The Ultimate Guide to Project Management Dashboards: Project Dashboard Templates, Tools, and Benefits
A project management dashboard is an invaluable tool that provides a centralized overview of your project's status. With project dashboards, project managers can visualize key metrics, track progress, and identify issues to keep projects on track. In this ultimate guide, you'll learn everything you need to know about project dashboards including templates, software tools, and the many benefits dashboards offer for streamlining project management.
What is a Project Management Dashboard?
A project dashboard is a data dashboard designed to display real-time visual representations of project data, metrics, and health. Project dashboards consolidate all essential project information into a single centralized interface to give managers and team members an at-a-glance view of project status and health.
With customizable widgets and views, a project management dashboard provides real-time insight into all aspects of a project from budgets, resource allocation, schedules, risks, issues and more. Dashboards offer project transparency for all team members and stakeholders.
Why are Project Management Dashboards Important?
Project management dashboards provide numerous benefits for managing projects successfully:
Visualize project data - Dashboards allow project managers to identify trends, patterns, and relationships in project data through interactive charts, graphs, and tables. Visual data makes digesting project information easier.
Centralized project visibility - With data from multiple systems and tools consolidated into a single dashboard, teams can gain a holistic view of project status.
Enhanced project transparency - Real-time dashboard access gives all team members visibility into project performance and health to align efforts.
Early issue identification - Dashboard analytics and metrics enable project managers to identify risks and trouble spots early to keep projects on track.
Track project progress - Dashboards allow you to monitor project stages, milestones, and completion rates to easily track progress.
Improved reporting - Dashboards can automatically generate visual reports on all project metrics for stakeholder reporting.
Informed decision making - With a data-driven project overview, managers can make smarter decisions on resource allocation, task prioritization, budgets, timelines and more.
Simply put, project management dashboards offer the visibility, analytics, and insights needed to manage projects successfully from start to finish.
What are the Key Features of Project Dashboards?
Project dashboards include a variety of features to provide actionable project insights, including:
Customizable widgets and views
Interactive data visualizations and charts
Real-time data on budgets, schedules, risks, resources, issues etc.
Centralized task management
Automated alerts and notifications
Role-based access and security
Automated report generation
Data integration from multiple systems and tools
Analytics for identifying trends and making predictions
Customizable metrics and KPIs
Collaboration tools like discussions and annotations
Mobile optimization for on-the-go access
The right project management software will allow you to customize dashboard features and views to meet each project's unique needs.
What Should You Include in a Project Dashboard?
While every project dashboard can be customized, most dashboards include these essential elements:
Task List - List of all tasks and to-dos
Task Progress - Percentage of tasks completed overall
Milestone Status - Milestone progress and completion
Schedule - Gantt chart of schedule and milestones
Budget Status - Budget utilization metrics
Resource Allocation - Workspace/equipment/team allocation
Risks - Risk register and rankings
Issues List - Current project issues
Reporting - Reporting and analytics widgets
Quick Access - Shortcuts to key tools and files
The goal is to consolidate all the information needed to manage projects successfully into a single view. Managers can also create multiple dashboard views to track specific project areas.
What are the Key Metrics to Include in a Dashboard?
These are some of the most important project metrics and KPIs to include on dashboards:
Budget utilization - Budget remaining vs spent
Schedule performance - Schedule delay, time to completion
Scope adherence - Requirements met vs incomplete
Resource allocation - Resources being utilized
Quality - Rework needed, quality issues
Risks - High/moderate/low risks
Task completion - Tasks completed on time
Defects - New/open defects
Customer satisfaction - Feedback, net promoter score
Whatever metrics offer the strongest indication of project health for the initiative should be included in dashboard views.
What are the Benefits of Using Project Management Dashboards?
