I have now been the Manager of the Project Management Office at the University for Manitoba for over two years. One of the first items I struggled with was trying to determine how to visually communicate the status of the portfolio of projects in a visual, intuitive way. I was a huge proponent of visual reporting and communication from my days as an Agile consultant. A textual or tabular report of the portfolio of projects just doesn’t inform stakeholders easily as to the breadth, depth, and status of the portfolio of projects.
Epiphany
Late one day, I had a discussion with our CIO in regards to how he had seen a radar diagram used as a means to communicate the life-cycle of Infrastructure within an environment. After a short discussion, we had formulated a plan as to how it could be used to display the portfolios of our projects.
We had devised a template to show the following:
- Separate portfolio sections with
- Projects represented by coloured circles of different sizes
- Status of projects indicated by circle colour
- Projects on hold indicated by a diamond
- New projects shown by a distinct circle icon
- Size of project indicated by size of circle
- Indication of a project being over budget by a halo around the circle
- Project phase indicated by the circle’s proximity to center of the radar
- Project’s progress indicated by the circle’s overlay to show percentage complete
Results
The Portfolio Radar diagram has been refined over the months. but it is probably the most requested document the Project Management Office produces.
Recently, I have created a personal radar that I use to track my to-do items. Like a lot of managers, I usually have 10-20 items on the go that need periodic attention. These items can usually be categorized into 3-4 “portfolios”. The radar template is much more appropriate than the standard kanban board used for projects as the items can be recurring and of extended duration. Some of them can be standing items which are never really done. The “Personal Radar” is a great diagram for showing which items need to have attention paid to them next week and which ones can wait.
Like the Portfolio Radar, the Personal Radar indicates:
- Separate portfolio sections with
- Items represented by stickies
- Urgency of attention indicated by stickie colour
- Stickie phase indicated by the Stickie’s proximity to center of the radar
This “Personal Radar” for the PMO Manager has been a great assistance to stay of top of multitude of items required in the PMO. The Personal Radar gets reviewed at the start of the week to plan the week and at the end of the week to ensure the items received the attention they deserved.
So far, this is becoming a key deliverable to stay on top of items. An example of the Personal Radar is show below:
Summary
The Portfolio Radar and Personal Radar have been excellent diagrams to use for communication of project status and task management. I’d love to hear your experiences with other means of visual methods for Project Management and personal management.
Agile PMO 