![Project management dashboard](/static/c212a4f4a590204353946deda1cebbc6/cc1c3/Project_management_dashboard.jpg)
Why Should Your Project Management Software Come with a Dashboard
The project dashboard is the platform where your project’s health assessment is displayed according to specific key performance metrics, a clear picture of the result of your project’s effectiveness and potential risk evaluation.
As you imagine, a lot of data is analyzed, processed, and then presented very concise and clear so that you can spot immediately if your projects are successful, or correction actions are necessary. How would it be like if all that data should be processed manually? How long would it take? How accurate would it be? How much effort would it take? Guessing you’re not quite happy with the answer. Now imagine that you can have all this information in a blink of an eye, completely effortless. Better? If yes, then project dashboard is a “must have” future for your project management software.
What data should a dashboard display?
- Projects pulse – a snapshot of overall project status and performance which points directly to your pain areas;
- Workload – a summary of allocated hours with clear display of over and under allocations to enable you to apply improvement actions and restore the balance where needed;
- Tasks status – a quick peek at tasks completion with emphasis on bottlenecks to allow you to intervene if there’s a high rate of overdue tasks, for instance;
- Financial data – quick insight into your projects budget, with clear view on billable hours, invoices status and expenses.
What are the benefits of a project portfolio dashboard?
- Accuracy – when data is automatically processed, human error is eliminated, and preciseness prevail;
- Real time data – you get an instant answer to your business question as information is updated on the dashboard whenever any simple change is made;
- Efficiency – by being provided with targeted information you get exactly the data you need to make wise fast decisions, especially in areas that need your attention; also, since you’re not spending time anymore with processing the data, you can focus on more important matters;
- Visibility – all your project data is visually displayed as charts, pies or graphs in a comprehensive manner;
- Centralized data – provides “at a glance” progress reports sparing you the effort of looking through disparate data in different places;
- Customization – presents a tailor mix of KPIs and allows you to change the metrics anytime you need.
With all the above characteristics, the project dashboard is not only giving you an overall sense of current or past status, but also a powerful forecast tool too by enabling anticipation and making strategic decisions on both project and business level.