“To get a project off the ground, tell a colleague it was their idea. They will put their heart and soul into making it successful.”

T. Wouhra

Entrepreneur

Ownership is key

Project Planning is driven by key aspect of ownership. Entire project planning is started by Project Manager. Project Manager is the owner and key responsible person for the success or failure of that project

Project during its planning stage itself is divided into milestones, parent tasks and tasks. Every task is then assigned to certain resources. WHich makes those resources responsible for that task. The same resource is responsible for the success or failure of that task. That resource is also responsible for schedule, efficiency and budget vs expenditure of that task.

Project during its planning stage itself is divided into milestones, parent tasks and tasks. Every task is then assigned to certain resources. WHich makes those resources responsible for that task. The same resource is responsible for the success or failure of that task. That resource is also responsible for schedule, efficiency and budget vs expenditure of that task.

While project is in its planning and drafting phase, right there Project Manager and key stakeholders decide the schedule – timeline, budget, resource, milestones, tasks and risk. Each of these aspects of the project has an owner defined in the project plan itself. If you are using any project management tool then that project management tool makes it obvious to assign user for each aspect listed above

Project Planning starts with the first owner which is Project Manager. Project manager needs to be convinced with the project, believe in the success of the project, willing to positively drive the project with all its resources, own the project and achieve its objectives.

The Project Manager then starts planning the project on a project management tool. And it starts with team building for that project. Identifying resources as per their expertise and experience required for the project  and its tasks. Once team is finalised. Then project plan needs to be discussed in order to have teams’ involvement in planning and drafting the project. 

When team working on project is also made part of project planning, then team owns the project more. Team’s collective experience and expertise will help ensure a much evolved project plan. WHen team is setting up project plan. Members of team can be made incharges of each tasks based on their experience, expertise and interest. Hence All know what is schedule, dependencies and responsible person for each task.

 

 

Ownership of tasks, milestones and dependencies will be clearly defined. Which enables entire team with better accountability and transparency. Member of team responsible for the task was part of the task since its planning phase, get more buying and ownership towards that task. One can plan ahead to ensure their tasks are well resourced and risks taken care of.

Project manager can deal with correct representative responsible for each task, milestone and risk. Every team member know who is responsible for each task. So in case project is getting delayed or out of budget or resource crunch; then responsible person could be picked and addressed. If particular task is getting delayed due to its precedent task is delaying and predent task completion is essential for particular task to start, then owner of former task knows whom to talk to.  

 Project Management tool enables you to create Project plan; starting with team building for that project plan.First part of the project plan in the online project management tool is to set Project Manager for the concerned project. Once Project Manager is assigned to the Project then Project Manager can login and create team for the project in Online Project Management tool. Once team is created then All team members get access to online project management tool and their concerned project only.

All these project team members can weigh in when they actually start preparing tasks, milestones, budget and timeline. All these team members will then be allotted to respective tasks inside an online project management tool for a given task – project. 

Consumption of resources vs planning of resources, Budgeting tasks vs actual expenses, Project schedule vs project execution all these factors will be able to be analysed. And

Best Project Management Tool : ZilicusPM

Subsribe and try weeks trial package to check out ZilicusPM. Zilicus PM is evolved as one of the most used Project Management tool.

Click Here to join using Zilicus

The post Project and its Ownership appeared first on Zilicus Blog | Project Management Software.

 

No matter how good the team or how efficient the methodology, if we are not solving the right problem the project fails

Woody William

American Defence Veteran

Projects are designed for some social or commercial purpose, Big projects has milestones, tasks and their schedule. Most importantly it also has risks and issues.

Risk becomes issue if not handled well. Or issue can pop up if project is not planned well, accident or over looked aspects or two.

May be we have best team in place. May be we have best resources at our service. May be there is no dearth of budget and we are running 

 

Planning risk at the time of project drafting or project planning is key quality of Project manager. If project manager is able to see through project and anticipate risks or accidents and plan safety for it. It demonstrates that Project Manager is veteran and well read, well experienced.

We need to plan all risks well during project planning. Only well experienced Project Manager can see through projects, scan tasks and milestones and can anticipate all that could probably go wrong or had gone wrong; SO we can prepare for it wel in advance and ensure it does not affect our project execution.

Most tools helps you plan for tasks, milestones, parent tasks, dependancies, their attractive gantt chats and budget sheets. This is undoubtedly important part of every project. But One which is also equally important is Risk Management system and issue tracking system which is usually rare to be seen.

 

Risk managing is skill which only comes from planning and executing multiple projects in same domain. Risk management system as it will help you forecast and document all the possible risks. Once these are in front of our eyes. We can allot resources for these risks. We may keep provision of its effect on project timeline and project budget as well. Once the risks are listed then we will actively make an effort to eliminate them or mitigate them.

 

 

 

If it’s not documented, it is not done. Hence first we should be documenting all risk and there is no better way to document risk than a risk management tool. Best part of risk management tool is it enables us to do various aspects of risk. Which evolves us as project manager to manage risk in better way.

Lets see what is better way of documenting Risks.

While we document risk, it should have following things listed with their elaboration :

• Timeline : Timelines might get affected because of risks, and we should keep that documented within the project plan. Our efforts will be to minimise this effect or eliminate it completely but that can only happen if we have documented it well
• Risk Owner : We should be allotting who is responsible to handle this risk. Which person will be the owner of this risk and should plan activities in order to deal with this risk. If we have owner, we know who should be asked questions. We will have one person accountable for that risk.
• Project Manager : It is important to see the risk well in advance. And it is Project Manager’s job to anticipate all possible risks. More Risks anticipated during project planning lessyou encounter them as issues or accidents. So Issue creator is important person and usually Project Manager

 

The most important part is, risk becomes issue or accident when not delt well. So acnticipate them, document them well in advance and act upon them. Allot resoruces and owners to it and action items that are required to be taken in order to mitigate that risk or eliminate that risk.

Every project has risk. One has to own them, accept them and ensure to eliminate them or mitigate their effect. Project is worth executing when complete risk vs benefits analysis is studied and proactive efforts are taken to manage those risks.

 

ZilicusPM is coupled with systematic risk management tool. This is helpful in anticipating and planning for every risk related to specific projects.

