Have you ever wanted to know the secret weapon top project managers swear by?
The answer is not as mystical as you’d think; most of the time, it’s an effective project management dashboard.
Advanced dashboard features like data tracking provide a solid backbone for continued growth in key areas like revenue and productivity.
Here’s everything you need to know about this commonly underestimated tool and how you can get the most from it in your business.
What is a project management dashboard?
Project management dashboard software can give you a big picture overview of all your open projects. You can monitor progress, view KPIs at a glance, and anticipate delays or budget issues before they come up. It’s also great for keeping your team and your clients on the same page at all times.
The best project management dashboard software will offer these key features:
- Layouts that you can customize and limit your view to only the most relevant data.
- A to Z task management for creating, assigning, and updating progress on essential project steps.
- The ability to templatize past successful projects and save time replanning workloads on duplicate assignments.
- Advanced dashboard widgets that you can personalize to suit your team’s priorities
- The option to view data in any format that you need, including graphs, charts, and lists.
What can you track with a project management dashboard?
Besides getting a bird’s eye view of your entire team’s work, dashboards can help you keep track of those extremely important details. So, what should be on a project dashboard? Some KPIs you can monitor include:
- Budget predictions versus projections
- Task assignments and individual task timelines
- Overall project timelines as well as progress in real-time
- Anticipated risks
- Changes to tasks, team leads, or timelines
- Professional services billing and financial concerns such as employee time cards and projected effort versus realized effort. These are usually the responsibility of a client financial manager.
5 key advantages project management dashboards give users
All of these features sound great, but what can they actually do for you? Here are some practical reasons why you should use a dashboard in project management software:
- Plotting projects on a granular level. Not only can you catch conflicting priorities within individual assignments, but you can also find dependencies or possible issues across all projects and resources.
- Live updates. Project management dashboards help team members communicate progress, which means no more messy email chains and lost threads.
- Analyzing productivity. It’s easy to view your project timelines and follow up on anything that needs it.
- Greater visibility. Insightful discoveries are only possible when you have all of your data gathered in front of you in one easy to digest format.
- Offering transparency to clients. Keep your interested parties in the loop and answer progress check-in emails with data-backed evidence.
How to keep your team on track with a project management dashboard
Here’s how Wrike users get the most out of their project management dashboards.
- Gather important documents, communications, and project details all in one place with Wrike Spaces. That way, you and your team will be able to keep track of every change, update, or reassignment without having to rely on a variety of other tools.
- Make color-coded calendars that help your team visualize their workload and provide better organization. After you’ve gathered everyone’s schedules, you can quickly assign tasks and look for competing tasks among other projects on an individual and team level.
- Create your own automated reports so you and your team can see up-to-the-minute information on progress, overdue assignments, or resource distribution.
- Use Gantt charts to keep an eye on overall goals versus individual project goals.
- Draft, edit, and agree on project workflows for assignments, both big and small. Using one singular platform allows everyone to view management decisions as soon as they are made.
Get started today
In an era where advanced business intelligence is a necessity, it’s clear to see why project managers who choose to adopt a project management dashboard get amazing results. If you’re in the market for one, Wrike is a simple project management tool with Dashboard for small businesses. Take advantage of our free trial today.
