Why Power BI Supercharges Project Management Success

Tracking project progress and adhering to budget and schedule is essential to project management success.

We all track our project’s health in one way or another. Sometimes, it’s checking in with team members to see where they’re up to on a task, using a collaborative working platform to see which files have been uploaded and which haven’t, or manually updating financial documentation to see how closely you’re sticking to a budget.

However, there are few ways to get as much insight into your project as with Power BI, a business intelligence tool that allows project managers to make better-informed, data-driven decisions that increase project success.

What is Power BI?

Power BI is a Microsoft-built business intelligence tool that enables businesses to aggregate their data and present it as visualizations such as charts and graphs in intuitive dashboards.

These business intelligence dashboards can collect data from multiple sources – Excel, CSV files, databases, and more – and display the data as visualizations that share at-a-glance insights into project health in areas such as budget, schedule, resource capacity, risk, change management, and more.

As well as an overview, project managers can click on visualizations to dig deeper into the data. For example, if you’re tracking the project timeline and notice that the project has fallen behind schedule, you can click into the dashboard and see the activity causing the hold-up. You can also view the raw data behind the visualizations if you choose to.

How Power BI Supercharges Project Management

1. Insight into KPIs

In a previous article, we talked about the importance of tracking your KPIs to measure, monitor, and improve your project management processes.

Power BI dashboards are the ultimate tools for gaining at-a-glance insight into all your KPIs within seconds. You can create multiple dashboards that focus on specific areas—such as cost, schedule, and resource capacity—displaying all the relevant KPIs for that aspect of project management in the appropriate dashboard.

Power BI dashboards take raw, inscrutable data and transform it into visualizations that paint a picture of the health of each of your KPIs.

2. Automatic real-time updates

Instead of waiting for your team members to manually gather, analyze, and format data into reports, Power BI enables all this to be done instantly and automatically.

Power BI pulls data from your connected data sources in real-time. It then updates the visualizations in your dashboards with the data, with the dashboards functioning as real-time project reports.

This reduces the delay between a problem occurring and project managers noticing it, allowing them to make better-informed choices based on what’s happening right now.

3. Enhanced project efficiency

There are several ways that Power BI can boost the efficiency of your project management processes.

For one, with real-time insight into project progress, you can see when a project has fallen behind schedule and dive into the data to see which tasks are causing problems. This up-to-date insight means any issues can be resolved as soon as possible.

You can also view which resources are available so that they can be assigned to new tasks more quickly.

Moreover, once you’ve gotten the hang of Power BI, it’ll save time with manual data entry for reporting and documentation. Once set up, Power BI retrieves data automatically and doubles as a reporting and documentation method. This frees up time to do more high-value project work.

4. Improved cost-effectiveness

Like the ability to determine what’s making a project behind schedule, Power BI makes it easy to check how well you’re sticking to budget.

You can click into the data to see which tasks are over budget, determine the causes, and make changes to reduce costs. With Power BI, you can also use predictive analytics to forecast future project costs.

With visualizations that are easy to compare between projects, you can easily observe which projects are your most profitable and come to data-backed conclusions about why this is.

Project managers can use all this data to reduce project costs and actively seek out clients that offer the most profitable projects.

5. Better communication and clarity

 Which do you think is more likely to get everyone on the same page about where the company/project is: dashboards with visualizations that take a few seconds to ‘get the picture’ or long, wordy reports that take an age to interpret?

Power BI dashboards are the ultimate method to communicate project progress to stakeholders. You can create dashboards designed for a specific end user to meet their needs, including executives, team members, or clients.

Dashboard visualizations make data digestible and make progress easy for everyone to interpret. As mentioned in a previous article, stellar communication is the key to project success.

6. Comprehensive insight into project health

Because Power BI integrates multiple sources of data to create its dashboard visualizations, these dashboards provide the most comprehensive overview of project health by considering every factor.

Visualizations based on all the relevant data show insights that consider all data-producing sources, giving project managers the most accurate insight into all aspects of project management health, at a glance.

Essential KPIs to Measure Project Success

To gain insight into how successful your projects are, you need to measure their performance – but with what?

The most appropriate KPIs for your project will depend on your business’ top priorities and the goals and aims of your project.

The eight KPIs we detail below give insight into the most critical KPIs to track project health and business success. These give insight into budget and schedule adherence, resource use efficiency, and the overall profitability of your projects.

Here is a guide to the most important KPIs for project managers.

To measure how well you’re staying on budget…

The more closely you can stick to the project budget, the happier your clients will be. There are two major KPIs that track how well you’re adhering to the planned budget of the project.

1. Budget variance

This measures the difference between the projected budget and the actual amount of the budget spent. Budget variance KPI can be measured in two ways:

Budget variance = Actual Budget Spent – Projected Budget

This will give you a value in dollars showing how over budget (if the result is a positive value) or under budget (if the result is a negative value) the project is.