There are many benefits project teams gain from using customizable project dashboards:
1. Increased Team Alignment - Enhanced visibility ensures all team members are aligned on priorities and status.
2. Improved Decision Making - Data insights help managers make timely decisions to keep projects on track.
3. Enhanced Risk Management - Early visibility into risks means they can be mitigated quickly.
4. Greater Accountability - Responsibilities and ownership are clear across all project elements.
5. Automated Reporting - Automated reports reduce time spent manually creating reports for stakeholders.
6. Reduced Time Tracking Status - With a real-time dashboard, time spent tracking down project status is reduced.
7. Customizable Interface - Dashboards can be easily customized for each project type.
8. More Efficient Meetings - Teams spend less time updating status and more time progressing projects.
9. Increased Customer Confidence - Real-time access and transparency provides customer confidence.
10. Centralized Information - All project data consolidated into a single source of truth.
What are the Key Elements of a Great Project Dashboard?
The best project dashboards have the following characteristics:
Visual - Capture attention with bold graphics, charts, gauges, and dials.
Intuitive - Allow users to easily drill-down into data.
Configurable - Offer custom widgets and adjustable layouts.
Interactive - Enable filtering, sorting, zooming, etc.
Real-time data - Pull dynamic data from multiple systems.
Role-based - Display relevant data by user role.
Flexible - Adaptable to changing needs.
Accessible - Easy access on all devices.
Automated - Deliver notifications, alerts, and reports.
Analytical - Provide analysis of trends and predictions.
Integrated - Aggregate data from multiple sources and tools.
The most effective dashboards are highly visual, intuitive, and offer dynamic customization for different users and projects.
What are Some Common Project Management Dashboard Types?
There are different types of project dashboards designed to provide visibility into specific project areas, including:
Project status dashboards - High-level project health and status
Budget dashboards - Budget vs actual costs, burn rates
Schedue dashboards - Task schedules and milestones
Resource management dashboards - Utilization of team, equipment, etc
Quality dashboards - Rework, defects, testing status
Risk management dashboards - Risk registers, rankings, trends
Requirements dashboards - Requirements coverage and gaps
Team dashboards - Individual workloads, capacity, alerts
Portfolio dashboards - Health metrics for programs and portfolios
Executive dashboards - High-level summaries of project portfolios
The ability to create customized dashboard views is critical for monitoring all aspects of projects.
What are the Best Practices for Project Dashboard Design?
Follow these dashboard design best practices:
Limit clutter - Display only the most critical metrics and data.
Draw attention to what matters - Use color, size, layouts to highlight priorities.
Align to audience - Display information relevant to each user's role.
Make data readable - Use clear labels, legends, and data visualization.
Keep it visual - Charts and graphs are easier to digest than sheets of data.
Enable interactivity - Allow users to engage with data for deeper insights.
Keep it current - Use real-time data to enable fast action.
Ensure accessibility - Optimize for easy mobile access.
Automate updates - Configure automatic data refresh.
Start small, then expand - Add widgets as needed. Too much data overwhelms.
Following dashboard design best practices will maximize your project dashboard's effectiveness.
What are Some Examples of Good Project Management Dashboards?
Many project management tools like Asana, Wrike, Smartsheet, and ProjectManager.com offer excellent dashboard features.
Here are some examples of effective project dashboards:
Asana - Asana Dashboards enable custom views like workload, custom goals, and tracking. Users can also build custom charts and calendars.
Wrike - Wrike dashboards include timeline views, custom widgets, charts, and reports. Role-based views align work.
Smartsheet - Smartsheet has card, chart, map, and calendar dashboard views with automatic roll-ups.
ProjectManager - ProjectManager dashboards consolidate budget, timeline, workload, issues, risks, and custom views.
No matter which tool you use, look for easy customization across a variety of useful widgets and views that align to your projects' biggest priorities and pain points.
What are the Key Features to Look for in Project Management Dashboard Software?
When evaluating dashboard software, look for these key features:
Real-time data - Dashboards connected to live data enable instant visibility
Interactive visualizations - Charts, graphs, and gauges should allow for clicks, drill-downs etc.
Configurable layouts - Ability to add widgets as needed for each view
Filtering - Interactive filtering of data to analyze from different perspectives
Sharing dashboards - Ability to securely share or embed dashboards for stakeholders
Alerts - Configurable alerts when data thresholds are exceeded
Reporting - Easy generation of reports from dashboard data
Mobile access - Ability to securely view dashboards on any device
Role-based views - Display only relevant data based on user roles
Integration - API and connectors to pull data from other platforms
Choosing software with robust dashboard functionality will maximize your project visibility.
