Projects have always been challenged to deliver successful outcomes. Project Managers have always struggled to balance the“triple constraints”! The complexity and uncertainty of projects keeps increasing with every passing year. Hence, the way they need to be “proactively” tracked and monitored needs to evolve! Sometimes, they may need intervention when things are not going well. Help and inputs can come from within the team (using approaches like Retrospectives) or from experience/wisdom available outside the team – Leadership, Management, etc. In this blog, we focus on the latter.
The “evolving” Need
The way that we measure projects needs to evolve over time. Often, aggregates hide details at a micro level. So, measuring project or effort variance at the phase/project level might miss a major risk/issue lurking at an individual work item level.
All organizations track project metrics! Often, there are too many metrics. So, there is always some or the other metric that is in Red, Amber or Green! Across the last 25 years of our experience, we know customers who track over 40+ metrics at a project level. They span from Schedule-related metrics, Effort-related metrics, Cost-related metrics, Quality-related metrics, and Risk-related metrics… the list is endless.
This makes it very difficult for the Project Manager to focus on and figure out – “What am I supposed to do”? For the Leadership/ Management team that is at a distance from the project, they stand almost no chance.
There is another problem that has largely remained unaddressed. Organizations run a large number of projects, across functions. CXOs need a common way to track these projects. Yet, Project metrics are specific to the kind of project that you are working on. How do you bring them to a set of common metrics that would universally apply? For example, what common metrics would apply for a team that is responsible for recruitment or sales campaigns or IT development? This simple problem makes it very difficult for Leadership/Management teams to figure out what they need to truly focus on. They land up relying on escalations or perceptions, often too late!
From the above, we identify three distinct needs:
1. From aggregated metrics to tracking at a micro work item level.
2. Reduce the number of things that we track but still be multi-dimensional.
3. Evolve a simple approach that can apply to projects across domains and functions.
Measuring Project Health
Project Health is Nimble’s way to track and measure projects on how they are doing. It is simple, light, and understandable; yet, it is universal across domains and functions.
While the term “Project Health” has been prevalent in the industry, Nimble’s approach to measuring it is unique. It is based on a simple premise – if all things that you need to do in a project are doing well, then the project is doing well; if not, it is not doing well.
Nimble applies this principle by tracking the health of each and every work item on the project. If you are responsible for recruitment, you track the health of each job opening. If you are tracking your marketing campaign, you track the health of each of the marketing campaigns. If you are doing IT development, you track the health of each work item that the team is doing! Nimble’s almost “limitless” configurability allows the end user to configure what is the appropriate criteria for identifying the Health of their work item, for your domain and vertical function, in a completely No-Code manner. It translates to a score that says – do you need attention or are things going well!
In the screenshot below, we show Nimble tracking work item Health score and status.
For example, if your job opening is critical and it is not closed for the last 4 weeks, you might want to give it a health score that says – “Need Attention”. On the other hand, for a low-priority job opening, even if it is open for 3 months, it might not need anyone’s attention. This criterion will be different for someone tracking their campaigns or someone tracking their software tasks.
Once you take this approach, you can aggregate this score to the project level from the work item health scores. Project scores can be aggregated to the organization so that when a CXO looks at his/her dashboard, they get a cross function, cross department view of all the projects that are doing good or that need their attention.
To make this a little more meaningful, we normalize the score for the size of the project. A health score of 50 might be perfectly reasonable for a 100-person month project but not so for a 10-person month project. Once again, because there are many different ways to measure project size, Nimble uses a simple universal measure of the number of people allocated to the project as a measure of the project size.
At the Organization or the Department level, the CXO will be able to view how his organization is performing, with the ability to drill down to specific projects.
Conclusion
Projects are complex endeavors, filled with uncertainties. Yet, we need a simple, understandable and universal approach to track and measure projects. Nimble’s Project Health score ensures that we deliver the expected outcomes, proactively. By tracking each work item’s health and providing visual cues, Nimble offers a clear view of the project’s status so that Leadership and Management teams can truly focus on projects that need their attention. Sign up for a Free trial and experience these firsthand.
