Snowboarding: The sport of cruising down a mountain where an individual is a single plane of wood where two feet are tethered to a board via bindings.

Wakeboarding: The sport where an individual is riding behind a boat on a single plane of wood while two feet are tethered typically in binding that are attached to a board.

Dashboarding: Creation of Dashboard that provides users with visibility into data that is simple to understand.

The key to Dashboard best practice is just like snowboarding and wakeboarding.   Let me explain.   For ideal snow conditions you would desire fresh snow, that way you can get out and obtain ‘fresh tracks’ before the rest of the crowds chew up all the good snow.  Wakeboarding conditions should have a body of water that has minimum chop, basically a smooth ride if possible.

The Intersection between Dashboarding, Snowboarding and Wakeboarding is  design.   It is very easy to produce an overly complex solution.  To create a simple, elegant solution, takes time, thought leadership and experience.  Great snowboards and wakeboards are masterful designs.  Just look at the top companies, they ride, thus they integrate simple yet powerful designs.

Dashboards are used to convey information in concise portals.  Dashboards are in a variety of places.  Dashboards gives users visibility into data that can quickly synthesized and understood.  The data points should be simple.

The automobile dashboard includes a metric for petro.   Anyone who drives are automobile knows what ‘F’ and ‘E’ stands for on the gas gauge.  Simple design to articulate if you have enough fuel for your next trip or not.

Baseball, the American pastime key attributes for offensive player is Batting Average (AVG), Home Runs (HR) and Runs Batted In (RBI).  A knowledgeable fan understand a AVG hovering over .300 is pretty good, while HR over 30 is excellent and RBI over 100 would be excellent.   The point being, these three simple metrics are universally understood.

Why cannot a Dashboard for Managers and/or Executives reviewing key Initiatives have the same simple gauges?

According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), the key attributes for a project to monitor is the triple constraint.   The triple constraint is scope, schedule and resources.

Scope:  Who best to monitor scope on a project?  One way to monitor is to track the approved changes (change orders) on the project. For construction project, this could adding additional options for central facility.  For an information technology project, increased scope may be adding more functionality.

Schedule:   One of the best ways to track whether the project will finish on time is using Total Float.   Total Float is number that project has in flexibility or wiggle room before it falls behind.    Generally a positive total float number is good, while a negative number indicates changes need to made for the project to finish on time.

Cost(Resources):  Costs typically will be defined as resources on your project.  Resources can be labor, non-labor, or material.    Assigning resources to your project will enable your organization to find out the budget total cost of the project.  As the project progresses, actual cost can be compared against the original estimate.

In summary, corporations should design simple dashboards that focus on key data points.  The data points will allow the Project Managers and Executives to easily interpret the Dashboard.  The data points should drive discussion between Sr. Management and the Project Managers and collaboratively work on finding ways to a) deliver a project on time b) reign in scope creep and/or c) keep costs with budget tolerances.

SUB3® Management Inc. is boutique Oracle Primavera Project Portfolio Management (PPM) global consulting firm specializing in enabling corporations achieve greater efficiencies and return on investment for projects with schedule, scope and cost challenges.   SUB3 is an Oracle Gold Partner.

Our Clients are a sample set of those who have Run Projects with SUB3.  If SUB3 can assist your company contact us at info@sub3mgmt.com