This is the last installment of project management using excel series.
Preparing & tracking a project plan using Gantt Charts
Team To Do Lists – Project Tracking Tools
Project Status Reporting – Create a Timeline to display milestones
Time sheets and Resource management
Part 5: Issue Trackers & Risk Management
Project Status Reporting – Dashboard
Bonus Post: Using Burn Down Charts to Understand Project Progress
Communication is a very important aspect of project management. Communicating with stakeholders, sponsors, team members and other interested parties takes up quite a bit of project manager’s time.
In almost all the projects I have been part of, the first and foremost question anyone used to ask us is, “how is the project going?”. There is no one line answer to this. A project status dashboard or project status report can help us express the project status in a crisp yet effective manner.
In today’s installment of project management using excel series, we will learn how to make a project management dashboard using Microsoft excel. [related: Making Dashboards using Excel]
To make the project management dashboard, you must answer the following questions,
- Who is the audience of this dashboard?
- Top management or project sponsors or team members or other departments?
- What are they interested to know?
- Day to day issues or High level stuff or Plans or Budgets?
- What is the frequency for updating the dashboard?
- Weekly, Bi-weekly or Monthly or Once in a blue moon?
The answers to these questions will determine what goes in to the dashboard and how it should be constructed.
For our example, I have assumed the following scenario, but you can easily change the dashboard constituents based on your situation.
- Audience of the report: Project Sponsorship Team
- Interested to know: Project Progress wrt Plan, Blocking issues, Overall timeline and Delivery Progress
- Frequency: irrelevant (could be weekly or bi-weekly)
Step 1: Make an outline sketch of the dashboard
Based on the above answers, we vaguely know what should go in to the dashboard. Based on this, we should make an outline sketch of the dashboard. This will help you structure the dashboard on an excel spreadsheet. For our example, this is the outline I have prepared.
the finalized dashboard will look like this: (click here for a bigger version)
Step 2: Get the data to be placed on dashboard
Making a dashboard in excel is a complex and intricate process. Knowing the outline of the dashboard is only the 10% of work. Getting your data to calculate the dashboard metrics (or KPIs) is the most vital part of any dashboard construction.
In our outline, the sections 1,2 and 3 are purely data and 4,5 and 6 are charts prepared from data.
To facilitate this, first, let us create a worksheet named “data” where we can capture user inputs. These inputs can be further manipulated to make the dashboard.
For our dashboard, we need the following inputs,
- Overall project status and progress
- List of ongoing activities and issues
We will derive other inputs from the following,
- Project Plan Gantt Chart discussed in Part 1 will provide us the project plan
- Project Timeline Chart in Part 2 will give us the timeline chart
- Burn down chart will give us the project deliverable status
- Issue Tracker discussed in Part 5 will give us the metrics related to issues
Step 3: Put everything together and make a dashboard
[PS: I have greatly simplified the process of dashboard construction to keep the article readable. Please note that this step usually takes a few of hours and has lot more detail]
Now that we have all the bits of our data ready, we just need to bring them together to make a dashboard.
We will use the following excel concepts,
- Excel Camera Tool to get a live snapshot of the project gantt chart
- Conditional Formatting to show Red, Green or Amber traffic light to depict the project status
- Thermo-meter chart to show the project progress against 100% total
- We will create a stacked bar chart of outstanding issues by using SUMIFS formula. [counts for issue status=”open” and issue priority=”high”, issue status=”open” and issue priority=”medium”, issue status=”open” and issue priority=”low”]
Let us place the remaining pieces of dashboard from already constructed charts and available data,
- Burn-down chart to show the project deliverable status
- Project Time line to show the project milestones over a period of time
- We will create references to the “issue” and “activity” data and show only the first 5 items.
See the below illustration to understand how each part of the dashboard is constructed.
That is all, our dashboard is ready now.
Download the project management dashboard excel file
Unlike other downloads on Chandoo.org, this file is locked. You can purchase unlocked version along with 23 other project management templates – Click here to buy it.
- To download the locked version of project management dashboard excel file click these links: excel 2003, excel 2007
- To get an unlocked version of the dashboard along with 23 other templates, click here.
Tell us about your Project Management Dashboard / Status Report
Tell me about your project management dashboard, project status report formats and how it is constructed. Do you use excel or some other tool (like powerpoint, word) to prepare the report? How the report / dashboard generated? Is the process automated or manual? What have you learned from using / making such status reports?
Resources for Project Managers
Check out my Project Management using Excel page for more resources and helpful information on project management.
Also check out below posts to make your project management files awesome.
- Project Portfolio Management Dashboard
- Gantt Box chart – depict uncertainty in your projects
- Excel Risk Map template
What next?
This is the last installment of project management using excel series. I am looking for ideas to extend this series in useful manner. Please use comments to tell me what other activities of project management can be made easy using Microsoft Excel. I will try to write follow up posts if the topics are interesting.