 

ZilicusPM as tool has evolved over multiple years while dealing with multiple projects, portfolios, various teams and cultures. In ZilicusPM we not just have systematic risk management tool but once risk is not delt and converted into issue. In ZilicusPM we also have detailed Issue management system.

The post Risk And Projects appeared first on Zilicus Blog | Project Management Software.

Controlling Projects

Either you run the day or the day runs you​

Jim Rohn

American Entrepreneur

Why to control Project Execution

Multiple projects are driven with large teams and complex organization structures. Project managers, teams and customers driving these projects. But have we considered how are these project being driven…

Online project Management tools has given complete new angle to this project execution domain. Now Project are executed and delivered using systematic Online project management tools. Which are collaborative in nature. Making all stake holders updated about the each progress, each issue, each risk and each tasks/Milestones.

Most important feature about using online project management tools is that exhaustive features enables teams to Plan projects and track projects systematically accommodating all tricks, turns and accidents.

Project may get delayed or budget may overshoot but all of these unforeseen errors should be able to reflect in project plan. Which makes you as better project planner for upcoming projects and improves your skills to keep your projects in your control.

How to control Project execution

 

 

Results of Controlling project execution is timely delivery, setting up and meeting correct expectations, budgeting for milestones and expending as per planning, Meeting project profitability and achieving bigger objectives attached with project.

 

Results of Controlling project execution is timely delivery, setting up and meeting correct expectations, budgeting for milestones and expending as per planning, Meeting project profitability and achieving bigger objectives attached with project.

 

An evolved and matured project management tool will ensure to adapt best industry standards for project management which results in keeping execution team their project in their control with regards to schedule, with regards to resources and costs

 

 

 

 

When projects are not properly planned, it results in delay, over use of resources, muddled up budgets and sky rocketing costs resulting in losses and not serving larger purpose.

Hence it is important to be in charge of project from the start of project by systematically drafting project plan, getting project plan reviewed and approved by all stake holders before starting execution. And once execution is started the real-life project execution has to be reflected against project plan by every task owner. This collaborative approach keeps all stake holders well informed about project progress and avoid any surprises, predicts any bottlenecks, risks and enables teams to sleeve ups to face issues and risks. Ensuring each task, milestone and various stages are compliant with project plan.. keep you in control of project execution rather than project to drive team

To Control your Projects signUp on ZilicusPM

 

 

 

ZIlicusPM is evolved around various project management veterans. Perfect tool to track every aspect of Project planning and Project execution

SignUP

The post Controlling Project Execution appeared first on Zilicus Blog | Project Management Software.

KPI Dashboard

KPI stands for key performance index. It allows businesses to track performance of employee, project, product, service level, etc. KPI dashboard gives users to quick view of the health of business and allows managers to make better decisions based on the KPIs defined and the presented data-set and not based on gut-feelings.

Example of businesses KPIs

Example of businesses KPIs can be in terms of sales, financial, productivity, marketing, project management as follows

1. Sales growth quarter-on-quarter basis
2. Average lead conversion rate
3. Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)
4. Acquisition cost per customer
5. Monthly account receivable
6. Net profit margin
7. Monthly margins on products sold
8. Project tasks running in red (lagging behind schedule)
9. Number of milestones pending, missed
10. Employee billability per month
11. Employee productivity per month

When you see, these numbers or charts visualising these numbers, you get a better sense of how/where “things” are going (interpretation can be as simple as – are we growing or sinking). Once you know the trend, numbers based on facts, yo are in a position to take corrective actions. You will not be able to apply any meaningful and useful strategy unless you know what’s really going on. This is exactly why KPI dashboard are so much popular among executive management and decision makers in all businesses.

Microsoft Excel for KPI dashboard, really?

Earlier businesses used to heavily rely on Microsoft Excel to gather data and crunch data from one sheet to another. It has limitation in terms of visualising data on large scale as well as capturing information on a real-time basis. You end up spending more time in playing with Excel than actually making sense of the results or dashboard. So there is life beyond Microsoft Excel and you better get it ASAP.

Project Management KPI Dashboard

Like in any business, executive management and project management professionals need to know how projects are doing, whether things are on right track or not, how bad is that, can it be corrected, where it needs to be corrected – by more budget, more resources, asking for more timeline, accepting risk, etc? We are talking about project management KPIs.

The answer to these questions can be easily derived if you have all relevant information gathered and presented in one place. The holistic view of how projects are performing is in your project KPI dashboard or it can be portfolio KPIs dashboard. There are tools which can provide you out of the box KPI dashboard, whereas some other tools will allow you to export the data which can be visualised using third party tools. Likewise, there are third-party tools which enable you to visualise your project KPI dashboard if you have dataset ready with you.

Benefits of project KPI dashboard software

• Get a high level status of projects, portfolios
• It is visual hence pretty easy to understand
• Get early warning indicator
• It helps you reduce risk, avoid bad surprises if you act fast
• Get better control over project financials for greater benefits
• Make informed decision with good governance
• Enable transparency in stakeholder communication

You will not find the “one” best project KPI dashboard software in this universe. The KPI dashboard tool that works well for your

• project managers to define and visualise project KPIs
• Portfolio managers to get clear visibility into portfolio status to make right decisions
• Project team members, to know what needs to be done and easily use system to update progress or collaborate
• Clients to get right visibility into project progress and work with project team

is your best tool.

We have compiled a list of tools which give you out of the box KPI dashboard or you can integrate/import/export data to visualise those in third part tools. Let’s look at the list of project KPI dashboard software.

ZilicusPM

Pricing

$ 25 /user/month

Rating

Website

www.zilicus.com

ZilicusPM provides you project KPI dashboards to effectively track performance of projects, portfolios as well as project team members. You can define project KPIs in terms of financial KPIs, health KPIs, schedule KPIs, risk KPIs such as portfolio budget, project budget, project cost, billing, portfolio milestones, portfolio health, project health, project earned value, portfolio issues, risks, changes and so on..

Top Features

• Interactive portfolio KPI dashboard
• Interactive projects KPI dashboard
• RAG status tracking of portfolio of projects
• Track project portfolio milestones, issues, risks, changes
• Track portfolio financial health status, earned value
• Portfolio Gantt Chart with progress indicators, zoom
• Drill down from portfolio, project dashboard to specific bottleneck in project schedule, issues, risks, changes, meetings, etc.

