A Toolkit to Drive Efficiency and Visibility

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“You cannot manage what you cannot measure.”

Peter Drucker, Management thinker

How does your organization define and measure success? Regardless of industry, chances are that both historical and real-time data is utilized, analyzed and turned into actionable strategies for decision making. 

In order to manage and measure the success of your team, you must be able to quickly check the status of all work items each team member is working on. Visuals are key, and by having a team dashboard, you get an organized, high-level overview of existing work and work coming down the pipeline without having to spend time digging around the system. 

This week’s blog focuses on four different ways that you can drive efficiencies through reporting and visibility within your organization:

1. Team Dashboard Tips
2. Key Performance Indicators (KPI) Dashboard
3. Calculating Slippage via Baselines
4. Best Practices for Managing an Intake or Request Queue 

TEAM DASHBOARD TIPS

A team dashboard is a great birds-eye view into your managed projects. The information visible is solely based on the accuracy of your team. To make sure that your reports have the most up-to-date data, ensure that everyone is updating percent complete and start and end dates accurately.  

With Workfront’s customized and real-time reporting, you can provide valuable information, in a chart, matrix or detailed view, to both the team and to your leaders. The most common reports added to a team dashboard can be found in the blog post, Manage Your Team’s Work Using Dashboards.

KPI DASHBOARD

Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are the critical indicators of progress toward an intended result. They provide a focus for strategic and operational improvement, create an analytical basis for decision making and help focus attention on what matters most.

Here you will find a sample KPI dashboard that can be imported directly into your system through the use of a kick-start file. The reports within the dashboard provide metrics for demand, on-time delivery, productivity, project velocity and collaboration. If you are unsure of how to import a kick-start file to your system, directions can be found here.

We understand that each of your systems are configured differently so some reports may show more information than others, but remember that each report can easily be adjusted based on custom filters, and negative trends provide an opportunity for improvement. 

This is intended to be a start. We welcome comments and discussion on key KPIs for your business. Join us on Wednesday, April 22 at 9 am MT for a 1-hour Ask the Expert session with Q&A to further discuss KPIs with former customer turned Workfront Strategic Customer Success Manager, Jaimeson Wennerstrum. Register here.

CALCULATING SLIPPAGE VIA BASELINES

Within your projects, each task has a Planned Start Date and Planned Completion Date. These dates are not static — they can change for a variety of reasons such as dependencies, delays, or changes in prioritization. As you alter the dates, being able to compare the original project plan with the new timeline allows you to understand what is called slippage. 

That’s where baselines come in. Baselines are a snapshot of your project plan and key pieces of information. These snapshots will allow you to compare information from the current plan, to the original plan, or any other point in time, to identify problem tasks, scope creep, and other trends over time. 

For step-by-step instructions on how to calculate slippage in both Workfront Classic and the new Workfront experience, click here to access the related blog on Workfront One.

BEST PRACTICES FOR EFFECTIVE QUEUE MANAGEMENT

Planned work is represented in Workfront by projects and tasks. However, you might work in an environment where unplanned work, in the form of random requests, can come in at any time. Or, your organization utilizes incoming work requests from end-users or external third parties to create new projects. Workfront provides a workflow to accommodate these types of environments through the use of Request Queues. 

Below are best practices that customers utilize for effective queue management: 

• Route incoming requests to a team, rather than an individual to ensure there is a backup. 
• Utilize section breaks on custom forms to retain historical data from archived custom fields or to hide financial information using the additional settings option. 

• Create a custom status for “Request Queue" and equate it to Current. This will inform users to not add tasks, like a standard project since this project is simply designed to manage incoming requests. Also, a custom status helps easily filter reports so you can include or exclude these projects from the results. 
• Add calculated fields to an issue or request custom form to capture specific information that needs to be transferable and visible on the converted project. The most popular calculated custom fields are Requested By and Request Type (Queue Topic). Learn how to transfer custom form data here. 

We hope these Workfront Wednesday: Did you know? Toolkits are making things a bit easier in these challenging times. We’re here for you, and will get through this with you. Thank you for #workingboldly with us. 

With love, 

Sue Fellows

Chief Customer Officer

Workfront