Leveraging Data Analytics and Dashboards for Enhanced Project Performance
In the ever-evolving realm of project management, especially when delivering large Federal Programs, integrating data analytics, automating workflows, and tailoring purpose-built dashboards is integral to achieving project success.
This white paper delves into how organizations can utilize data-driven insights to optimize project outcomes, foster collaboration, and design digital architecture that contributes to the project’s success from the outset. This document provides a roadmap on how program and project managers can leverage tools to better understand and act on their data. This understanding drives a more predictable, efficient, and successful delivery for all stakeholders.
Effective project management is predicated upon informed decision-making, timely execution, and proactive risk mitigation. However, many organizations face a roadblock: the absence of tools to facilitate these critical processes. In the dynamic environment of large, government-funded programs, where variables and unforeseen challenges are the rule, not the exception, the role of data analytics and dashboards is not just beneficial but essential. Using the proper tools empowers project teams with real-time visibility into the project status, delivering actionable insights and ensuring a consistent alignment with project objectives. Data analytics and dashboards can transform the landscape of project management, offering a strategic advantage in complex program delivery.
The Power of Data Analytics in Project Management
Real-Time Performance Measurement
Challenge: Traditional project reporting often lacks real-time accuracy, leading to delays in critical decision-making and potential escalations of minor issues. This deficiency can result in missed opportunities for course correction, allowing minor problems to grow into more significant, costlier ones.
Solution: Project managers can collect and analyze real-time project data and metrics by leveraging a multitude of products. This enhanced approach to performance measurement facilitates accurate, timely adjustments and promotes informed decision-making, which is crucial for project success.
Identifying Bottlenecks
Challenge: Bottlenecks significantly impede project progress and efficiency, often causing delays and budget overruns. They can stem from factors such as inadequate resource forecasting and distribution, unforeseen project complexities, or inefficient process workflows. These constraints slow project momentum and can lead to diminished team morale and increased stress, further exacerbating project challenges.
Solution: By leveraging advanced machine learning algorithms to evaluate historical and contextual data to provide predictive analytics that facilitates early identification of bottlenecks, allowing for targeted interventions. Whether the issues stem from resource allocation, process inefficiencies, or workflow delays, using the proper tools will create actionable insights for resolution.
Evaluating Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Challenge: Selecting KPIs well-aligned with project goals for monitoring progress and outcomes is critical. Choosing inappropriate or misaligned KPIs can lead to a misguided focus, diverting attention and resources from critical areas and potentially skewing the project’s perceived success. Establishing KPIs that reflect the project’s objectives can provide meaningful insights into its health and progress is essential.
Solution: Select the right tools to objectively evaluate KPIs, ensuring they align with the project’s success criteria. By harnessing advanced analytical tools, project teams can dissect complex data sets, uncovering nuanced insights that may be overlooked through traditional analysis. This deep dive into data enables a comprehensive understanding of project dynamics, guiding managers to make more strategic, impactful decisions.
Designing Effective Dashboards
Understand User Needs
Guideline: The first step in designing effective dashboards is understanding stakeholder needs and expectations. This involves capturing and codifying what information is most valuable to each stakeholder group, how they intend to use the dashboard, and what decisions they aim to make with the data presented. Recognizing that each stakeholder may have unique requirements and perspectives on the project’s success factors is crucial. By aligning the dashboard’s design with these needs, you ensure that the dashboard is a versatile tool that fosters informed decision-making across the entire project spectrum.
Action: Initiate working sessions with project team members, sponsors, and end-users to gather their input on critical metrics and reporting requirements from the project’s inception. By doing this, you ensure the dashboard is tailored to address the specific needs of its users, providing them with relevant and actionable insights into the project’s status and health. A well-designed dashboard not only presents data but does so in a way that is intuitive and immediately useful, facilitating better decision-making and project oversight.