Can You Build a Custom Project Management Dashboard in Excel?
Yes, you can build a custom project dashboard in Excel using data from multiple sources. However, Excel dashboards have limitations:
Difficult to make highly visual and interactive
Manual refresh of data is required
Limited collaboration features
No built-in workflows or automation
For robust, real-time project dashboards that can be easily shared with non Excel-users, a dedicated project management platform will provide the most value. But for simple high-level views, Excel can be used.
What are Some Key Takeaways for Project Management Dashboards?
Dashboards provide a centralized view of all essential project metrics and health data.
Interactive visualizations make digesting project data simple for users.
Real-time dashboards enable fast decision making and course correction.
Customizable layouts allow alignment to specific projects and user roles.
Dashboards increase team alignment, accountability, and customer confidence.
Effective dashboards are highly visual, intuitive, and have dynamic access.
Choose software with robust dashboard capabilities and integrations.
Follow best practices for clean, uncluttered dashboard design.
By leveraging project management dashboards, teams gain the visibility needed to successfully manage projects from start to completion. Carefully designed dashboards empower managers to mitigate risks, identify issues, and make data-driven decisions throughout the project. If you don't currently use project dashboards, this guide outlines how investing in the right dashboard solution can help drive consistent and effective project delivery.
The Ultimate Guide to Project Management Dashboards: Project Dashboard Templates, Tools, and Benefits
A project management dashboard is an invaluable tool that provides a centralized overview of your project's status. With project dashboards, project managers can visualize key metrics, track progress, and identify issues to keep projects on track. In this ultimate guide, you'll learn everything you need to know about project dashboards including templates, software tools, and the many benefits dashboards offer for streamlining project management.
What is a Project Management Dashboard?
A project dashboard is a data dashboard designed to display real-time visual representations of project data, metrics, and health. Project dashboards consolidate all essential project information into a single centralized interface to give managers and team members an at-a-glance view of project status and health.
With customizable widgets and views, a project management dashboard provides real-time insight into all aspects of a project from budgets, resource allocation, schedules, risks, issues and more. Dashboards offer project transparency for all team members and stakeholders.
Why are Project Management Dashboards Important?
Project management dashboards provide numerous benefits for managing projects successfully:
Visualize project data - Dashboards allow project managers to identify trends, patterns, and relationships in project data through interactive charts, graphs, and tables. Visual data makes digesting project information easier.
Centralized project visibility - With data from multiple systems and tools consolidated into a single dashboard, teams can gain a holistic view of project status.
Enhanced project transparency - Real-time dashboard access gives all team members visibility into project performance and health to align efforts.
Early issue identification - Dashboard analytics and metrics enable project managers to identify risks and trouble spots early to keep projects on track.
Track project progress - Dashboards allow you to monitor project stages, milestones, and completion rates to easily track progress.
Improved reporting - Dashboards can automatically generate visual reports on all project metrics for stakeholder reporting.
Informed decision making - With a data-driven project overview, managers can make smarter decisions on resource allocation, task prioritization, budgets, timelines and more.
Simply put, project management dashboards offer the visibility, analytics, and insights needed to manage projects successfully from start to finish.
What are the Key Features of Project Dashboards?
Project dashboards include a variety of features to provide actionable project insights, including:
Customizable widgets and views
Interactive data visualizations and charts
Real-time data on budgets, schedules, risks, resources, issues etc.
Centralized task management
Automated alerts and notifications
Role-based access and security
Automated report generation
Data integration from multiple systems and tools
Analytics for identifying trends and making predictions
Customizable metrics and KPIs
Collaboration tools like discussions and annotations
Mobile optimization for on-the-go access
The right project management software will allow you to customize dashboard features and views to meet each project's unique needs.
What Should You Include in a Project Dashboard?
