How to build a project management dashboard for real-time insights

Managing a project can be overwhelming or smooth sailing, depending on whether or not you use a project management dashboard for real-time insights. 

Without a project management dashboard, it can be difficult to know what’s happening on your project and whether or not you’re on track. However, a project management dashboard gives you an overview of your project, helping you understand everything happening on the project at a glance. This enables you to track progress and make timely interventions to deliver a successful project.

A project management dashboard is an essential tool for delivering successful projects. So, how do you create this all-important tool? This article will discuss:

• Overview of a project management dashboard 
• What are the common components of project management dashboards?
• Steps to build your project management dashboard
• Project management dashboard examples
• Advantages of project management dashboards
• What are common mistakes to avoid in project dashboards?
• Takeaway: Build effective project management dashboards with Starhive

Overview of a project management dashboard

A project management dashboard (often called a project dashboard) is a visual tool that consolidates key project metrics and data into a single view to help a project manager, team, and other stakeholders view project performance in one central location. 

For example, you can use a project dashboard to quickly view project timelines, milestones, current status of tasks, current costs, and other key performance indicators you use to assess project health.

Key features of a project management (PM) dashboard include:

• Visualisation: It uses charts and other visual elements to make it easy for the team and other project stakeholders to quickly understand presented information about project status, progress, and potential risks.
• Relevance: It tracks key performance indicators project stakeholders use to assess project health. That is, it does not simply put together any metrics in a visual manner. Instead, it tracks the right metrics.
• Customisable: A dashboard can be customised to show specific project data at specific times. Since project stakeholders may have different needs, users should be able to tailor the dashboard to display the most relevant information for them at specific times. For example, if it displays daily task completion, a user should be able to click to view the task completion rate month over month.
• Frequent update: A project management dashboard is usually updated in real time or at regular intervals. This is the only way it can be useful in showing the current state of a project.
• Alerts and notifications: A project dashboard is often configured to send alerts when tasks are overdue or certain thresholds are reached. This helps the viewer identify issues at a glance.

Also read: The top five ClickUp alternatives in 2024.

What are the common components of project management dashboards?

Since project management dashboards are customisable, you choose what data to include in your dashboard.  However, that decision should be guided by project size or complexity, project goals and objectives, stakeholders’ preferences, and any other insights you want to convey. 

That said, certain project data commonly feature in project management dashboards. These include:

Project status overview

This section provides a high-level snapshot of the project. It includes information such as the project name, overall progress, milestones achieved, and upcoming deadlines. This helps viewers quickly assess whether the project is on track.

The status overview section often uses colour-coded status indicators to show how well the project is progressing. For example, red to show that the project is behind schedule, yellow to show that it is at risk, and green to show that it is on track.

Task management

This section displays the status of individual tasks. Specific information displayed here includes:

• A list of all project tasks, including their current status (not started, in progress, completed)
• The person responsible for each task
• Deadlines for each task
• Task completion rates

It helps viewers quickly see what work is being done, how well it is coming along, what needs attention, and who to hold accountable.

Resource management

A resource management section helps viewers quickly see how different resources (project team members, budget, and equipment) are distributed across tasks and how efficiently they are being utilised. Specifics to include in this dashboard section are team member workload and availability.

You don’t want work held up because of insufficient resources, and you don't want scarce resources idling away because of overallocation. The resource management section of project dashboards helps you visualise and correct resource allocation problems. It can help you identify potential bottlenecks (like resource shortages) and ensure optimal use of resources.

Budget tracking

The budget tracking component of a project dashboard provides insight into the financial aspects of a project. Specifically, it tracks expenditures, compares planned versus actual costs, and may include projected future spending based on current trends.

This component of the project management dashboard helps viewers assess the project's financial health and ensure it stays within financial limits. This will help them determine whether the remaining funds will be enough and/or whether additional funds are needed to execute the project.

Risk management

A risk management component highlights potential risks that can impact a project and strategies for mitigating them.  

Specifics to include in this section of the project dashboard are:

• A list of identified risks, including their description and likelihood
• Colour-coded rating of risk impact (e.g., red for high, yellow for medium, and green for low impact)
• Action plans for addressing each risk 

This section helps viewers visualise what could go wrong and plan to minimise disruptions.

Gantt charts and timeline

This component of project management dashboards is a visual representation of project timelines and task dependencies. This component usually contains:

• A visualisation of how project tasks are interconnected
• Key project milestones
• Visual cues showing how much of each task has been completed

A project timeline makes it easy for project managers and other stakeholders to understand task scheduling. At a glance, they can see the critical path, understand task dependencies, identify significant deadlines, and assess a project’s progress.

Team collaboration 

The team collaboration component is a section for team comments, updates, and feedback. This section helps ensure that project team members are informed and are on the same page. The team collaboration component includes:

• A comment section where team members can leave feedback on specific tasks
• An area for sharing important documents about tasks and the project 
• An activity feed showing a timeline of recent activities and updates

Steps to build your project management dashboard

Building an effective project management dashboard can be easy if you know what steps to follow. Here are steps to build powerful dashboards for successful project management:

Step 1: Define your objectives

Before diving into the technical aspect of creating a project dashboard, you need to define what you want to achieve with the dashboard. To help you define dashboard objectives, ask yourself questions like:

• What information do I want to convey with the dashboard? 
• Who will be using this dashboard, and what type of information do they require?
• What choices or actions will be guided or influenced by the information presented on the dashboard?

Answers to these and similar questions will help you build a useful dashboard that meets the needs of stakeholders who will need it for project tracking. 

