Essential Project Management Dashboards

You are fully equipped for your project. You have your project schedule, your risk assessment, your issues list, project budget, and communication plan. But what do you communicate to your project sponsor or other stakeholders? Many project managers will communicate only the project schedule, but there are so many other perspectives to present to your stakeholders.

Another twist: when you are just starting to gain control of your project, your manager assigns you another one, and another, and another. How do you keep up with all of the changes that are going on in your projects?

Both of these problems can be solved by creating and maintaining project dashboards. Project dashboards help keep you focused on what is important about your projects and allows you to communicate at the right level of detail to those who have an interest in it.

There are two main kinds of dashboards to consider: 1) a project dashboard; and 2) a project portfolio dashboard.

Project Dashboard

A project dashboard is for a single project. It provides a complete picture of your project from a variety of perspectives, including schedule, budget, risk, and issues. Each of these areas should be easy to view quickly for areas of concern. Red, yellow, and green light indicators are common on dashboards, allowing the eye to quickly find issues for further exploration and explanation.

Sample Project Dashboard: Acrobat PDF or Microsoft Word

Project Portfolio Dashboard

A project portfolio dashboard may be used for communicating multiple projects at the same time. It may be used by individuals who are managing several projects or by a department manager who's team has multiple projects. It contains less detail than the individual project dashboard, but communicates similar indicators, lined up for a quick scan across multiple projects.

Sample Project Portfolio Dashboard: Acrobat PDF or Microsoft Excel

Take Aways

If you don't use a project dashboard, download the samples here and adapt them for your own use. Remember, keep it high level, but make sure that unmitigated risks and issues stand out clearly.