OR

Budget Variance % = ((Actual Budget – Projected Budget)/Projected Budget) x 100

A percentage value can sometimes be easier to interpret, giving an impression of the proportional difference between the estimated cost of a project and how much actually ended up being spent.

This KPI provides insight into whether you need to change your budget estimates or identify areas – such as increasing resource utilization efficiency – which you can improve to better stick to your projected budget.

2. Cost variance

Though budget variance and cost variance are often used interchangeably, cost variance is better used to target the budget of specific tasks.

While budget variance typically measures how effectively the whole project is sticking to budget, cost variance is often used to measure the cost performance of specific tasks or activities within the project.

Cost Variance = Earned Value of a Task/Deliverable – Actual Cost

A negative result indicates that the task/project is over budget, while a positive result indicates the task has been completed within budget.

Earned value – also known as the ‘budgeted cost of work performed’ is the monetary value of a particular task within the budget.

• Earned Value = Percentage of Work Completed x Total budget

Actual cost – the amount spent to complete the task.

To track how well you’re sticking to schedules and completing work on time….

3. Schedule variance

Schedule variance compares the earned value of work performed against the planned value of the work to be completed by a specific point in time. This indicates whether the project is ahead or behind schedule.

Schedule variance = Earned Value – Planned Value

• Earned Value = value of work performed by a certain point in the project timeline.
• Planned Value = value of work planned to have been completed by a particular point in time.

If the result is negative, the project is behind schedule; if positive, the project is on track and ahead of schedule.

4. Cycle time

Cycle time is a KPI that measures how long tasks take to complete from start to finish. It could be used to measure the time to complete a particular activity or to produce a certain deliverable.

By recording how long a certain task or process takes, you can more accurately schedule work in the future, identify areas for improving efficiency and track improvements to project efficiency over time.

To observe the efficiency of your resource usage…

5. Resource capacity

Measuring resource capacity allows you to view how many resources you have available to assign to a task at any time.

This allows any scheduling conflicts to be identified early to prevent bottlenecks. Likewise, identifying free resources can allow you to assign resources to tasks to maximize billable utilization and improve project efficiency.

6. Billable utilization

This KPI is used to determine the cost efficiency of resources. Billable hours are compared to the actual hours worked, to help identify which resources are being under-utilized and when, using this equation:

Billable Utilization = (Billable Hours / Actual Hours Worked) x 100%

This KPI helps to ensure that each hour paid for is an hour in which productive work is produced.

 To get a picture of your overall financial performance…

7. Cost performance

Cost performance is a measure of the cost efficiency of a project. To calculate the Cost Performance Index (CPI), you can use this equation:

CPI = Earned Value of Work Performed / Actual Cost Incurred to Complete the Work

If the CPI >1 the project is performing well in terms of cost efficiency. For example, a CPI of 1.31 would indicate that $1.31 dollars of value was being produced per $1 being spent.

If CPI <1, the project is underperforming financially, and the value of work being completed is less than the value spent to produce the work.

8. Project profitability

Used interchangeably with Return on Investment (ROI), project profitability shows how much money a project makes, after subtracting the costs incurred to complete the project.

Project Profitability = Total Project Revenue – Costs Incurred

This KPI indicates whether your project management business is financially healthy and producing enough profit with the projects it completes.

Tracking this metric over time, across different projects, indicates whether your company is achieving healthy growth and can highlight the kinds of projects that deliver the highest ROI.

Actionable Tips for Maximizing Project Efficiency

90% of projects are delivered late. This stat is often thrown around the project management sphere and sadly, projects do often miss their deadlines due to unforeseen circumstances, project changes, or a general lack of efficiency and planning.

While this stat isn’t true for every company, it’s universally true that, as project managers, we strive to be more efficient, more productive, and to deliver higher quality work to our clients.

With this in mind, here are some actionable tips you can use to maximize project efficiency.

1. Take a top-heavy approach to planning.

In the scramble to be efficient, it’s easy to make the mistake of diving in head-first before you’ve made an all-encompassing plan.

However, the more work you put into planning, the more efficient the rest of the process will be – and the less you’ll be held up by bottlenecks, backtracking, and uncertainty in the team.

Here are the three main components to tackle.

a. Project plan

Begin by outlining the goals and objectives of the project, moving on to making a list of every deliverable required for the project’s completion, and every task necessary to create those deliverables.

You’ll also want to note down key deadlines, assign roles and responsibilities to your team members, and highlight where you might need to bring in contractors.

This will ensure that you know, in advance, who you’ll need to complete the project, helping you to avoid project bottlenecks when waiting for resources to become available.

b. Project schedule

Building on the foundation of a solid project plan, you can now create the most efficient project schedule to bring your project to completion.

With a roster of all the activities you need to create the deliverables, you can arrange them into the optimal schedule to complete your project efficiently.

