually updated on a regular basis, such as weekly or monthly.
  • 01:33 This is often tied to any regular project management review cycle.
  • 01:37 Typically, the organization has standard templates
  • 01:40 that are followed by all projects.
  • 01:42 This simplifies the review process for senior management.
  • 01:46 These are some examples of project management dashboards.
  • 01:49 In the top view, each project has a red, yellow, or
  • 01:52 green indicator in the areas of technical cost and schedule.
  • 01:55 There is also an arrow indicating if things are getting better or worse for
  • 01:58 that project on that parameter.
  • 02:01 On the right side,
  • 02:01 there are comments discussing what has happened since the last review.
  • 02:05 On the bottom, we see a portfolio dashboard.
  • 02:08 There are many projects listed, and we can see the status of them.
  • 02:11 The portfolio has been prioritized by the stakeholders.
  • 02:14 The portfolio provides information about projects,
  • 02:18 such as market segment, phase, in addition to the red,
  • 02:22 yellow or green status of the schedule, budget, resource, and risk.
  • 02:25 This organization was resource-constrained.
  • 02:28 Senior management used the dashboard to prioritize which projects received their
  • 02:32 full allotment of resources.
  • 02:34 As you can see, in this case,
  • 02:35 the closer a project was to market launch, the higher the priority.
  • 02:40 Now let's talk about the project team dashboard.
  • 02:43 This provides team members with the current status of what's happening on
  • 02:46 the project.
  • 02:47 Typically, this will be comparing the actual performance of the project
  • 02:51 to the plan performance.
  • 02:53 This makes the plan a very important aspect of the project team dashboard.
  • 02:57 Team dashboards are normally updated on a daily or weekly basis.
  • 03:01 Their focus is on the near-term events and the progress on the project.
  • 03:06 My practice is to update these dashboards at each project team meeting,
  • 03:09 which is usually daily or weekly.
  • 03:11 That way, there's no extra meetings or activities needed to update dashboards.
  • 03:16 The dashboard normally relies heavily on project plan artifacts,
  • 03:20 such as the schedule, the budget, or the work breakdown structure dictionary,
  • 03:24 a list of deliverables, or the risk register.
  • 03:27 Here are examples of team dashboard formats.
  • 03:30 On the top is the scrum board and burn down chart used by a project team that is
  • 03:34 following the agile scrum project management methodology.
  • 03:37 It shows the status of all the deliverables as they move from the spread
  • 03:40 backlog, to the work-in-progress column, to the done column.
  • 03:44 The burn down chart shows how much of the plan resources have been consumed.
  • 03:49 The bottom dashboard is a more traditional Gantt chart,
  • 03:52 which is showing the actual task performance, in blue,
  • 03:54 as compared to the scheduled task performance, which is in gray.
  • 03:58 If using software, this will often be calculated and
  • 04:00 created automatically, providing the WBS dictionary is being kept correct.
  • 04:06 And, as we've seen, dashboards provides a quick,
  • 04:09 visual indication of the health of a project.
  • 04:11 They're invaluable as a communication vehicle, and can point the way for
  • 04:16 the team and management to effectively complete a project.

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