 

How Does ZilicusPM Help You?

ZilicusPM provides comprehensive project portfolio management capabilities along with project KPI dashboard, reports. Hence you just have to use one integrated tool instead of using multiple tools to manage project financial, tracking time, tracking employee availability, project scheduling, issue management, risk mitigation, scope change management and tracking all these things using project KPIs dashboard or reports.

Thus using one central tool, managers can clearly track health & status of portfolio of projects and team members can remain top of their things & clearly know the things they need work on. 

Tableau

Pricing

$ 70 /user/month For Individual

Rating

Website

tableau.com

Looking for visualising all your business data-set not just project management, like sales data, employee -organisation information, customer interaction – support emails/calls, etc? Tableau can be your answer. Tableau is very good for enterprise companies as its software tool allows them to create a powerful data visualisation. 

Top Features

• Easy to get started and scale up
• Share dashboard with external people
• Mobile app to visualise dataset
• Auto fetch & refresh of data from 3rd party applications e.g. Salesforce, 
• Integrates with R, Google BigQuery, Hadoop and other BI tools

How Does Tableua Help You?

Tableau offers multiple licensing options. There is also viewer license (subscription) available at $12 per user per month but it requires minimum of 100 viewers. One can create and publish KPI dashboard, share those without any need of coding skills. Tableau is a amazing tool for all those businesses who don’t have or want to invest in the infrastructure to create their own BI server installations to visualise, analyse data.

KPIfolio

Pricing

$ 99 month

1 min data refresh

Rating

Website

klipFolio.com

Klipfolio is an online dashboard software to help you create powerful real-time KPI dashboards for your own business or your clients.

Top Features

• Connect with any data-source, local files, database as well as online app data
• Visualise data using KPI dashboards
• Pre-built visualisation templates available
• Define targets, warning/success indicator in the dashboard
• Define conditional parameters, reactive alerts
• Multiple ways to publish and share visualisation

How Does KlipFolio Help You?

Klipfolio is a cloud based online software to create as well as share business dashboards using web browsers, TV monitors and smartphones. The dashboard created using KlipFolio can give you visibility of your most important data, presenting trends, story being unfold to make decision based on data-insights.

SimpleKPI

Pricing

$ 99 /month

 

Rating

Website

simplekpi.com

SimpleKPI offers KPI Software for companies of all sizes to track Key Performance Indicators and metrics. It is easy to use visualisation tool with dashboards capabilities.

Top Features

• KPI data entry
• Create your own KPIs using KPI library
• Work with your team regarding KPIs
• Create, share KPI dashboard
• Export, share KPI dataset, reports

How Does SimpleKPI Help You?

Companies be it small project teams or large businesses who need to track KPIs can use SimpleKPI to create, manage and analyse key business performance indicators. You can create, monitor, and manage KPI dashboard and reports for your company. It gives you simple user interface to source data, create KPI dashboard. Rather than investing heavily in legacy DW, BI software, you can get started easily using SimpleKPI and at fraction of the cost of BI, DW tools.

Chartio

Pricing

Only available on request

Rating

Website

chartio.com

Chartio is business intelligence tool that anyone can use to visualise key performance indicators as well as many other dataset .

Top Features

• Explore data interactively or using SQL queries
• Transform data by layering, preview and query execution
• Visualise data using charts – trends, patterns, outliers
• Drill-down dataset to get deeper actionable insights
• Take snapshot of your data, continuously

How Does It Help You?

Chartio enables teams in SMBs to speed up as well as scale up reporting and visualising data through KPI dashboards. Your marketing, customer data may reside in on-premise or cloud based CRM software like Salesforce; you can source such data to Chartio. With the data-sourcing and integration Chartio offers, you can get multiple systems to talk to each other to pull any piece of data and visualise it for making right decisions. The process to get data together is seamless and gives you precise view using KPIs dashboard.

Smartsheet

Pricing

$ 25 /user/month Billed Annally

Rating

Website

smartsheet.com

Smartsheet is excellent tool to manage and automate collaborative work and it also provides features to create project KPI dashboard for premium users. With a spreadsheet-like interface, Smartsheet to help project teams, sales team, finance team track important KPIs visually.

Top Features

• Executive dashboard
• Project management dashboard
• Team resource views
• Sales pipeline dashboard

Things to consider

• KPI dashboard tool available only for Business, Enterprise Plan
• Remember, it is essentially online spreadsheet designed for team collaboration and reporting. Be watchful of performance as your data grows and as your number of sheets grow.

How Does It Help You?

You can create or edit a Smartsheet Dashboard or Portal. Using Smartsheet dashboard or portal you can visualise, summarise, as well as share important data-set regarding your project status or sales numbers or cost information with key performance indicators (KPIs)..

Oracle Primavera

Pricing

$ 125 /user/month  min 200 users

Rating

Website

Oracle.com

Oracle Primavera is one of the earliest player in project management software market. It primarily used for construction and engineering projects. It provides standard project KPI dashboard and reporting capabilities.

Top Features

• Project scheduling, WBS, Gantt chart
• Project portfolio health charts
• Standard project KPI dashboard, reports
• Risk management

 

How Does It Help You?

Oracle Primavera combines document sharing, cost management, scheduling and resource tracking, budgeting as well as business process management. Though the user interface looks age old, it is configurable. It is one of the most popular but highly expensive legacy system used in many industries such as Aerospace and Defence, Engineering and Oil and Gas, Construction, Financial Services, Healthcare, Transportation and Utilities and many other.

Power BI

Pricing

$ 9.99 /user/month

Free plan available

Rating

Website

microsoft.com

Microsoft Power BI is a business analytics software. It provides interactive visualisations of data along with use-by-yourself business intelligence features. End users can create reports and dashboards by themselves without any need of knowing programming skills.

Top Features

• Get started quickly in matter of minute
• Plethora of visualisation dashboard templates
• Multiple options of sourcing data irrespective of on-prem or cloud
• Ask questions to BI tools in natural language and get answers e.g. what was last years revenue growth
• Integration with many online application services like Google Analytics, Salesforce, Mailchimp, etc.

How Does It Help You?

