>>Hello, I'm Jennifer Whitt, Director of ProjectManager.com.
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>>Well welcome to our white-board session on using your project dashboard.
A lot of times I get these questions of, where are we?
So for me, on my projects, I like to go to my dashboard.
But I'm always amazed on visiting some other project teams where they're using no dashboard
at all, and I just don't get it.
And everyone seems to be lost, they don't know where are we, are we there yet, are we
there yet?
And no one knows because everyone is mired down looking at tons of details or not enough
details.
So it's no wonder they're lost.
I wanted to share something with you, I'm a technology person I love technology.
So just previously, as helping a friend look for real estate in the city where I live.
A real estate agent provided their website, so we went to their website first.
The city where I live is like this, it's like a circle, it has a perimeter, it had different
sections.
Within the website of the drawing it had a map of the city and it had indicated the little
neighborhoods.
So you could from a far glance, you could see the neighborhoods and where they were
located in relation to themselves.
Then you could actually click on one of the neighborhoods, and when you clicked on the
neighborhood it popped out the neighborhood.
It showed all the streets and it showed the homes that were available.
So you could actually go click on a home, pull up the home, see all the photos, and
actually take a virtual tour.
We could actually look inside the home and look at the bedrooms, the kitchen, and all
the different rooms available.
I thought that was pretty cool.
What we do without this dashboard.
Then, I'm a traveler, so with me I always take my handy dandy travel companion, my iPhone,
and I love an app.
For me I'm always looking for a Starbucks or a coffee location, so you know me, I love
it when there's an app for that.
I have an app where I pull up my Starbucks or other coffee shop app and it shows a grid
of the area that I'm located.
I can actually see the little shops available and I can click on those.
Many times when I'm traveling there may be project team members in that city, or in that
area, that I can call and I can give them a specific coffee shop to meet me.
Or likewise they may give me a coffee shop to meet them.
So I know how to get there, what would I do without my dashboard.
And then also, financial portfolios.
Many people have their financial portfolio on a web based application where they can
actually go look at their profile to see how it's doing.
So they may have different investments, and for people who have different investments
they may invest in stocks or bonds, then they can see stocks are up, bonds are down, or
vice versa.
So what would they do without their dashboard.
Many people are utilizing Google Maps, as I travel, there are maps.
So if we look at it, we are using dashboards all throughout our life.
But I'm amazed when I go to project teams and when people are lost and they can't find
where they are on their project, I ask them about their dashboard, and they're not using
one.
So I don't understand the resistance of that.
Anyway in working with teams when I look at their project management, how they're using
their systems, one thing we put in place is a project dashboard.
Where they can actually see reports, they can look at look at things from a high level.
From the project manager they may want to see things from a higher glance, they may
want to give reports or information to their executive team, or change control board at
a higher view, and then they may give their project teams a more detailed information.
So looking at charts or resource allocation.
When I go into teams I start giving these examples and showing how, again, we're using
project dashboards everyday in our life.
And these applications we embrace, and we love them, and they help us out, we can either
see things high level, or we can go down to the virtual tour and actually see more details,
and we love that.
So how do we do that on our project management, in our project management processes, or on
our project, how do we do that?
Number one adopt and adapt.
We just need to embrace the technology here, is here to help us.
So adopt technology and adapt it so it's useful for us so we can find our way, we do know
where we are, and then customize it.
One of the resistance is, people say well, I get too much information and then they may
say I don't get enough high levels.
So you can customize it for yourself as the project manager, your executive team, your
stakeholders, even your project team members.
And then just use it and I guarantee you if you adopt and adapt, and you customize it
for you own use or your teams use and actually use it, you will know where you are.
So I hope this is helpful, it's definitely helped find and navigate myself around not
only these things, but my project.
If you and your team are trying to figure out where you are on your project, and you're
looking for a tool that you can adopt and adapt, customize, and use to find your way,
then sign up for our software now at ProjectManager.com.