While every project dashboard can be customized, most dashboards include these essential elements:
Task List - List of all tasks and to-dos
Task Progress - Percentage of tasks completed overall
Milestone Status - Milestone progress and completion
Schedule - Gantt chart of schedule and milestones
Budget Status - Budget utilization metrics
Resource Allocation - Workspace/equipment/team allocation
Risks - Risk register and rankings
Issues List - Current project issues
Reporting - Reporting and analytics widgets
Quick Access - Shortcuts to key tools and files
The goal is to consolidate all the information needed to manage projects successfully into a single view. Managers can also create multiple dashboard views to track specific project areas.
What are the Key Metrics to Include in a Dashboard?
These are some of the most important project metrics and KPIs to include on dashboards:
Budget utilization - Budget remaining vs spent
Schedule performance - Schedule delay, time to completion
Scope adherence - Requirements met vs incomplete
Resource allocation - Resources being utilized
Quality - Rework needed, quality issues
Risks - High/moderate/low risks
Task completion - Tasks completed on time
Defects - New/open defects
Customer satisfaction - Feedback, net promoter score
Whatever metrics offer the strongest indication of project health for the initiative should be included in dashboard views.
What are the Benefits of Using Project Management Dashboards?
There are many benefits project teams gain from using customizable project dashboards:
1. Increased Team Alignment - Enhanced visibility ensures all team members are aligned on priorities and status.
2. Improved Decision Making - Data insights help managers make timely decisions to keep projects on track.
3. Enhanced Risk Management - Early visibility into risks means they can be mitigated quickly.
4. Greater Accountability - Responsibilities and ownership are clear across all project elements.
5. Automated Reporting - Automated reports reduce time spent manually creating reports for stakeholders.
6. Reduced Time Tracking Status - With a real-time dashboard, time spent tracking down project status is reduced.
7. Customizable Interface - Dashboards can be easily customized for each project type.
8. More Efficient Meetings - Teams spend less time updating status and more time progressing projects.
9. Increased Customer Confidence - Real-time access and transparency provides customer confidence.
10. Centralized Information - All project data consolidated into a single source of truth.
What are the Key Elements of a Great Project Dashboard?
The best project dashboards have the following characteristics:
Visual - Capture attention with bold graphics, charts, gauges, and dials.
Intuitive - Allow users to easily drill-down into data.
Configurable - Offer custom widgets and adjustable layouts.
Interactive - Enable filtering, sorting, zooming, etc.
Real-time data - Pull dynamic data from multiple systems.
Role-based - Display relevant data by user role.
Flexible - Adaptable to changing needs.
Accessible - Easy access on all devices.
Automated - Deliver notifications, alerts, and reports.
Analytical - Provide analysis of trends and predictions.
Integrated - Aggregate data from multiple sources and tools.
The most effective dashboards are highly visual, intuitive, and offer dynamic customization for different users and projects.
What are Some Common Project Management Dashboard Types?
There are different types of project dashboards designed to provide visibility into specific project areas, including:
Project status dashboards - High-level project health and status
Budget dashboards - Budget vs actual costs, burn rates
Schedue dashboards - Task schedules and milestones
Resource management dashboards - Utilization of team, equipment, etc
Quality dashboards - Rework, defects, testing status
Risk management dashboards - Risk registers, rankings, trends
Requirements dashboards - Requirements coverage and gaps
Team dashboards - Individual workloads, capacity, alerts
Portfolio dashboards - Health metrics for programs and portfolios
Executive dashboards - High-level summaries of project portfolios
The ability to create customized dashboard views is critical for monitoring all aspects of projects.
What are the Best Practices for Project Dashboard Design?
Follow these dashboard design best practices:
Limit clutter - Display only the most critical metrics and data.
Draw attention to what matters - Use color, size, layouts to highlight priorities.
Align to audience - Display information relevant to each user's role.
Make data readable - Use clear labels, legends, and data visualization.
Keep it visual - Charts and graphs are easier to digest than sheets of data.
Enable interactivity - Allow users to engage with data for deeper insights.
Keep it current - Use real-time data to enable fast action.
Ensure accessibility - Optimize for easy mobile access.
Automate updates - Configure automatic data refresh.
Start small, then expand - Add widgets as needed. Too much data overwhelms.
Following dashboard design best practices will maximize your project dashboard's effectiveness.
What are Some Examples of Good Project Management Dashboards?
