The 4 questions
/You're chairing your 3 hour monthly project review…
The project manager is presenting the current dates, the dates from the last review and the target dates. You listening and yet you don't feel that you have the whole picture. People use words like Portfolio Management and companies supply sophisticated tools, giving you a mass of information to "manage" your portfolio.
These tools are often expensive, cumbersome to use and you have to spend time populating them with data only to find out that you can't get the answers you really need to manage your portfolio. In essence, the four key questions are:
How far off are we from our target date?
Do we have enough time remaining to recover?
Do I have enough confidence that the team can hit the target?
What do I need to do to bring the project back?
fastProject supports getting answers to these questions. Using the Portfolio functionality, a high level time-line per project is created. Key (portfolio) milestones and identified and assigned target dates. If needed, resources and costs can be entered and then analyzed over time (portfolio level).
When the Trend Chart is generated, each portfolio milestone with a target date produces its own Trend chart. The chart graphically displays the trending of the portfolio milestones vs. their targets. Instantly you can determine whether the project is is trending away or towards their target dates - an indication of the confidence level the team can deliver on time.
The number of days pull-in vs. remaining time provides an indication whether it's even feasible to hit the target dates. The critical path is intensively scrutinized and actions taken to accelerate the schedule.