Project Portfolio Management: A View From The Management Trenches

12.1. DASHBOARDS AND METRICS: THE VISUALS

When most PPM efforts are established, part of the sales pitch to the business leadership usually includes a vision of how it will be presented with wonderful charts and graphs that will clearly depict the organization's performance against goals and objectives, and give a rock-solid view of the state of investments across the business. Metrics can be the most anticipated and least-defined area of PPM, usually because it's very hard to know in advance what a leadership team will actually want, and because it takes time for the data to start flowing. Most PPM teams spend countless hours defining data elements, project scorecards, reports, and process and then stumble when it comes to consolidating and analyzing the data for management review.

Foundational Tool Project portfolio dashboard

The key to developing metrics starts with an understanding of the maturity of the organization. Many organizations are likely to have been starved of metrics and dashboards due to little or no available data. But now that the data exists, there is a danger that an enthusiastic Project Management Office (PMO) may bombard management with information that it may not be able to absorb. We recommend starting simple and only increasing the complexity and breadth of metrics as the organizational capacity to absorb them grows and matures.

12.1.1. Phase 1: Simple Dashboards

Simple dashboards can be very effective at giving the leadership team a quick and easy-to-understand ...