Portfolio Dashboard - best way to showcase multiple phases within each project

Jsantos

Hello Community,

We have multiple projects that are in not just ONE phase but have overlapping of phases within a project. We are trying to find a way to be able to display this in a visual representation? Not sure if we would filter out the full list of phases and only show key milestone phases? this is for development of properties so being able to know how many projects are within certain phases

We already have a gantt view of active projects timeline so not sure if anyone has an idea of another way to present this? We tried a bar graph but does not really showcase the right number of phases the project is in?

Any suggestions would be great

SoS | Dan Palenchar

You could use a report to filter projects, group, and/or sort them based on any criteria you can think of, they are extremely adaptable.

The tricky part is how you want to handle projects that are in multiple phases at one point in time. This is a question only you can answer based on what is the most important info to prioritize, but there a lot of options most likely.

Let's say you have 5 phases in your project lifecycle. You could use a sheet summary report which a checkbox (or some other visual) for each phase. Based on the Sheet data the boxes could automatically check/uncheck as a project enters/exits a phase. This report could then be on a dashboard and you could see each project with checkboxes for the phase(s) it is in.

You could use metric widgets to show the number of projects in a given phase, and when you click those you could go to a report that lists them.

Depending on how much complexity there is in your phases (# of phases total, # of simultaneous phases) you could have a report that is grouped by each phase or each combination of phases and lists them. For example it could start with whatever is in phase 1, then phase 1 & 2, phase 1 & 3, etc. This may or may not be practical with the data you have.

So it comes down to what information is important to communicate and then determining how to do so with the tools at your disposal.

Dan Palenchar | School of Sheets Solutions Consulting (Smartsheet Aligned Gold Partner)

Smartsheet Consulting Inquiries: schoolofsheets.com/workwithus

Smartsheet Tutorial Videos: schoolofsheets.com/youtube

SoS | Dan Palenchar

You could use a report to filter projects, group, and/or sort them based on any criteria you can think of, they are extremely adaptable.

The tricky part is how you want to handle projects that are in multiple phases at one point in time. This is a question only you can answer based on what is the most important info to prioritize, but there a lot of options most likely.

Let's say you have 5 phases in your project lifecycle. You could use a sheet summary report which a checkbox (or some other visual) for each phase. Based on the Sheet data the boxes could automatically check/uncheck as a project enters/exits a phase. This report could then be on a dashboard and you could see each project with checkboxes for the phase(s) it is in.

You could use metric widgets to show the number of projects in a given phase, and when you click those you could go to a report that lists them.

Depending on how much complexity there is in your phases (# of phases total, # of simultaneous phases) you could have a report that is grouped by each phase or each combination of phases and lists them. For example it could start with whatever is in phase 1, then phase 1 & 2, phase 1 & 3, etc. This may or may not be practical with the data you have.

So it comes down to what information is important to communicate and then determining how to do so with the tools at your disposal.

Dan Palenchar | School of Sheets Solutions Consulting (Smartsheet Aligned Gold Partner)

Smartsheet Consulting Inquiries: schoolofsheets.com/workwithus

Smartsheet Tutorial Videos: schoolofsheets.com/youtube

Jsantos

thank you dan for your response, this was quite helpful!

SoS | Dan Palenchar

@Jsantos Happy to help!