Things you should prioritise when creating the most efficient project schedule:

• Dependencies – many of the tasks required for project completion will need to be done in a particular order (a.k.a. to start some tasks, others will need to be completed first). Note all these dependencies and make this the foundation of your schedule to avoid bottlenecks and increase efficiency.
• Availability of resources – certain team members or contractors may only be available at certain times. Make sure to check in with your people and schedule tasks according to when they’re available to complete them.
• Overburden – when you finally arrange tasks into a project schedule, you may find that there are some team members that have too much on their plate. Or they might be responsible for several tasks that need to be completed in a similar time frame. In both cases, it’s a good idea to re-delegate to ensure project completion efficiency.

c. Risk management plan

Dealing with risks that turn into tangible problems is a huge drain on your team’s time. However, you can minimize the time lost to realized risk by preparing effectively.

Consider the risks that have the potential to impact your project and come up with a mitigation strategy to deal with each efficiently. It’s a good idea to assign owners to track and mitigate risks so that no time is wasted in responding to them.

2. Make use of your team

The benefit of being part of a team is that you have several brains to work with, rather than one.

Getting several of your team members involved with processes such as listing out all tasks and deliverables will help you to complete your project plan more quickly, so work on tangible deliverables can begin faster, too.

Brainstorming the kinds of risks you might encounter – and developing the risk management strategies to tackle them – is an activity similarly improved by teamwork, with people’s different experiences adding significant value to this process.

In short, any area where several heads are better than one – such as brainstorming and problem solving – should use your several members of your team to tackle it.

3. Arrange regular check-ins with stakeholders

As we’ve already touched upon, ‘backtracking’ – in other words, having to redo work you’ve already done – is a significant contributor to project delays and reduced efficiency.

One surefire way to reduce the amount of backtracking you do is to regularly check in with your clients – for example, once a week.

You can show them the latest versions of the tasks/deliverables to check you’re on track to execute their vision – or you’ll be able readjust quickly if they have something different in mind.

Share your plans for the upcoming week so that your client can interject if they have additional information or a change request to propose at a particular step. Again, preventing backtracking as much as possible to maximize efficiency.

4. Make communication regular and accessible

To be at your most efficient, your team needs to know exactly what needs to be done and when, what others have already done, and to be able to get in touch with team members and collaborators quickly.

In general, collaborative working/messaging tools are better than emailing, since they allow many team members to communicate at once, rather than individually. This makes it easier to work as a team – teamwork, as we highlighted above, is key to improving project efficiency.

It can also be a good idea to have regular team meetings to ensure everyone is on track. When there’s any confusion, or there are any big changes or events that take place, it’s often more effective and efficient to realign everyone at once, in person.

5 Steps to Assemble a Dynamic Team Primed for Peak Performance

At the heart of any successful project is a dynamic, unified team, formed from two vital components: the people and their environment.

But how do you make sure that both are primed for peak performance when completing projects, with a dynamic, efficient team that delivers punctual, high-quality work?

Here are the steps you can take.

1. Outline the project scope

To assemble your team, you need to outline the roles and responsibilities required for your project.

For this, you need a clear project scope, so you know exactly what deliverables you need to produce – and, therefore, the people required to bring about their completion.

2. Identify roles and responsibilities

Look at the project scope and determine which team members you need. Of course, you need a project manager and other integral project roles.

 Beyond this, however, what subject matter specialists does the project need? Does this project need an analyst to keep track of the project’s progress and analyze data? Does it require a communications specialist to disseminate key messages to stakeholders?

Look through the project scope and note down each role you need filled to ensure the project’s completion. Don’t be afraid to outsource and get the contractors necessary to complete the project if you don’t have the right person in your in-house team.

3. Select the candidates

Now you’re aware of the roles needed for the project, you can select some appropriate candidates. Different projects will be suited to different skillsets and qualities.

You’ll want to consider:

• Past project experience
• Individuals’ interests and passions
• Readiness to learn new skills (if the project requires them)
• Adaptability
• Familiarity with necessary tools

Another thing to keep in mind is the chemistry of the group as a whole. If you know a particular subset of people work well together on certain types of projects, then reusing this group – or a part of the group – can help to ensure things go smoothly.

4. Facilitate a communicative atmosphere

A successful team is underpinned by stellar communication, which doesn’t happen by magic. You need to make sure that the tools and processes are in place to make it happen.

Depending on how your team best communicates, it might be a good idea to onboard them onto a collaborative working tool for the project and/or have regular in-person meetings. Make sure to set expectations for when, how often, and where the team should communicate.

It’s a good idea to set ground rules for communication, setting a precedence for respect and collaboration. Developing a comprehensive communication plan can help you to accomplish this, too, enabling the team to navigate conflict smoothly.

5. Foster strong workplace relationships

Whether it’s team building exercises in work hours, or opportunities for bonding outside of work, creating a comfortable atmosphere where everyone feels able to share their ideas and feel heard is key to building a dynamic team primed for peak performance.

Cultivating strong workplace relationships is pivotal to project success. By focusing on developing these critical bonds, you’ll create a team that’s stronger, and make projects which are even better.