Project Schedule/Milestone Tracking Solutions

Shelby

Hi Everyone! Does anyone have a project schedule/milestone tracking solution to share? I'm trying to create a company wide solution to input/track schedules for multiple projects, multiple milestones within each project, and provide executive level visibility of the status of each project. Any good ideas would be appreciated!

Shanna Giannatti

Hi Shelby! I came here looking for the same type of solution so I'm hoping your post gets some replies soon. Do your projects include budget/financials or is is more time/effort/tasks?

Shelby

Hi Shanna

This particular solution is meant to be solely for time/task (the financials part is tracked elsewhere). The hope is to highlight overall project schedule status (Buffer Days Remaining, Buffer as % of Contract Days Remaining, overall status, etc.) and provide granular visibility to each milestone within the project. So that both executive level and project manager's have a true view into the project's schedule status.

How about your project?

Shanna Giannatti

My projects aren't tracking financials either, and similar to yours, will be for tracking milestones. Our deadlines are a bit more flexible as this is for upgrading wireless hardware to 4G; Verizon is shutting off their 3G network at the end of the year, so we need to have everyone finished by December. The real issue is managing the installations of the hardware. Most customers have multiple locations, meaning multiple orders, service appointments, etc

I think I need a template to use for each client, and each client's sheet would need to track orders/fulfillment, field service visits, and follow up meetings. Maybe a high-level dashboard for the executive review info.

For yours, have you looked through all of the many templates and template sets? I've seen a few that are similar to what you mentioned, although they might need editing.

Shanna Giannatti

This one is a set that includes dashboard (for exec review), milestones report, tasks report, and project risk report (close to exceeding deadlines) https://app.smartsheet.com/b/publish?EQBCT=0dad2350d4eb49148627d0d9472207ee

Shelby

Awesome, that sounds like a fun solution to put together. Yes, I've looked through the templates and they don't appear to offer what we are looking for.

For your solution, I've used a single "Master Sheet" or "Intake Sheet" (whatever you want to call it), that houses all the info, and then I would generate a Report for each customer as needed. This helped us to easily update, edit, and archive. By using one Master Sheet you can filter the sheet to find/update info, collect and report on the data, and archive for later because all the data is housed in one location.

Supingc

Hi Shelby,

I'm looking for a similar executive level view of milestones tracking for multiples projects. Did you combine "Master Sheet" with "Project Milestones" report or are you generating your reports in a different way?

I'm still at a 'conceptual' level of the milestones tracking solution. We have a kind of "Master Sheet", but milestones are displayed on multiples lines for a project that's not a nice view at executive level. I'd see them on the same line for a given project. Any insights you have would be much appreciated. Thanks!

SRLinhardt

PM here, too! I have used this similarly to build out an executive dashboard. I have had the most success with whiteboarding my end result/mock layout and then working backward to see what information I need to feed the dashboard. This helped me make sure that creating templates was not redundant and I did not have to go back and update multiple projects after the initial template creation. I did mock up one project as a whole and then saved it as new for the rest of them. That was a huge time saver. I also recommend that you put sheets in the folders that you want to roll up into reports because then when you add more projects, they just get saved in that folder that feeds the report and you don't have to edit the report every time you add a new project.

If you do use the intake form, I would recommend using the workflow to move lines to other sheets and again, you can set up the rules for that too, and have everything be very automated so you only touch it a few times a week.

I do recommend putting the workflow and any summaries on the template so you don't have to recreate those with each project as well.

Riley Windsor

I would also recommend checking out some of Prodactive's PMO solutions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc3EZXK4A2A this PMO solution helped take my smartsheet Project Portfolio to another level.