Visual Clarity and Relevance
Guideline: Properly designed dashboards will convey information clearly and concisely, ensuring that users can quickly grasp the essential insights without being overwhelmed by data. This means that every element on the dashboard will be intentional, serving a specific purpose in the narrative that the dashboard aims to tell. The design will facilitate a logical flow of information, guiding the user’s eye through the data in an intuitive way that leads to a clear understanding of the project’s status and performance. The dashboard must avoid presenting data in isolation; instead, it should contextualize information, allowing users to make sense of the metrics in relation to the project’s objectives and broader goals. By adhering to principles of visual hierarchy, simplicity, and focus, the dashboard becomes a powerful tool for communication, enabling stakeholders to absorb critical information and make informed decisions quickly.
Action:
Design a system that uses visualizations (charts, graphs, heatmaps) to represent data effectively. Employ visualization tools to illustrate data in a way that is immediately understandable. You can select the type of visualization based on the data being represented, ensuring that the chosen method highlights the critical trends and insights in the data without confusion.
Focusing on the most impactful KPIs and metrics for decision-making and project monitoring is crucial for the dashboard’s effectiveness. This entails a meticulous selection process where each potential KPI and metric is evaluated for relevance and impact on the project’s overall success. Engaging with key stakeholders during this process is essential to understand their specific needs and expectations, ensuring that the dashboard aligns with their interests and the project’s strategic objectives.
Avoid clutter and focus on actionable insights: Organizations must avoid unnecessary complexity. Limit the use of colors, fonts, and styles, and only include elements that contribute to understanding the data. The goal is to make the dashboard visually appealing and practical, where each element serves a purpose in guiding the viewer toward actionable insights. By reducing clutter, you ensure that users can focus on the most pertinent information, aiding in quicker and more accurate decision-making.
Real-Time Updates
Guideline: Providing up-to-date information, reflecting the current status of the project ensures accuracy in decision-making. This necessity stems from the dynamic nature of project management, where conditions, resources, and priorities can shift rapidly. A dashboard that offers real-time or near-real-time data empowers stakeholders to make decisions based on the latest available information, which is crucial in maintaining project momentum and addressing issues as they arise. Moreover, up-to-date information fosters a culture of transparency and trust within the team, as all members have access to the same timely data, reducing the chances of miscommunication or misaligned efforts. In essence, the currency of the data in a dashboard is not just about keeping figures updated–it’s about providing a reliable foundation for decision-making, strategic planning, and effective communication across all levels of the project team.
Action: Implement automated data feeds to ensure real-time updates. This allows for the rapid integration of live data sources, ensuring that the information displayed is always current. Stale data can lead to misguided decisions, as it may not accurately represent the project’s current state, leading stakeholders to base their actions on outdated information. Ensuring that the dashboard reflects real-time data enables stakeholders to make timely, informed decisions based on the latest project developments.
Collaborative Features
Guideline: Enhance value by fostering collaboration among stakeholders, making it not just a tool for information display but also for interaction Utilize a central hub where team members, managers, and other stakeholders can converge to discuss, analyze, and strategize based on the data presented. Transforming the dashboard into an interactive platform encourages a more integrated approach to project management where insights and decisions are shared and developed collectively. This collaborative environment not only harnesses the diverse expertise and perspectives within the team but also promotes a sense of ownership and accountability toward the project’s outcomes. Collaboration facilitated by the dashboard can lead to more innovative solutions, quicker problem resolution, and a more cohesive project team, ultimately driving the project toward success more inclusively and dynamically.
Action: Use interactive elements to encourage engagement. Incorporate features such as drill-down capabilities, filters, and sliders within the dashboard to enable users to delve deeper into the data layers or adjust the displayed information to suit their specific inquiries or interests. This level of interactivity transforms the user’s experience from passive observation to active exploration, allowing stakeholders to uncover specific, detailed insights that might not be immediately apparent at a surface level. For example, drill-down capabilities can reveal underlying causes of trends or anomalies, filters can segment data to analyze specific scenarios or departments, and sliders can adjust parameters to explore different forecasts or outcomes. By providing these interactive tools, the dashboard serves as a source of information and a platform for hypothesis testing, problem-solving, and scenario planning. Engaging users this way encourages a deeper connection with the data, fostering a more analytical mindset and promoting a proactive approach to project management and decision-making.
