Allison, As David indicates, Workfront's capability to track custom data enables you to track a number of different metrics depending on what's relevant to the business or the PMO. One thing that I often advise clients is to only track what is relevant and actionable - no more, no less. Often times organizations see that there are these incredible possibilities (see Big Data) and want to implement them all at the same time, but I have to reel them back many times because of the overhead that may be involved or the simple fact that they are not prepared to do anything with the data once it's gathered. I like data as much as anyone, but there can be too much where it can impede projects or overwhelm an analyst. That said, here are a few questions that can help us get context on what to recommend: 1) How mature is project and portfolio management in your organization? a) Are projects given budgets that they are held to or measured against? b) Are there areas or segments where projects fall under? It can be formal portfolios, departments, corporate initiative, business unit, etc... c) Do most projects follow some sort of template or are they more free-form? d) What is the percentage of projects that finish on-time, on-budget? e) What is the average project duration, hours, and spend? 2) How formal is the intake process for projects? a) Is there a consistent way for folks to request a project? b) Is there a formal approval process for project requests? c) Do you reject any projects/requests? 3) What methods are used for monitoring projects? a) Are status reports standardized and/or automated? b) What happens when a project is At Risk, Behind, or Late? c) What is the process when you start running out of hours or budget? Does it need to go back for approval of those funds/hours? 4) What happens when a project is complete? a) Do you have a formal approval process? b) Do files/assets need to be transferred, printed, made, stored, archived, etc... and is that tracked as part of the process? c) If the project replaced something, what happened to the old thing? These are just a few things off the top of my head, but often they can be overlooked as being simple but it's the simple things that will bring you the biggest gains. One other thing I highly recommend is to track the things that are causing the bottle-necks and pain so that you can hopefully identify what is causing it and then modify process to improve it. Workfront is very scalable regarding whether it can be utilized by immature and mature PMOs alike. John Albaugh GP PRO