Many project management tools like Asana, Wrike, Smartsheet, and ProjectManager.com offer excellent dashboard features.
Here are some examples of effective project dashboards:
Asana - Asana Dashboards enable custom views like workload, custom goals, and tracking. Users can also build custom charts and calendars.
Wrike - Wrike dashboards include timeline views, custom widgets, charts, and reports. Role-based views align work.
Smartsheet - Smartsheet has card, chart, map, and calendar dashboard views with automatic roll-ups.
ProjectManager - ProjectManager dashboards consolidate budget, timeline, workload, issues, risks, and custom views.
No matter which tool you use, look for easy customization across a variety of useful widgets and views that align to your projects' biggest priorities and pain points.
What are the Key Features to Look for in Project Management Dashboard Software?
When evaluating dashboard software, look for these key features:
Real-time data - Dashboards connected to live data enable instant visibility
Interactive visualizations - Charts, graphs, and gauges should allow for clicks, drill-downs etc.
Configurable layouts - Ability to add widgets as needed for each view
Filtering - Interactive filtering of data to analyze from different perspectives
Sharing dashboards - Ability to securely share or embed dashboards for stakeholders
Alerts - Configurable alerts when data thresholds are exceeded
Reporting - Easy generation of reports from dashboard data
Mobile access - Ability to securely view dashboards on any device
Role-based views - Display only relevant data based on user roles
Integration - API and connectors to pull data from other platforms
Choosing software with robust dashboard functionality will maximize your project visibility.
Can You Build a Custom Project Management Dashboard in Excel?
Yes, you can build a custom project dashboard in Excel using data from multiple sources. However, Excel dashboards have limitations:
Difficult to make highly visual and interactive
Manual refresh of data is required
Limited collaboration features
No built-in workflows or automation
For robust, real-time project dashboards that can be easily shared with non Excel-users, a dedicated project management platform will provide the most value. But for simple high-level views, Excel can be used.
What are Some Key Takeaways for Project Management Dashboards?
Dashboards provide a centralized view of all essential project metrics and health data.
Interactive visualizations make digesting project data simple for users.
Real-time dashboards enable fast decision making and course correction.
Customizable layouts allow alignment to specific projects and user roles.
Dashboards increase team alignment, accountability, and customer confidence.
Effective dashboards are highly visual, intuitive, and have dynamic access.
Choose software with robust dashboard capabilities and integrations.
Follow best practices for clean, uncluttered dashboard design.
By leveraging project management dashboards, teams gain the visibility needed to successfully manage projects from start to completion. Carefully designed dashboards empower managers to mitigate risks, identify issues, and make data-driven decisions throughout the project. If you don't currently use project dashboards, this guide outlines how investing in the right dashboard solution can help drive consistent and effective project delivery.
The Ultimate Guide to Project Management Dashboards: Project Dashboard Templates, Tools, and Benefits
A project management dashboard is an invaluable tool that provides a centralized overview of your project's status. With project dashboards, project managers can visualize key metrics, track progress, and identify issues to keep projects on track. In this ultimate guide, you'll learn everything you need to know about project dashboards including templates, software tools, and the many benefits dashboards offer for streamlining project management.
What is a Project Management Dashboard?
A project dashboard is a data dashboard designed to display real-time visual representations of project data, metrics, and health. Project dashboards consolidate all essential project information into a single centralized interface to give managers and team members an at-a-glance view of project status and health.
With customizable widgets and views, a project management dashboard provides real-time insight into all aspects of a project from budgets, resource allocation, schedules, risks, issues and more. Dashboards offer project transparency for all team members and stakeholders.
Why are Project Management Dashboards Important?
Project management dashboards provide numerous benefits for managing projects successfully:
Visualize project data - Dashboards allow project managers to identify trends, patterns, and relationships in project data through interactive charts, graphs, and tables. Visual data makes digesting project information easier.
Centralized project visibility - With data from multiple systems and tools consolidated into a single dashboard, teams can gain a holistic view of project status.
Enhanced project transparency - Real-time dashboard access gives all team members visibility into project performance and health to align efforts.