AI’s Role in Enhancing Project Success
Predictive Analytics: Use AI algorithms to leverage vast amounts of data to forecast potential project risks, offering an advanced warning system. This foresight allows project managers to engage in proactive risk mitigation strategies, addressing issues before they escalate into significant problems. By analyzing patterns and trends from past projects, AI can identify risk factors that humans might overlook, enabling a more nuanced and anticipatory approach to risk management.
Natural Language Processing (NLP): Leverage Natural Language Processing (NLP), which can analyze vast quantities of unstructured data, such as contracts, emails, meeting notes, and project logs, extracting valuable insights that would be time-consuming to identify manually. This capability enables project teams to type questions in a chat box setting on all available data, enhancing their understanding of project nuances, and improving their ability to make data-driven decisions.
Conclusion
Data analytics and well-designed dashboards are indispensable tools for project success. By integrating these advanced functionalities and deep practitioner knowledge into the platform, organizations can set benchmarks in harnessing data to enhance collaboration, drive informed decision-making, and consistently achieve project goals.
The implementation of data analytics goes beyond number-crunching; analytics transform data into a narrative that informs every phase of a project’s lifecycle. Dashboards are not just visual representations of data; they are interactive and strategic tools that provide real-time insights and foresight, enabling the team to anticipate challenges and seize opportunities. This proactive approach to project management, underpinned by sophisticated data analysis, fosters a culture of transparency, agility, and continuous improvement. The result is a more cohesive, informed, and effective project team capable of navigating complexities and successfully completing projects.
Charles “Chad” Freeman has nearly 20 years of experience in the AEC industry, including serving as a Senior Project and Program Manager for disaster recovery and infrastructure projects across the U.S., including work supporting the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). As a team leader, he has been responsible for overseeing projects and programs throughout the project lifecycle to completion.
Chad currently serves as Director of Response Operations for Hill International, Inc. where he leads the Resiliency and Disaster Recovery practice’s program, project, and construction work for clients involved in housing and other infrastructure recovery programs. Contact Chad at [email protected] or 228-990-2488 for more information on how Hill’s team can help your community recover more efficiently and effectively.
Mark Della Volpe is the President of Ignatius.io, a pioneering SaaS platform designed to transform how state and local governments manage federally funded projects through data and analytics. He has also served as a Senior Advisor to State, Local, and Federal clients on data, grants, and financial management. Contact Mark at [email protected].
We and use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your experience on our website. We may store and/or access information on a device and process personal data, such as your IP address and browsing data, for personalised advertising and content, advertising and content measurement, audience research and services development. Additionally, we may utilize precise geolocation data and identification through device scanning.
Please note that your consent will be valid across all our subdomains. You can change or withdraw your consent at any time by clicking the “Consent Preferences” button at the bottom of your screen. We respect your choices and are committed to providing you with a transparent and secure browsing experience.
Customize your consent preferences for Cookie Categories and advertising tracking preferences for Purposes & Features and Vendors below. You can give granular consent for each and . Most vendors require explicit consent for personal data processing, while some rely on legitimate interest. However, you have the right to object to their use of legitimate interest.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
Cookies, device or similar online identifiers (e.g. login-based identifiers, randomly assigned identifiers, network based identifiers) together with other information (e.g. browser type and information, language, screen size, supported technologies etc.) can be stored or read on your device to recognise it each time it connects to an app or to a website, for one or several of the purposes presented here.
Most purposes explained in this notice rely on the storage or accessing of information from your device when you use an app or visit a website. For example, a vendor or publisher might need to store a cookie on your device during your first visit on a website, to be able to recognise your device during your next visits (by accessing this cookie each time).
Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times an ad is presented to you).
A car manufacturer wants to promote its electric vehicles to environmentally conscious users living in the city after office hours. The advertising is presented on a page with related content (such as an article on climate change actions) after 6:30 p.m. to users whose non-precise location suggests that they are in an urban zone.