Microsoft Power BI is offered in multiple setup configuration such as Power BI Desktop, Power BI service, Power BI mobile, Report Server, etc. It is simple and fast to get started, you can import data from Excel or database or online services, thereby easily connect to your data sources, visualise KPIs data in dashboard and you can also share it with anyone or everyone you want. 

Want to check better solution than Microsoft Projects, here is the alternative to MS Project.

 

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Note: Logos, screenshots used in this post belong to respective brands and companies.

The post Best Project KPI Dashboard Software appeared first on Zilicus Blog | Project Management Software.

Tracking performance of portfolio of projects involves different perspective, processes, tools and stakeholders. These stakeholders are generally executive management people. Executive management needs to know whether we are going to deliver desired portfolio, program, product/service and achieve desired organizational benefits?

To track performance at various levels in the organization, there are project management KPIs and in turn KPIs for project managers, then there are KPIs for project team members.but it is important to note that organization, department, project or PMO if present should have the process to design & define KPIs. Similarly, there have to be KPIs for portfolio managers which executive management can track.

Let’s look at KPIs that portfolio managers can track. I have shared screenshot from ZilicusPM – project portfolio management software for some of these KPIs. Soon, it will be updated with more details.

Portfolio Health KPIs for Portfolio Manager

• Portfolio Health

• Portfolio Completion Percentage

• Portfolio Budget Utilisation

• Projects Pending for Approval

Portfolio Financials KPIs for Portfolio Manager

• Allocated Budget Across Portfolios

• Used Budget Across Portfolios

• Percentage of Budget Utilization

• Estimated Cost Across Portfolio of Projects

• Actual Cost Across Portfolio of Projects

• Allocated Budget vs Used Budget for multiple portfolio of projects

• Estimated Cost vs Actual for a portfolio of projects

• Allocated Budget Across portfolio of projects

Portfolio Schedule KPIs for Portfolio Manager

• Total Number of Milestones | Achieved Milestones | Missed Milestones | Upcoming Milestones

• Total Milestones Vs Achieved Milestones

Portfolio Issues KPIs for Portfolio Manager

• Total Number of Issues Reported in a Portfolio

• Number of Open Issues in a Portfolio

• Number of Resolved Issues in a Portfolio

• Number of Closed Issues in a Portfolio

• Number of High Priority Issues in a Portfolio

• Number of Low Priority Issues in a Portfolio

• Number of Medium Priority Issues in a Portfolio

• Number of Normal Priority Issues in a Portfolio

Portfolio Risks KPIs for Portfolio Manager

• Total Number of Risk Reported in a Portfolio

• Total Number of Reviewed Risks in a Portfolio

• Total Number of Open Risks in a Portfolio

• Number of Risk With Catastrophic Impact in a Portfolio

• Number of Risk With Major Impact in a Portfolio

• Number of Risk With Moderate Impact in a Portfolio

• Number of Risk With Minor Impact in a Portfolio

• Number of Risk With Insignificant Impact in a Portfolio

Portfolio Change Requests KPIs for Portfolio Manager

• Total Number of Change Request Reported in a Portfolio

• Total Number of Open Change Request in a Portfolio

• Number of High Priority Change Request in a Portfolio

• Number of Medium Priority Change Request in a Portfolio

• Number of Low Priority Change Request in a Portfolio

• Number of Normal Priority Change Request in a Portfolio

Portfolio Earned Value KPIs for Portfolio Manager

1. Cost Performance Index (CPI)

2. Schedule Performance Index (SPI)

Miscellaneous KPIs for Portfolio Manager

1. Percentage Completion of Individual Project

2. Percentage Progress Made For a Portfolio

3. Number of Team Member of Individual Project

4. Number of Projects Per Portfolio

5. Project Wise Actual Work Hours Spent by Resources

6. Customer Wise Resource Work Planned Vs Actual Work

7. Customer Wise Resource Work Planned Vs Actual Work Per Project

Let me know if you have different ways and KPIs to track project portfolio performance?

Additional readings about project management, leadership

• Case Study: What Happens When Project Team Has Dual Reporting
• Avoid These 10 Most Common Mistakes That Leads to Project Failure
• Ultimate Project Management Guide for project manager
• Back2Basics: Ultimate Project Management Guide: Project Planning
• 8 Reasons to Decide Whether Your Organization Needs Project Management Office

Your life can be become easier with the right project management system. ZilicusPM is the right PM tool for you and your team. Get started now.

Remember, project management isn’t about task schedule. To recap, you have various functionality available in ZilicusPM project management software as a part of project planning, project tracking, project collaboration such as

• Gantt Chart
• Time Tracking
• Budgeting and Cost Management
• Resource Planning and Management
• Issue Tracking
• Risk Management
• Change Management
• Meeting Management
• Stakeholder Management
• Project Portfolio Management
• Project Reporting
• Document Management

About Zilicus

Zilicus offers All-In-One online project management software ZilicusPM that provides complete project management control for project and portfolio managers; at the same time makes it really simple for project team members to stay on top of things. If you have been managing projects with conventional spreadsheet/ MS Excel templates or emails, it is the right time to start using online project portfolio management software. ZilicusPM is great platform for better project collaboration. Take a screenshot tour of project management software tour of ZilicusPM and Sign up for 30-days free trial of project management software ZilicusPM

The post Project Portfolio KPIs That Portfolio Managers Can Track appeared first on Zilicus Blog | Project Management Software.

What is KPI?

Key performance indicator (KPI) is a measurable value that indicate how well an individual, department or organization or an entity is achieving its important business objectives or goals.

KPIs can be of different types, applicable to different goals such as strategic goals or operational goals. There are different KPIs for different industries and even they differ from one company to another or one department to another.

Why KPIs Are Important?

Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) is very important for a defined period of a project for a project as well as for an individual, department or organization. Tracking KPI numbers tells you whether you are making progress or not by how much. Without KPI you wouldn’t know whether you are progressing towards your goals or not. Knowing KPIs numbers, you can correct the course and align your efforts to meet the goal.

How to Identify & Define KPIs?

There are certain thumb rule to identify and defining KPIs. Let’s look at those.