Early issue identification - Dashboard analytics and metrics enable project managers to identify risks and trouble spots early to keep projects on track.
Track project progress - Dashboards allow you to monitor project stages, milestones, and completion rates to easily track progress.
Improved reporting - Dashboards can automatically generate visual reports on all project metrics for stakeholder reporting.
Informed decision making - With a data-driven project overview, managers can make smarter decisions on resource allocation, task prioritization, budgets, timelines and more.
Simply put, project management dashboards offer the visibility, analytics, and insights needed to manage projects successfully from start to finish.
What are the Key Features of Project Dashboards?
Project dashboards include a variety of features to provide actionable project insights, including:
Customizable widgets and views
Interactive data visualizations and charts
Real-time data on budgets, schedules, risks, resources, issues etc.
Centralized task management
Automated alerts and notifications
Role-based access and security
Automated report generation
Data integration from multiple systems and tools
Analytics for identifying trends and making predictions
Customizable metrics and KPIs
Collaboration tools like discussions and annotations
Mobile optimization for on-the-go access
The right project management software will allow you to customize dashboard features and views to meet each project's unique needs.
What Should You Include in a Project Dashboard?
While every project dashboard can be customized, most dashboards include these essential elements:
Task List - List of all tasks and to-dos
Task Progress - Percentage of tasks completed overall
Milestone Status - Milestone progress and completion
Schedule - Gantt chart of schedule and milestones
Budget Status - Budget utilization metrics
Resource Allocation - Workspace/equipment/team allocation
Risks - Risk register and rankings
Issues List - Current project issues
Reporting - Reporting and analytics widgets
Quick Access - Shortcuts to key tools and files
The goal is to consolidate all the information needed to manage projects successfully into a single view. Managers can also create multiple dashboard views to track specific project areas.
What are the Key Metrics to Include in a Dashboard?
These are some of the most important project metrics and KPIs to include on dashboards:
Budget utilization - Budget remaining vs spent
Schedule performance - Schedule delay, time to completion
Scope adherence - Requirements met vs incomplete
Resource allocation - Resources being utilized
Quality - Rework needed, quality issues
Risks - High/moderate/low risks
Task completion - Tasks completed on time
Defects - New/open defects
Customer satisfaction - Feedback, net promoter score
Whatever metrics offer the strongest indication of project health for the initiative should be included in dashboard views.
What are the Benefits of Using Project Management Dashboards?
There are many benefits project teams gain from using customizable project dashboards:
1. Increased Team Alignment - Enhanced visibility ensures all team members are aligned on priorities and status.
2. Improved Decision Making - Data insights help managers make timely decisions to keep projects on track.
3. Enhanced Risk Management - Early visibility into risks means they can be mitigated quickly.
4. Greater Accountability - Responsibilities and ownership are clear across all project elements.
5. Automated Reporting - Automated reports reduce time spent manually creating reports for stakeholders.
6. Reduced Time Tracking Status - With a real-time dashboard, time spent tracking down project status is reduced.
7. Customizable Interface - Dashboards can be easily customized for each project type.
8. More Efficient Meetings - Teams spend less time updating status and more time progressing projects.
9. Increased Customer Confidence - Real-time access and transparency provides customer confidence.
10. Centralized Information - All project data consolidated into a single source of truth.
What are the Key Elements of a Great Project Dashboard?
The best project dashboards have the following characteristics:
Visual - Capture attention with bold graphics, charts, gauges, and dials.
Intuitive - Allow users to easily drill-down into data.
Configurable - Offer custom widgets and adjustable layouts.
Interactive - Enable filtering, sorting, zooming, etc.
Real-time data - Pull dynamic data from multiple systems.
Role-based - Display relevant data by user role.
Flexible - Adaptable to changing needs.
Accessible - Easy access on all devices.
Automated - Deliver notifications, alerts, and reports.
Analytical - Provide analysis of trends and predictions.
Integrated - Aggregate data from multiple sources and tools.
The most effective dashboards are highly visual, intuitive, and offer dynamic customization for different users and projects.
What are Some Common Project Management Dashboard Types?
