Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
At the recent PMO Summit held by the IQPC in Coconut Grove, Florida, leading PMO Managers discussed their approaches to PMO Executive Dashboarding. PMO Managers from Fortune 1000 firms that use the leading PPM applications were quick to acknowledge that while the PPM tools they used provided tremendous amounts of functionality, the monthly PMO presentation dashboards that they prepared for use by the executive and leadership team were typically constructed in Microsoft PowerPoint and at a much higher level of presentment and detail than what would be found within the PPM tool.
Additional, there was a unanimous confirmation that the PMO needs both, the real-time day to day analytics found within the PPM tool, and the higher level summarized, and scorecard style, intuitive presentation dashboards for the executive team. And in many cases, the executive team needed such dasboarding to include information not available in the PPM tool. And, as not all users and members of the leadership team will necesarily have access (on account of per user licensing, etc.) or even want access, the need for the PMO to provide periodic presentation style dashboards outside of the PPM tool is further needed.
What are your experiences in providing PMO dashboards for your executive team? What tools (PPM tools) and approaches have you found work best? Saving Changes...
Sort By:
Silviu MIRONPMO Head| AVON CosmeticsNew York, Ny, United States
Hi,
In our company, I am using P.Point dashboads. I am still working on a Xcelsius interface, but this is time consuming and not very flexible.
A "drag & drop" tool allowing to customize your dashboard would be prefeered, however, what I found is that not the design itself is an issue, but the quality and quantity of input data & information. As it says: "garbage in... garbage out..."
Regards,
Saving Changes...
Stuart DixonProject Office Manager| Xl CatlinCrowbrough, United Kingdom
I would agree that dashboards are typically done in Powerpoint, even when using a PPM Tool. I think the heart of your question is why use powerpoint when you have invested in a PPM tool?
The answer to that is that the PPM tool is not for the Senior Managers who recieve the dashboards. It is for the foot soliders who enter the data and interact with the system on a regular basis. A PPM system provides the PMO with a consistent format of information e.g. exact dates for milestones not vague ones like 'end of the year'. It also provides something for consistent processes to be hung off. It is easier to implement a consistent process with a tool that supports it.
For the senior managers powerpoint becomes the default tool, as they all have it, you can paste the information in as a picture so it can't be changed, and you can add in new slides, remove slides depending on the whim of the senior manager.
The other thing you are trying to do with those dashboard is provide analysis (commentary) about why the data shows what it does, and most PPM tools don't give you anywhere to put this in, or if they do it is at the project not the programme or portfolio or departmental level.
As an example a PPM tool may tell you you need 3 more people, but only the programme manager has the information about how the recruitment is going, and when the resource will start.
As a PMO using a PPM tool I find the process goes something like:
Extract data from PPM tool into Excel
Make pretty in Excel
Paste into powerpoint
Send around for commentary
Chase up for commentary
Reword commentary for the audience taking out the TLAs & libelous bits, and precising down to 1 sentence
Send off as management dashboard Saving Changes...
Elyse NielsenSenior Project Manager| Ascension Health Information ServicesHaines City, Fl, United States
Hi Mark,
What I have found to be the most successful technique is to review with the executive leadership what information they are looking to know. Once you have a sampling of that information, ascertain the best way to develop and automate that information.
Often due to the fact that organizations are competing and focusing on different strategies and goals, canned reports from a PPM applications do not provide the information and executive is seeking.
Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
Guys, thank you for your replies. This is topic is an area that I have been informally tracking over the last year. The effort started out accidentally, as is so often the case, on account of the chasm that seems to exist between how the so-called SMEs say it should be done and how people actually do it.
Stuart, you fine description hits the nail on the head an describes, exactly, the way 24 out of 25 PMOs in this informal study group go about. I hope we hear and learn more from others. Thanks so all.
Saving Changes...
Martyn PrettyDirector| Bowler Hat ConsultingFranklin, Act, Australia
I have used many different formats of dashboards for Management reporting (MPP, PPT, DOC, XLS, etc)
A good place to start is the P3O Online repository, it has several examples of Management Dashboards in different formats. They are excellent starting points and fully functional to use now.
Best of all..... They are free :-) Saving Changes...