1. KPI should be clearly linked to important goals which are crucial for the organization/department
2. Tracking KPI should clearly answer whether an individual/department/organization is on right track or not
3. KPIs should be transparent to those individual, department; those should help them learn and improve
4. Selected KPI should be controllable – meaning, it should not have elements which are beyond control of individual or department or orgnization; e.g. just to make the point – rainfall, economy growth rate, etc
5. KPI should be such that it should make people accountable for the result – which can be qualitative or quantitative in nature
6. For each KPI, organization should have target level or number so that the performance of an individual or department can be tracked against it.

KPIs in Project Management World

Let’s look at KPI in project management context used to meet project goals.

The KPI in project management context can be look at as

Key: Represents the important aspect that if it is achieved, can deliver project successfully or otherwise.

Performance: Represents the trend for set of figures or statistics of important project aspects that can be measured, managed/controlled during the lifecycle of a project

Indicator: Represents metric of current state or expected state of important aspect of project

There are many KPIs for tracking project performance but those are typically club them in following categories

• Project Schedule KPIs
• Project Budget KPIs
• Project Quality KPIs
• Effectiveness KPIs (Combination of above three)

Let’s list down some of the KPIs applicable in each of these categories that every project manager should track regularly.

Project Schedule KPIs

1. Schedule Performance Index (SPI)
2. Schedule Variance (SV) Project KPI
3. Planned Hours vs Actual Hours
4. Planned Duration Vs Actual Duration
5. Achieved Milestones vs Overdue Milestones
6. Overdue Tasks
7. Percentage of Schedule/Tasks Complete

Project Financial KPIs

1. Cost Variance (CV) Project KPI
2. Profit Margin (%) Project KPI
3. Cost Performance Index (CPI)
4. Planned Value of a Project (PV)
5. Actual Cost of a Project (AC)

Project Quality KPIs

1. Number of Incidents Reported
2. Number of Unresolved Incidents
3. Number of Customer Issues
4. Number of Unresolved Customer Issues

Project Effectiveness KPIs (Combination of above three)

1. Earned Value of a Project(EV)
2. Resource Utilization
3. Planned Hours vs Actual Hours of a Project
4. Planned Hours vs Billable Hours of a Project
5. Percentage of Used Budget of Allocated Budget

In next post we will see how one can set up processes and systems to identify as well as track these KPIs on a regular basis, and know which all kpis for project manager can be defined and tracked.

Looking for a project management software, we have compiled a list of best project management software tools.

Additional readings about project management, leadership

• Case Study: What Happens When Project Team Has Dual Reporting
• Avoid These 10 Most Common Mistakes That Leads to Project Failure
• Back2Basics: Ultimate Project Management Guide: Project Planning
• 8 Reasons to Decide Whether Your Organization Needs Project Management Office
• Compare the best project management software 
• All in one project management software

Your life can be become easier with the right project management system. ZilicusPM is the right PM tool for you and your team. Get started now.

Do you know ZilicusPM project management software offers comprehensive project planning, project tracking, project collaboration capabilities such as

• Gantt Chart
• Time Tracking
• Budgeting and Cost Management
• Resource Planning and Management
• Issue Tracking
• Risk Management
• Change Management
• Meeting Management
• Stakeholder Management
• Project Portfolio Management
• Project Reporting
• Document Management to help you manage and deliver projects better?

About Zilicus

Zilicus offers the best project portfolio management tool ZilicusPM, with robust project management tools capabilities and easy ways to track project management KPI,

Know more about project portfolio management, Gantt chart, best project management tool, project management office, project management tips, project planning guide, project risk management, project scope management, effective project management, project manager guides and know more about Project Portfolio Management Software, Project Management Software Guide.

The post 20 Important Project KPIs Every Project Manager Must Track Regularly appeared first on Zilicus Blog | Project Management Software.

Project Portfolio Management Software (PPM Tool)

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Software is a centralised system that  enables businesses to adopt processes, methodologies and techniques to select right project with right resources, evaluate its alignment with portfolio goals, objectives. There are portfolio KPIs that portfolio managers need to define and track. PPM tools also help portfolio managers or decision makers analyse, manage performance of projects in a given portfolio based on various parameters.

The primary functionalities PPM Tools offer

1. Demand management
2. Budget and financial controls
3. Resource planning and management
4. Risk planning and management
5. Change control and management
6. Portfolio analysis with dashboard and reports
7. Stakeholder communication

With a central enterprise project portfolio management software, stakeholders can kiss good-buy to using different tools. There are many complex facets of projects that decision makers have to be presented info about or made aware of, you should not use essential PM tools that are just good at scheduling or team collaboration. PPM Tool saves project mangers a great deal of overhead of manual data reporting or error induced therein, rather than using multiple discrete PM tools.

Beside core PPM functionality, there are few critical elements which one should consider while selecting PPM software such as

• Intuitive design
• Easy to use functionality
• Configuration to suit business workflow
• Mobile app
• Email notification
• Allows everyone to be involved

Benefits of project portfolio management software

• Prioritise and select right projects
• Reduce risk and avoid bad surprises
• Allocate & share resources optimally
• Manage project inter-dependencies as well as scope creep
• Visibility into progress across projects
• Control project financials for greater benefits
• Make informed decision with good governance
• Use best PM practices across organisation
• Consistent stakeholder communication

There is no “one” best project portfolio management software in this universe. The PPM tool that works well for your

• project managers for detailed project planning and tracking
• Portfolio managers for getting clear visibility into portfolio & making informed decisions
• Project team members, to know what needs to be done and easily use system to update progress or collaborate
• Clients to get right visibility into project progress and work with project team

is your best PPM software.

I’d recommend taking a close look at project portfolio management software guide. Here is the list of project portfolio management software (PPM tools) you can consider for your organisation.

ZilicusPM

Pricing

$ 25 /user/month

Rating

Website

www.zilicus.com

ZilicusPM provides you all the tools to effectively manage portfolio  of projects using portfolio budgeting, project approval process, risk management, change control, portfolio dashboard, reporting and more.

Top Features

• Interactive portfolio dashboard
• Set portfolio goals, objectives, budget
• RAG status tracking of portfolio of projects
• Review/approve project requests to align with portfolio goals
• Track project portfolio milestones, issues, risks, changes
• Track portfolio financial health status, earned value
• Portfolio Gantt Chart with progress indicators, zoom
• Mobile app on the go
• Team collaboration: calendar, discussions, meeting management

 

How Does ZilicusPM Help You?

