Project Monitoring, Analytics, and Control
This chapter provides a detailed overview of the processes involved in monitoring and reporting project performance.
A Note About Dashboards
A well-designed dashboard can be extremely useful, greatly minimizing the time required to put reports together. If the data is live – that is, updated continually – stakeholders can get updates instantaneously, instead of waiting for monthly project review meetings. Even a dashboard that is merely updated daily, or even weekly, can prevent the waste and delays that arise when people are working with outdated information.
In his book Project Management Metrics, KPIs, and Dashboards: A Guide to Measuring and Monitoring Project Performance, Harold Kerzner discusses the importance of presenting monitoring information in a way that allows stakeholders to make timely decisions:
The ultimate purpose of metrics and dashboards is not to provide more information but to provide the right information to the right person at the right time, using the correct media and in a cost-effective manner…. Today, everyone seems concerned about information overload. Unfortunately, the real issue is non-information overload. In other words, there are too many useless reports that cannot easily be read and that provide readers with too much information, much of which may have no relevance. It simply distracts us from the real issues…. Insufficient or ineffective metrics prevent us from understanding what decisions really need to be made.
A well-designed dashboard is an excellent tool for presenting just the right amount of information about project performance. The key to effective dashboards is identifying which dashboard elements are most helpful to your particular audience. Start by thinking about what those people need to focus on. For a given project, the same dashboard might not work for all groups. The dashboard you use to report to high-level managers might not be useful for people actually working on the project. Generally speaking, a dashboard should include only the information the intended audience needs to keep the project on track. A dashboard also helps senior managers evaluate different projects in their portfolio. They can quickly assess what's working, what's not working, and where they might provide assistance.
In a two-part series for BrightPoint Consulting, a firm that specializes in data visualization, Tom Gonzalez explains how to create effective dashboards by focusing on key performance indicators (KPI), which are metrics associated with specific targets.
Figure 11-1 provides an example of an effective dashboard. It is simple, and easy to read, and focuses on a few KPIs.
Figure 11-1: A simple, easy-to-read dashboard
For a dashboard to be really useful, it's essential that all stakeholders share the same definitions of common metrics such as "high," "medium," and "low". Likewise, everyone has to understand the specific meaning of the colors used in any color coded system.
Of course a dashboard is only one part of a monitoring system. It allows you to see what's going on in the present. As a project manager, you have to balance looking at the dashboard with looking through the front window to see where the project is headed, while occasionally checking your rearview mirror to see if you might have missed something important.
Beyond the Status Report
According to Dave Pagenkopf, Applications Development and Integration Director for DoIT at the UW-Madison, one effective form of monitoring in IT projects is asking team members to demonstrate their work:
For software projects where I am the sponsor or a key decision maker, I ask for product demonstrations before going through status reports. Demonstration of working software or the lack thereof tells me more about progress than any status report could. I have been known to take a quick tour of a data center when a team says they have finished installing servers. I have a large monitor in my office, so people can show me working software during meetings. As a general rule, in IT, the best performers always want to show what they have done. The poor performers want to talk about what they have done.
Another form of monitoring IT projects is simply taking a close look at the programmers. During marathon projects, when everyone is working nonstop, I look for signs of unspoken exhaustion that will inevitably lead to problems. Those usually show up first as changes in grooming habits, which I notice as I walk through the office.
That last suggestion is an example of managing by walking around (MBWA) – a management style that emphasizes unplanned encounters with team members, and spontaneous, informal reviews of equipment and ongoing work. Sometimes a two-minute conversation with a team member will tell you more about the health of a project than piles of status reports. MBWA was first popularized in the 1980's by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman in their book In Search of Excellence.