There are different types of project dashboards designed to provide visibility into specific project areas, including:
Project status dashboards - High-level project health and status
Budget dashboards - Budget vs actual costs, burn rates
Schedue dashboards - Task schedules and milestones
Resource management dashboards - Utilization of team, equipment, etc
Quality dashboards - Rework, defects, testing status
Risk management dashboards - Risk registers, rankings, trends
Requirements dashboards - Requirements coverage and gaps
Team dashboards - Individual workloads, capacity, alerts
Portfolio dashboards - Health metrics for programs and portfolios
Executive dashboards - High-level summaries of project portfolios
The ability to create customized dashboard views is critical for monitoring all aspects of projects.
What are the Best Practices for Project Dashboard Design?
Follow these dashboard design best practices:
Limit clutter - Display only the most critical metrics and data.
Draw attention to what matters - Use color, size, layouts to highlight priorities.
Align to audience - Display information relevant to each user's role.
Make data readable - Use clear labels, legends, and data visualization.
Keep it visual - Charts and graphs are easier to digest than sheets of data.
Enable interactivity - Allow users to engage with data for deeper insights.
Keep it current - Use real-time data to enable fast action.
Ensure accessibility - Optimize for easy mobile access.
Automate updates - Configure automatic data refresh.
Start small, then expand - Add widgets as needed. Too much data overwhelms.
Following dashboard design best practices will maximize your project dashboard's effectiveness.
What are Some Examples of Good Project Management Dashboards?
Many project management tools like Asana, Wrike, Smartsheet, and ProjectManager.com offer excellent dashboard features.
Here are some examples of effective project dashboards:
Asana - Asana Dashboards enable custom views like workload, custom goals, and tracking. Users can also build custom charts and calendars.
Wrike - Wrike dashboards include timeline views, custom widgets, charts, and reports. Role-based views align work.
Smartsheet - Smartsheet has card, chart, map, and calendar dashboard views with automatic roll-ups.
ProjectManager - ProjectManager dashboards consolidate budget, timeline, workload, issues, risks, and custom views.
No matter which tool you use, look for easy customization across a variety of useful widgets and views that align to your projects' biggest priorities and pain points.
What are the Key Features to Look for in Project Management Dashboard Software?
When evaluating dashboard software, look for these key features:
Real-time data - Dashboards connected to live data enable instant visibility
Interactive visualizations - Charts, graphs, and gauges should allow for clicks, drill-downs etc.
Configurable layouts - Ability to add widgets as needed for each view
Filtering - Interactive filtering of data to analyze from different perspectives
Sharing dashboards - Ability to securely share or embed dashboards for stakeholders
Alerts - Configurable alerts when data thresholds are exceeded
Reporting - Easy generation of reports from dashboard data
Mobile access - Ability to securely view dashboards on any device
Role-based views - Display only relevant data based on user roles
Integration - API and connectors to pull data from other platforms
Choosing software with robust dashboard functionality will maximize your project visibility.
Can You Build a Custom Project Management Dashboard in Excel?
Yes, you can build a custom project dashboard in Excel using data from multiple sources. However, Excel dashboards have limitations:
Difficult to make highly visual and interactive
Manual refresh of data is required
Limited collaboration features
No built-in workflows or automation
For robust, real-time project dashboards that can be easily shared with non Excel-users, a dedicated project management platform will provide the most value. But for simple high-level views, Excel can be used.
What are Some Key Takeaways for Project Management Dashboards?
Dashboards provide a centralized view of all essential project metrics and health data.
Interactive visualizations make digesting project data simple for users.
Real-time dashboards enable fast decision making and course correction.
Customizable layouts allow alignment to specific projects and user roles.
Dashboards increase team alignment, accountability, and customer confidence.
Effective dashboards are highly visual, intuitive, and have dynamic access.
Choose software with robust dashboard capabilities and integrations.
Follow best practices for clean, uncluttered dashboard design.
By leveraging project management dashboards, teams gain the visibility needed to successfully manage projects from start to completion. Carefully designed dashboards empower managers to mitigate risks, identify issues, and make data-driven decisions throughout the project. If you don't currently use project dashboards, this guide outlines how investing in the right dashboard solution can help drive consistent and effective project delivery.