ZilicusPM provides comprehensive portfolio management capabilities such as set portfolio goals, objectives, budget; project request approval, track portfolio Gantt chart, resources capacity planning, cost tracking, issues, change, risk tracking, earned value management, executive dashboards and reporting. It enables you to track performance of projects very easily. It helps you to bring order to entire project work be it schedule, resources, changes, budget, cost, billing. You do not need to use different tools for each of these activities. ZilicusPM gives you a single, central project portfolio management tool where managers can clearly track health & status of portfolio and team members can remain top of their things & clearly know things they have work on. 

Oracle Primavera

Pricing

$ 125 /user/month  min 200 users

Rating

Website

Oracle.com

Oracle Primavera is one of the earliest player in project scheduling market. It mainly used for construction and engineering projects.

Top Features

• Project scheduling, WBS, Gantt chart
• Project portfolio health charts
• Capital planning, financial control
• Risk management
• Global search options
• Copy projects with options

 

How Does It Help You?

Oracle Primavera combines document sharing, cost management, scheduling and resource tracking, budgeting as well as business process management. Though the user interface looks age old, it is pretty configurable. It is one of the most popular but highly expensive legacy system used in many industries such as Aerospace and Defence, Engineering and Oil and Gas, Construction, Financial Services, Healthcare, Transportation and Utilities and many other.

Microsoft Project Portfolio Management Software Online

Pricing

$ 55 /user/month

When paid annually

Rating

Website

microsoft.com

Microsoft PPM is also one of the most popular project management software. It has transformed itself as a cloud based PPM provider as well. It offers portfolio optimisation, ability to systematically evaluate project proposals, work with Power BI tools to generate dashboard and reports.

Top Features

• Gantt chart, WBS
• Milestone tracking
• Project proposal evaluation
• Budget management
• Issue & risk management
• Dashboard and report
• Integration with Microsoft Project

How Does It Help You?

Microsoft project portfolio management software (PPM) help you optimise project portfolio by prioritising project requests. It offers integration with Power BI (to be purchased separately) for advanced analytics, and reports for more visibility. Though Microsoft PPM has better user interface than Oracle Primavera EPPM, it still need integration with Project Server, MS Project and SharePoint to work for a business looking to utilise it better.

 

Want to check better solution than Microsoft Projects, here is the alternative to MS Project.

TargetProcess

Pricing

$ 25 /user/month

Rating

Website

targetprocess.com

Looking for a agile project portfolio management tool? TargetProcess can be your answer. TargetProcess is good for medium-sized companies as its software tool allows users  visualise and manage agile projects using different approaches such as Scrum, Kanban or a custom approach..

Top Features

• Agile project management
• Portfolio budgeting
• Portfolio item prioritisation
• Risk management
• Dashboard to track project portfolio performance
• Resource allocation

How Does TargetProcess Help You?

TargetProcess is a project portfolio management tool that provides project managers with the features to manage the time, people, tasks, and budgets in order to deliver projects on time, within budget and meet company goals. It also offers issue tracking and risk management along with portfolio dashboard and reporting to managers to identify the most suitable approach to deliver projects.

Avaza

Pricing

$ 9.95 /user/month

for 5+ projects

Rating

Website

avaza.com

Avaza is web based as well as mobile application that provide good mix of time tracking, task collaboration across multiple projects and also offers integration with other tools. .

Top Features

• Project scheduling
• Time tracking
• Resource allocation & tracking
• Invoicing linked to tracked timesheet & expenses
• Client project management, task scheduling, etc.

How Does Avaza Help You?

Avaza offers a whole host of workplace automation especially using project management features. It helps you organise personal or team work wherein the work is broken down to individual tasks and assigned to team members. Team can track time on the go and get it approved from managers. Aggregate timesheet and expenses can be billed to client with invoices generated using Avaza.

WORKetc

Pricing

$ 78 /user/month

Max 2 users

Rating

Website

worketc.com

WORKetc offers integrated project management, CRM, invoicing, customer support, reporting, and collaboration software. It is suitable for small and medium sized companies.

Top Features

• Task dependency, recurring tasks, triggers and alerts
• Set companywide billing, charge rates for people, project, activities
• Track times against project activities, track expenses
• Team collaboration with documents sharing, discussions, notes
• Manage products and quotes, project budget

 

How Does WORKetc Help You?

WORKetc is not a pure project portfolio management software but it offers an integrated business management tool with basic/simpler scheduling integrated with billing, invoicing, CRM as well as helpdesk tool. It keeps track of what team is working on, and saves project managers time by integrating timesheet with billing, CRM, reporting, calendar, etc. It is useful for agencies to manage their business with clients.  

SAP For Project Portfolio Management

Pricing

Only available on request

Rating

Website

sap.com

SAP for project portfolio management claims to offer a centralised solution to manage full project lifecycle which helps managers keep their portfolios on track from forecasting and planning to accounting and closure perspective.

Top Features

• Submit, approve project proposals
• Task management with Gantt chart, critical path
• Resource management
• Tracking project progress
• Tracking portfolio performance

How Does It Help You?

SAP Project Portfolio Management Software as you can guess, is from the family of SAP product suite. It has similar interface as other SAP product which means if you are familiar using SAP products, you will be able to use this PPM tool as well however other way round, you may have difficult time adopting the tool unless you go through trainings. SAP PPM software helps you gain insights into project progress and cost performance across portfolio of projects. It offers modular structure of SAP Portfolio and Project Management allows you to pay for only the functionality and number of users licenses that you require at any point in time.

CA PPM

Pricing

$ 50000 /year

Starting 100 users

Rating

Website

ca.com

CA Clarity PPM has been a well known PPM tool in IT industry. It allows enterprises to efficiently manage products, projects and portfolios. 

Top Features

• Plan project schedule, Gantt chart, milestones
• Plan, allocate and manage resources
• Project budgeting 
• Tracking project financial performance
• Product management 

Things to consider

• Requires considerable training to get started
• CA PPM tool experts are not easy to find in the market
• It can become legacy tool, due to complexity in configuration, installation/setup, trainging

How Does It Help You?

