Project Tracking & Reporting

ChuckyT

The main things we are looking at are a bar graph showing each worker's reporting and a true work allocation report that takes into consideration the completion percentage on a task and not the end date.

I'm a stickler on 100% time reported so we know where each person is spending their time (we have projects set up for things like training, administrivia like reporting 100% time Wink

, etc.) This report would show time reported based on our billing codes and graphically display based on total possible allocation for the time period. If the daily hours are 8 and it is a 5 day week, then the week report would expect to have 40 hours time reported. We can then display a bar graph showing billable, internal, free, and unreported time (unreported being the difference between possible allocation and total of all other time reported). This will also show if I have people working overtime as a percentage in excess of 100%.

The work allocation report (really a simplified earned value report) would take the duration to date, hours worked, and completion percentage to arrive at a theoretical completion date for a task and show that on a portfolio management type report for each resource, task, or project. For example, a task that was started 3 days ago, has 6 hours worked, and is 50% complete would theoretically take another 6 hours over the next 3 days. This also opens up exception reports where we can track the hours worked and percentage complete against the originally estimated number of hours for the task. Using the same example, if the task was originally estimated for 8 hours in 2 days, we can see that the task is tracking 150% over on hours and 300% over on duration. If I'm expecting that resource to start working on something else tomorrow I can take steps to move people or work around to ensure everything gets done, and can also quickly see projects that are lagging behind.

I think the project statistics report showed some of this for each project (just noticed mine's not working now for some reason), but we are looking primarily for something from the resource management point of view.

That's all I have for now. I know my team cringes whenever I start off the conversation with "you know what I'd like to see is..."

Sorry for hijacking your thread, snowhall. Smile

caseydk

Personally, I'm a fan of Earned Value Management from a *tracking* perspective.. for estimation/projection purposes, not so much.

Once we add some logic to guesstimate how quickly something should be worked on and complete, we can start showing warnings to the relevant people. I'd like to further add this to a Dashboard to let people know what is going on where.

ChuckyT

Mmm... Dashboards. Now you're talking. Wink

Has any thought/work gone into what KPI's would be displayed on a dashboard (or made available if the dashboard was able to be personalized)?

It seems like the project management side of things has been handled pretty well, but the logical progression is to handle portfolio management a little more elegantly. Still, IMHO w2P is ahead of dP when it comes to portfolio management. Tasks per user has become my new friend, and the global search is still my best friend. Never more than 2 clicks away from anything now. To be effective with portfolio management, dashboards will become really important.

caseydk

I'm glad you appreciate Search. Pedro and I worked hard to add some creative things to make it work. And it should be fully extensible to any Add On module now... which is a huge step.

And yes, we are ahead of other projects. Part of that is because we're slightly fanatical, but also we get some great suggestions, feedback, and code from our community. Wink

In terms of specific metrics, I suspect we'll need some of these:

* For projects/tasks they own:
-- Tasks which are 'behind' based on an estimate on how far along they should be;
-- Tasks which are over budget based on an estimate of how much they should cost so far;

* Hours/percentages for tasks they're assigned to which are active/late;
* Dependencies blocking their current task assignments;
* Upcoming events for that user;

* Other information that other modules choose to add... like 'key risks' if the Risk Management Module is being used;

ChuckyT

All good stuff!

For the executives in the world, how about the typical stoplight indication for each active project based on some configurable parameters. For example, if the project is on-time/on-budget it is green; from X time and/or X budget to Y time and/or Y budget is yellow; and over Y time and/or Y budget is red. That's probably a little too simplistic for how you guys like to do things with w2P Wink

, but would be a good start. Maybe allow the Project Owner to override the automatic stoplight with his/her own worse color and a reason. So maybe the project appears to be on-time/on-budget, but there is a significant issue that if not addressed quickly will cause the project to go over. In my organization, I wouldn't want the PM to be able to override an automatic color to something better though. Put a drill down in there to see more project detail and w2P has everything necessary for the execs to be dangerous! Laughing

I'd also like to see portfolio level budget information on a dashboard as well. We do mostly fixed price projects and use the project budget to indicate what we sold the project for. Having an overall budget number on all active projects would be a good indication of what the work we are doing is worth (or for others who use w2P as a more traditional PM tool what all active projects are currently costing).