Ben PhlipotSr. Director, PMO| TRGColumbus, Oh, United States
What are the best tools/templates to use to present project status on multiple projects. At any given time my team and I are managing 10-15 projects under a single portfolio and I am finding it difficult to find a template as a starting point to present status. Thanks! Saving Changes...
Alfred HortonCEO & President| AOC Connect, LLCLovettsville, Va, United States
I have put a significant amount of research into this very topic. Because my company has historically used MS project, I looked heavily into systems that integrated with the project while also considering alternatives. I have found that MS project seems to be the easiest and most cost effective solution for a small to mid-sized organization and that there are meant reporting tools that work well. I decided on MS SharePoint integrated with MS Project. You can find many canned solutions that layer onto SharePoint to report on various data points for multiple projects. Saving Changes...
MS project is a good tools to get the info you need for the status, but i think u should design a template to present project status. For example the temaplate could has the info below:
1. % Planning
2. %Real
3. Difference (%planning vs %real)
4. Status (On time, Late, On Hold, etc)
5. Achievements
6. Next Task (description of task, date, responsable)
7. Problem/Risk 8. Comments Saving Changes...
My organization has just adopted WorkOtter. It's a brand new platform for me, but seems to have some cool features. Does require collaboration with all Project Managers for each Project, but once everyone is synchronized to updating their projects the same way, can provide some good data on status.
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1 reply by Sante Delle-Vergini, PhD
May 01, 2019 3:38 PM
Sante Delle-Vergini, PhD
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Thanks for that, I will check out WorkOtter.
Saving Changes...
Alyne Padilla LynchSr Business Process Analyst| Communications and Finance IndustrySacramento, Ca, United States
Good morning Ben. While MS Project is a great tool, I'm a bit of an Excel fan for something like this. It seems the need is to visibly and quickly demonstrate that there are 10-15 projects running simultaneously, the project status of each, perhaps even with an overlapping time lapse that could clearly demonstrate resource constraints. If this is more or less what you had in mind, I'd highly recommend getting creative with conditional formatting in Excel. With some creativity, Excel is a great tool to use to present a visual and impacting reference that can help get the message across the right audience. The two main excel features used would be conditional formatting and filtering. It's amazing what can be accomplished in excel with these two. The worksheet can even include cross-functional teams. For example, if you rely on one server admin or one BA, the worksheet can also highlight when that resource is over-utilized. Filtering will allow you to present or remove as much of the data as you'd like. Lastly, your title indicates that you might be in a position of authority. If so, seek out the self-proclaimed excel guru in your office (we all have one of those : ) ) and challenge them to this project. My guess is that they'll love the opportunity to showcase their excel abilities. Saving Changes...
CJ GunnerDirector of Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO)| Tarrant County College - Fort Worth, TXTx, United States
I have found the cloud version of project (PWA) integrates well with Excel and you can create a dashboard that pulls data from PWA and can be refreshed with new data every 2 weeks when we do our status reports to the PMO. Saving Changes...
I agree with Alyne. We often use a combination of Excel and PowerPoint. With Excel we can easily show all the milestones for each project and the status at each milestone, providing a 1-page view of the portfolio. For more details we will have a deck of 1 page PowerPoint files for each project. To integrate across the different projects, Project can track the schedule dependencies.
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1 reply by Crystal Davies
Jan 24, 2024 3:32 PM
Crystal Davies
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Hi Keith, is there a visual template you can share? I'm having this issue at work and we're trying to figure out what variables to include on our dashboard and how these can be shown for one portfolio.
Saving Changes...
Ben PhlipotSr. Director, PMO| TRGColumbus, Oh, United States
Thanks everyone for your replies. Much appreciated! Saving Changes...
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