CA PPM  is offered as either on-premise as well as hosted option. This PPM tool platform helps businesses effectively and efficiently manage their products, portfolio of project services, teams, as well as finances. Businesses can hope to set and implement capital investments and business decisions. This tool helps users prioritise right project and in turn invest resources to maximise return on investment from  IT, service and product portfolios.

 

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Note: Logos, screenshots used in this post belong to respective brands and companies.

The post Best Project Portfolio Management Software Review 2021 appeared first on Zilicus Blog | Project Management Software.

Project manage is considered as the ultimate responsible person for delivering projects. If pm has knowledge, autonomy, experience and skill set s/he can deliver the job pretty effectively. Let’s see what is the role of a project manager.

Role of a project manager

[Team Lead] As I mentioned above, project manager is THE individual responsible for delivering project. S/he is the one who is granted the authority as per the project charter to drives and manages the project team, activities on a day-to-day basis.

[Business Interface] Project manager has a critical role to act as an interface between project team, business and management teams. This role expects project manager to translate business requirement/expectations into project deliverable. The requires PM to make business/management realize limitations/

constraints of existing set up as well as prepare/get the project team ready for success of a business.

Responsibilities of a project manager

Going by the PMI definition of project & its lifecycle and based on that, if we are to articulate project manager’s responsibility then, PM has the overall responsibility for initiation of project, planning, execution, monitoring, controlling and closure of a project.

There are primarily four responsibilities of a project manager

• Project Planning
  • Scheduling
  • Risk Planning
  • Cost Planning
  • Resource Planning
• Collaborating & Organizing
• Leading
• Monitoring & Controlling

There are additional important responsibilities but not enlisted above, such as

• Internal stakeholder management
• Customer satisfaction
• Evaluating, implementing and managing changes
• Motivating and leading team through different phases of project
• Maintaining project documentation
• Vendor management
• Quality checks
• Delivering strategic inputs
• Constant learning

Required Skills to be a Project Manager

Project manager must have following skills to do his/her job effectively

1. Excellent communication
2. Conflict resolution
3. Team management
4. Ability to deep dive into subject by asking penetrating questions
5. Uncover undisclosed assumptions

What are your views? Anything to add to the list, let me know with your comments.

Additional readings about project management, leadership

• Case Study: What Happens When Project Team Has Dual Reporting
• Avoid These 10 Most Common Mistakes That Leads to Project Failure
• Back2Basics: Ultimate Project Management Guide: Project Planning
• 8 Reasons to Decide Whether Your Organization Needs Project Management Office
• Compare the best project management software 
• All in one project management software

The post The Essential Role and Responsibilities of a Project Manager appeared first on Zilicus Blog | Project Management Software.

The statistics for project management office appears to be on both sides, depending on what survey-research and numbers you are looking at. There are instances of success and failure of project management offices across industries. However knowing what all factors which lead project management office (PMO) to succeed or to fail, is important for a business to prepare itself, for success and thereby reducing the chances of failure. These factors could be

1. Simplicity of and Clarity about PMO Goals, Objective
2. Executive Leadership buy-in, Support
3. Experienced PMO leadership
4. Adequate/Insufficient PMO Staffing
5. Simplicity and Clarity about PMO Processes, Policies
6. Visibility and Authority within Organisation
7. Organisation Culture, Trust Quotient
8. Effective Change Management, Catalyst Champions
9. Communication, Feedback Mechanism
10. Flexibility and Adaptiveness

Knowing all these factors, let’s look at how one can prepare himself/herself, team, organization for the most effective project management office (PMO). There are six ways one can initiate the process to set up project management office.

Ascertain The Right Need of, and Opportunities For PMO

First and foremost, the project organization should be convinced about setting up the project management office (PMO). So answering the question: does your organization need a PMO, will give you some pointers.

• Why do we need a PMO?
• Which areas are expected to benefit with a project management office implementation?
• How to define and quantify those benefits?

Get Right PMO Leader(s) to Drive PMO as a Sustainable Activity

Having the right man at the helm of the PMO team is the most critical element of all. Rightfully chosen PMO leader can define, drive, nurture, sustain the PMO initiative. S/he will be able to navigate right from project team member pain points to convince executive stakeholders, to inspire PMs.

Get Long Term Buy-In From Executive to Establish PMO as a Business Operation

Just like any business requires sustainable sales and marketing efforts to survive, grow, similarly if project delivering organisation is convinced about having a PMO, then there has to be a long term commitment, support from the executive management. There will be ups and downs, there will be questions about its utility in a shorter run. PMO leader can sail through the rough waters, if s/he has strong, sound support of the executive management.

Collaborate, Communicate about PMO Policies, Processes, Benefits, Trust

Establishing and running a functional and effective PMO team is about convincing everyone about its benefits, by answering the question “What Is In It For Me?” at various levels. It is also about establishing the trust element, that yes, we are doing it for the greater good and eventually it is going to help us all.

It is important to have clear communication and collaboration with project teams, project leaders, project managers and other stakeholder while formulating, explaining PMO policies and processes. Such communication is critical especially when PMO processes is going to change the way project team members, project managers have been managing their daily project activities.

Think Always Ahead of The Curve: Early Warning,Adoption Traction

There will be difficult times during implementation of PMO, stakeholders might question the utility of it, express frustration of additional activities they may need to perform. For the most effective and functional PMO, the PMO team need to think ahead of the curve, look for early warning indicators.

PMO team will have to continuously track the traction how PMO is being perceived, how it is being practiced, etc. Thinking ahead will equip you to realign your strategies in the most appropriate way e.g. identifying right change agent, involving change agents at right time, understanding and alleviating stakeholder’s concerns/resistance.

Document your learning, situation analysis, best practices, etc.

Keep The Morale High for PMO Team, Participating PMs, Project Leads

Ultimately PMO is a team effort. If project team wins, PMO is going to win. Simple, isn’t it? You got it right. It is all the more critical to keep the morale high for the PMO teams, participating PMs, volunteer project leads, champions, etc.

It is important to keep in mind – not to have unrealistic expectations about PMO. Implementing the most effective PMO is a lengthy process that requires meticulous planning, leadership drive, team efforts and constant learning.

Implementing PMO does not give you a magic wand that will magically drive higher success rate of project delivery. You will see the improvement incrementally, in a phased manner.