A large producer of watercolour paints wants to carry out an online advertising campaign for its latest watercolour range, diversifying its audience to reach as many amateur and professional artists as possible and avoiding showing the ad next to mismatched content (for instance, articles about how to paint your house). The number of times that the ad has been presented to you is detected and limited, to avoid presenting it too often.
Information about your activity on this service (such as forms you submit, content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (for example, information from your previous activity on this service and other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (that might include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present advertising that appears more relevant based on your possible interests by this and other entities.
If you read several articles about the best bike accessories to buy, this information could be used to create a profile about your interest in bike accessories. Such a profile may be used or improved later on, on the same or a different website or app to present you with advertising for a particular bike accessory brand. If you also look at a configurator for a vehicle on a luxury car manufacturer website, this information could be combined with your interest in bikes to refine your profile and make an assumption that you are interested in luxury cycling gear.
An apparel company wishes to promote its new line of high-end baby clothes. It gets in touch with an agency that has a network of clients with high income customers (such as high-end supermarkets) and asks the agency to create profiles of young parents or couples who can be assumed to be wealthy and to have a new child, so that these can later be used to present advertising within partner apps based on those profiles.
Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on your advertising profiles, which can reflect your activity on this service or other websites or apps (like the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects.
An online retailer wants to advertise a limited sale on running shoes. It wants to target advertising to users who previously looked at running shoes on its mobile app. Tracking technologies might be used to recognise that you have previously used the mobile app to consult running shoes, in order to present you with the corresponding advertisement on the app.
A profile created for personalised advertising in relation to a person having searched for bike accessories on a website can be used to present the relevant advertisement for bike accessories on a mobile app of another organisation.
Information about your activity on this service (for instance, forms you submit, non-advertising content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (such as your previous activity on this service or other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (which might for example include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present content that appears more relevant based on your possible interests, such as by adapting the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find content that matches your interests.
You read several articles on how to build a treehouse on a social media platform. This information might be added to a profile to mark your interest in content related to outdoors as well as do-it-yourself guides (with the objective of allowing the personalisation of content, so that for example you are presented with more blog posts and articles on treehouses and wood cabins in the future).
You have viewed three videos on space exploration across different TV apps. An unrelated news platform with which you have had no contact builds a profile based on that viewing behaviour, marking space exploration as a topic of possible interest for other videos.
Content presented to you on this service can be based on your content personalisation profiles, which can reflect your activity on this or other services (for instance, the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects. This can for example be used to adapt the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find (non-advertising) content that matches your interests.
You read articles on vegetarian food on a social media platform and then use the cooking app of an unrelated company. The profile built about you on the social media platform will be used to present you vegetarian recipes on the welcome screen of the cooking app.
You have viewed three videos about rowing across different websites. An unrelated video sharing platform will recommend five other videos on rowing that may be of interest to you when you use your TV app, based on a profile built about you when you visited those different websites to watch online videos.
Information regarding which advertising is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine how well an advert has worked for you or other users and whether the goals of the advertising were reached. For instance, whether you saw an ad, whether you clicked on it, whether it led you to buy a product or visit a website, etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of advertising campaigns.
You have clicked on an advertisement about a “black Friday” discount by an online shop on the website of a publisher and purchased a product. Your click will be linked to this purchase. Your interaction and that of other users will be measured to know how many clicks on the ad led to a purchase.
You are one of very few to have clicked on an advertisement about an “international appreciation day” discount by an online gift shop within the app of a publisher. The publisher wants to have reports to understand how often a specific ad placement within the app, and notably the “international appreciation day” ad, has been viewed or clicked by you and other users, in order to help the publisher and its partners (such as agencies) optimise ad placements.
Information regarding which content is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine whether the (non-advertising) content e.g. reached its intended audience and matched your interests. For instance, whether you read an article, watch a video, listen to a podcast or look at a product description, how long you spent on this service and the web pages you visit etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of (non-advertising) content that is shown to you.
You have read a blog post about hiking on a mobile app of a publisher and followed a link to a recommended and related post. Your interactions will be recorded as showing that the initial hiking post was useful to you and that it was successful in interesting you in the related post. This will be measured to know whether to produce more posts on hiking in the future and where to place them on the home screen of the mobile app.