Thanks a lot for reading the series and suggesting valuable inputs to make it better. I have learned a lot about project management and excel writing this series. I hope you have picked up few concepts too.
Tell me your feedback using comments.
27 Responses to “9 Box grid for talent mapping – HR for Excel – Template & Explanation”
Great stuff! I can understand how to add a slicer to the pivot table, but how do you implement the departmental selector on the 'Filter' formula scheme?
Just saw this on your Youtube channel, and it’s areat idea...!
An easy way to overcome the "ugliness" of pivot tables and get it to look nice (in the format of the Output sheet), would be to simply build a sheet with the nice map at the top, a pivot underneath it and a slicer next to formatted map and then reference each of the 9 cells in the formatted map to the “related” cell in the Pivot.
Keep up the good work!
/Claus
Thanks Claus. That is a great idea 🙂
Hi Chandoo,
This is great! Curious how to make additional columns operate the same as the Department column (ex. have a "manager column") that would allow you to sort a 9 box by manager, area, or team in addition to department?
Feel free to email me if needed! mfry01@minnetronixmedical.com
Happy New Year
Madison Fry
I am curious about the smae thing. I would like to populate the 9 box with other views as well by adding additional columns. IE., I would like to add location, region, etc. Thank you.
This is great, thank you!
How can i see the whole data set of all the teams in the output table. Need a formula that will pick up all the employees
Hello,
Love the template. Thank you. Question - the drop down to pick a department on the Output tab does not seem to work on the downloadable template. Am I doing something incorrectly?
Thank you!
Hi Heather... Thank you. I am using Excel 365 to make the calculations. If you are using an older version of Excel, then the drop-down filter won't work.
Hi
I was able to follow your 9 box grid and modified based my needs. However, you tutorial did not show how to you create the filter for the "Pick a department. Can you kindly share how to create that filter that updated the grid. Thank you.
I am working on this project but I am struggling with the data validation for the department. I copy the worksheets data entry and output as the managers want to see different tabs for each managers.
I updated the source reference for each tab but It does not update the grid based on the new source. The list was updated but it does not populate the grid based on the performance and potential listed.
In addition the hyperlink Update Data and View Talent Map no longer works. Can you please help me.
I keep getting this error message in the pivot table:
This formula is invalid or incomplete: 'The expression is not valid or appears to be incomplete. Please review and correct the expression.
The following syntax error occurred during parsing: Invalid token, Line 1, Offset 14, ‘.
Hi, I used your 9-box excel template with excel 365. First off, thank you so very much. It is incredibly helpful!! My only question is that the boxes aren't big enough for all of the employees (specifically the middle which we call 'Core Employee'). Is there a way to make the boxes larger? Even though it is in excel, I am not able to increase row height (like I normally do in a speadsheet). Any ideas? Thanks again, Jody
Hi Chandoo,
Thanks for the great content. Re. 9 box grid, pls advise how do I increase the size of the box to accommodate more names?
Hi Chandoo,
I figured it out. Excel 365 has the format row height on the ribbon. Thank you
Merci Chandoo pour le modèle proposé,
j'ai une question et un souhait est il possible de développer davantage ce modèle en insérant la photo de chaque employé.
Hi Chandoo!
Great tutorial and tool, thank you! Your tutorial didn't include how to create additional filters on the "Output" tab. Could you please share how you did it?
Can this be done exactly in google sheets?
Hi Chandoo,
Thanks for the video it was really helpful. Is there any way to multi select the dropdown to display multiple or all departments rather than just one at once?
Hello Prish
I have Microsoft 365 and I am struggling to make the boxes larger/unable to increase row height; any idea how you made this work? Specifically in the Output tab where the map is?
Many thanks
Hello Jody, I have Microsoft 365 and I am struggling to make the boxes larger/unable to increase row height; any idea how you made this work? Specifically in the Output tab where the map is? Many thanks
Is there a way to change the 9 box wording descriptions, i.e. Work Horses, to our own internal langauge?
You can edit the file. The descriptions are textboxes.
Hi Chandoo, this is awesome and has worked perfectly. Due to a big organisation the 9 box grid on the output file is too small. I tried adjusting using the row/width ribbon under the format ribbon however it doesn't seem to work. Is there an easier way to adjust this?
Thanks!
When I drag the formula, it doesn't work, and the order I use with the data changes. In the beginning, the order is it is " candidates," " potential," and " performance," but when it goes to another column, it is " Potential," Performance," and "Candidates."Can you help me? Thank you very much, sending love from vietnam
Hi- I am working on the 9 grid project and I am trying to expand the box since I have over 100 names on a few of the columns. How do I do that?
Hi, Thank you this is great stuff and really useful.
As well as department as demonstrated on your clip, how can I display all candidates on the grid at once?
Many thanks in advance