Additional readings about project management, leadership

• Case Study: What Happens When Project Team Has Dual Reporting
• Avoid These 10 Most Common Mistakes That Leads to Project Failure
• Back2Basics: Ultimate Project Management Guide: Project Planning
• 8 Reasons to Decide Whether Your Organization Needs Project Management Office
• Compare the best project management software 
• All in one project management software

The post 6 Ways You Can Have The Most Effective Project Management Office appeared first on Zilicus Blog | Project Management Software.

As a manager, do you think these factors drive the most smart decisions to consistently grow the business? Nope, it is data driven inferences and decisions. In order to grow a business consistently, today any business needs to make fact based, information driven decision rather than pure speculations and assumptions. It means managers need to have correct information as well as ability to make the right use of the data.

1. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are critical for any business operating in today’s environment since KPIs can help driving all aspects of the business.
2. If you can define right KPIs & use them in top-down manner to improve performance and execute the associated strategy effectively.
3. Adopting KPIs at different level, everyone in your company gets visibility to performance and office politics is squashed to make well informed, data driven decisions.

These are just few of the benefits you can reap by establishing KPIs. To say, anyone to implement KPIs effectively without any challenge is foolishness. At broader level KPIs can be at business/ strategic, execution/implementation, customer perspectives, etc. Success at each of these levels is important to ensure the viability of a business or its initiatives. Lack of attainment of target KPIs in any of them can potentially impair the overall business growth, success.

Projects are the means to execute company strategies through various initiatives. Hence project management KPIs are key to organisation’s growth and successful journey. Let’s look at project management KPIs challenges business face while implementing and tracking project KPIs.

Project Management KPIs

Managing projects can get complicated as well as highly demanding. It has many riddles to solve. These riddles can not be solved without using key performance metrics throughout lifecycle of projects. Tracking Project KPIs means you have much precise understanding of status of project, success level, etc.

There are different ways to categorise project management KPIs.

You can use any categorisation that is more appropriate for your business. But before you can jump into implementing project management KPIs, it is important to understand the typical project management KPIs challenges businesses face. Let’s look at these challenges.

5 Project Management KPIs Challenges

There are definitely project management KPIs challenges most organisations come across. Sure, there are different ways to tackle these difficulties but let’s first understand what these challenges are and subsequently look at how to overcome these difficulties.

1. Selecting Project KPIs (Selection Challenge)

Project managers struggles to define, measure and track KPIs which directly impact customers and for the business. More often than not, metrics defined to micro-manage projects do not benefit much, beyond a limit. It is necessary to identify KPIs which are useful, effective to achieve business goals : neither they should not be too broad/ generic nor should they be too specific or at a micro level. KPIs basket should be such that leadership team should get early warning indicators at all layers of implementation if any crucial area is likely to be compromised.

Want to know how to identify, define project management KPIs? Take a look at ultimate project management KPIs guide.

2. Communicating Project KPIs (Communication Challenge)

Once effective KPIs are identified and defined, they are still irrelevant if stakeholders do not know what to do with KPIs. If team members are not informed and do not FEEL involved, they would have less inspiration/incentive to successfully input, report or deliver KPIs information.

Making project management and its KPIs work, requires enabling factors such as

1. Establishing of PMOs who can provide fatherly attention to the KPIs across the implementation layers through people, processes, systems integration
2. Better communication among project management office (PMO) and project stakeholders (team, client, sponsors, etc).

3. Missing Action Plan for Project KPIs (Action Challenge)

There are distinct challenges in implementing project KPIs. Merely defining project management KPIs and shooting email about it, will not make it work. Project management office (PMO) along with project managers must explain purpose of KPIs, hear opinions from stakeholders, give them enough directions to achieve KPIs, help them understand the implications when project KPIs are achieved or missed; motivate and inspire project teams to achieve desired levels of KPIs.

The burden of collating information and preparing metrics to track KPIs often leads to procrastination by stakeholder. It is to take actions just to maintain metrics on the fly during project implementation. Automation of the KPI tracking process using project management software to the extent of only providing input data is highly desirable. Such automation  leads to effectiveness of performance of stakeholders engaged in tracking KPIs.

4. Tracking Project KPIs (Data Challenge)

Not only project manager KPIs, project managers also have difficulty in keeping track of projects KPIs. There are process issues, people issues as well as technology issues. Process issues can be fixed by having right project management process, technology issue is also tricky but can be fixed by having a right project KPIs tracking software. However people problem is big question mark. It takes great deal of change management to enable, enforce team members, project managers to keep entering project information so that KPIs can be measured and tracked. A simple, easy to use project management software can be very handy and effective to enable project KPIs tracking, without burdening team members.

Mapping the KPIs to the performance goals of the team & team members would be one of the best ways to ensure the timely updating of the  KPIs for reviews.

5. Uniform Treatment of Project KPIs (Consistency Challenge)

Not every project is same, neither every project manager or team member is same. But in order to bring a uniformity for the organisation to track performance of projects, all projects as well as staff members must be tracked/ evaluated in the same manner. Providing leeway to certain projects will loosen the proposition to track project performance with selected KPIs. You can have exceptions but, in order to have better monitoring and control, project management office will have to treat every project consistently as far as tracking KPIs are concerned.

Establishing of organisational level PMO, Project/Program specific PMOs would help greatly in bringing the consistency and collaboration across the organisation in defining and maintaining the KPIs.

Are there any other challenges you have faced with implementation of project management KPIs, let us know.

Authors:

Dhan W – Co-founder of Zilicus that offers online project portfolio management software ZilicusPM, as well as online review collaboration software ProofCafe for creative teams.

Rajarama Rao Bannengala has over 25 years of Industry experience dealing with Projects and Programs in IT and Non IT domains. He is also volunteer leader at PMI Pune-Deccan India chapter as President and CEO. He is an entrepreneur and through his company ProPMO Services, offers PMO as services to companies and also helps them to build and establish PMOs.

About Zilicus

Zilicus offers the best project portfolio management tool ZilicusPM, with robust project management tools capabilities and easy ways to track project management KPI,

Know more about project portfolio management, Gantt chart, best project management tool, project management office, project management tips, project planning guide, project risk management, project scope management, effective project management, project manager guides and know more about Project Portfolio Management Software, Project Management Software Guide.

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