You were presented a video on fashion trends, but you and several other users stopped watching after 30 seconds. This information is then used to evaluate the right length of future videos on fashion trends.
Reports can be generated based on the combination of data sets (like user profiles, statistics, market research, analytics data) regarding your interactions and those of other users with advertising or (non-advertising) content to identify common characteristics (for instance, to determine which target audiences are more receptive to an ad campaign or to certain contents).
The owner of an online bookstore wants commercial reporting showing the proportion of visitors who consulted and left its site without buying, or consulted and bought the last celebrity autobiography of the month, as well as the average age and the male/female distribution of each category. Data relating to your navigation on its site and to your personal characteristics is then used and combined with other such data to produce these statistics.
An advertiser wants to better understand the type of audience interacting with its adverts. It calls upon a research institute to compare the characteristics of users who interacted with the ad with typical attributes of users of similar platforms, across different devices. This comparison reveals to the advertiser that its ad audience is mainly accessing the adverts through mobile devices and is likely in the 45-60 age range.
Information about your activity on this service, such as your interaction with ads or content, can be very helpful to improve products and services and to build new products and services based on user interactions, the type of audience, etc. This specific purpose does not include the development or improvement of user profiles and identifiers.
A technology platform working with a social media provider notices a growth in mobile app users, and sees based on their profiles that many of them are connecting through mobile connections. It uses a new technology to deliver ads that are formatted for mobile devices and that are low-bandwidth, to improve their performance.
An advertiser is looking for a way to display ads on a new type of consumer device. It collects information regarding the way users interact with this new kind of device to determine whether it can build a new mechanism for displaying advertising on this type of device.
Content presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type, or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times a video or an article is presented to you).
A travel magazine has published an article on its website about the new online courses proposed by a language school, to improve travelling experiences abroad. The school’s blog posts are inserted directly at the bottom of the page, and selected on the basis of your non-precise location (for instance, blog posts explaining the course curriculum for different languages than the language of the country you are situated in).
A sports news mobile app has started a new section of articles covering the most recent football games. Each article includes videos hosted by a separate streaming platform showcasing the highlights of each match. If you fast-forward a video, this information may be used to select a shorter video to play next.
Your data can be used to monitor for and prevent unusual and possibly fraudulent activity (for example, regarding advertising, ad clicks by bots), and ensure systems and processes work properly and securely. It can also be used to correct any problems you, the publisher or the advertiser may encounter in the delivery of content and ads and in your interaction with them.
An advertising intermediary delivers ads from various advertisers to its network of partnering websites. It notices a large increase in clicks on ads relating to one advertiser, and uses data regarding the source of the clicks to determine that 80% of the clicks come from bots rather than humans.
Certain information (like an IP address or device capabilities) is used to ensure the technical compatibility of the content or advertising, and to facilitate the transmission of the content or ad to your device.
Clicking on a link in an article might normally send you to another page or part of the article. To achieve this, 1°) your browser sends a request to a server linked to the website, 2°) the server answers back (“here is the article you asked for”), using technical information automatically included in the request sent by your device, to properly display the information / images that are part of the article you asked for. Technically, such exchange of information is necessary to deliver the content that appears on your screen.
Information about your activity on this service may be matched and combined with other information relating to you and originating from various sources (for instance your activity on a separate online service, your use of a loyalty card in-store, or your answers to a survey), in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
In support of the purposes explained in this notice, your device might be considered as likely linked to other devices that belong to you or your household (for instance because you are logged in to the same service on both your phone and your computer, or because you may use the same Internet connection on both devices).
Your device might be distinguished from other devices based on information it automatically sends when accessing the Internet (for instance, the IP address of your Internet connection or the type of browser you are using) in support of the purposes exposed in this notice.
With your acceptance, certain characteristics specific to your device might be requested and used to distinguish it from other devices (such as the installed fonts or plugins, the resolution of your screen) in support of the purposes explained in this notice.