For example, a project dashboard for executives will require high-level metrics like project ROI and status summaries, but one for project managers will require detailed views (like task completion rates, resource allocation, and potential risks).

Step 2: Identify key metrics

The metrics you can track in a project are endless. However, not every metric may align with your project objectives. For this reason, an important step for building useful dashboards is to choose metrics that align with your project objectives—metrics you can use to make strategic decisions regarding the project.

Choosing the key metrics and performance indicators for your dashboard should be a team activity. This ensures you capture all critical aspects of the project, minimising the risk of overlooking important metrics. The collaboration also ensures everyone is aligned on project goals, fostering ownership and commitment.

Step 3: Choose a dashboard tool or software

There are different tools in the market for creating project dashboards, ranging from simple spreadsheets to highly customisable project management software.

Spreadsheets (like Excel) may be handy for basic dashboards but are limited for collaboration or when dealing with complex projects. Thus, always choose a project management dashboard software that offers comprehensive features for creating detailed dashboards that can help you gain complete visibility into your project and enhance collaboration. 

Also, ensure that the tool you choose can integrate with the other systems you use (such as CRM, ERP, time-tracking tools, etc.). 

This is where Starhive comes in! Anyone can use its simple dashboard builder to build comprehensive, easy-to-understand project dashboards that highlight critical information to those who need it.

Also read: Getting started with Starhive. 

Step 4: Design the layout

In this step, you have to decide how to organise the information in a single view. This involves organising the dashboard into different sections, deciding what metrics will be displayed in each section, and using appropriate visualisations to represent the metrics (such as pie charts for budget distribution and line graphs for trends over time).

A well-organised layout makes it easy for users to quickly find, understand, and interpret key metrics and make informed decisions.

Some principles to help you design an effective layout include:

• Hierarchy: Arrange elements in a way that highlights the most critical information first. For example, place high-priority metrics at the top or centre for immediate visibility. 
• Grouping: Organise related information (metrics with a common theme or function) together so it is easy for users to make necessary connections. For example, you can cluster financial metrics like budget and expenditures together.
• Colour-coding: Use colours to enhance data comprehension and user experience. You may use colours to group related data sets so users visually associate similar information. You may also use colours to convey status (e.g. red for warnings or issues and green for success or completion).

Step 5: Integrate data sources

When building a project management dashboard for real-time insights, after designing the layout and building its components, the next step is to integrate it with the relevant data sources.

Data sources you can connect include:

• Project management tools (like Jira)
• Financial systems (like Quickbook)
• Collaboration platforms (like Slack)
• Spreadsheets (like Excel and Google Sheets)
• SQL databases and cloud storage solutions

This integration allows the dashboard to pull live data so users always have the most current information. Automatic data updates eliminate manual data entry and all the errors that come with this.

You may also like: The top Microsoft Excel alternatives for data management (2024).

Step 6: Test and validate

After setting up your dashboard, the next step is ensuring it works as intended. Share it with relevant stakeholders (like your team), observe how they interact with it, and gather feedback from them about whether it meets their needs. Then, use this feedback to make necessary improvements. 

Step 7: Deploy

When you’ve tested and ensured that your dashboard meets stakeholders' needs, you may deploy it. Communicate to relevant stakeholders that the dashboard is live and ready to use. Walk them through the dashboard and what it entails, highlighting its benefits and how it can assist them.

Project management dashboard examples

Project performance dashboard

A project performance dashboard (or project status dashboard) provides an overview of a project’s status and progress. It shows key project metrics in real-time, enabling project managers and other stakeholders to assess performance, identify issues, and make informed decisions to deliver a successful project that meets time, cost, and quality requirements.

The KPIs that a project performance dashboard tracks include:

• Project completion percentage
• Milestones achieved
• Cost variance (difference between the budgeted cost of work performed and the actual cost)
• Schedule variance (difference between planned progress and actual progress)
• Budget utilisation
• Task status (task completed, in progress, or delayed)

The project performance dashboard pictured above immediately shows the user how the project is doing. You can see the project completion rate and individual task status. The budget utilisation chart shows where money is going in the project, while the cost and schedule variance metrics show that the project is behind schedule and running over budget. 

Budget utilisation dashboard

A budget utilisation dashboard provides an overview of how financial resources are allocated and spent on a project. It allows project managers to track budget performance over time to ensure that funds are being used efficiently.

Some KPIs that the budget utilisation dashboard tracks include:

• Total budget
• Amount spent to date
• Remaining budget
• Percentage of budget utilised
• Budget variance (difference between planned and actual spending)
• Spending by category

The pictured dashboard utilisation dashboard shows the user how they have spent the project budget to date and whether they are on track or risking a cost overrun. The charts show how actual and budgeted spending varied over time, a breakdown of spending by different categories, and forecasted projected costs if the current spending pattern continues. 

With this dashboard, the project manager can immediately see that the project will have a cost overrun as well as the cause of the potential problem.

Marketing campaign dashboard

A marketing campaign dashboard helps you track the performance of your marketing campaigns. It provides real-time insights into various aspects of campaigns, such as:

• Reach (the total number of people who see the campaign)
• Impressions (the total number of times the campaign content was displayed)
• Click-through rate (the percentage of people who clicked on the campaign link)
• Conversion rate (the percentage of users who completed a desired action, such as making a purchase)

The pictured marketing campaign dashboard (above) starts with a summary of the campaign (Ad spend, cost per click, click-through rate, and more) and compares this with the previous period. Then it uses charts to help users visualise how the reach and engagement (CTR) of their content changed during the period.

You can quickly see that ad clicks have risen and relatively steadied recently, even as ad reach has fallen slightly. This can inform decisions on strategies to increase ad reach towards optimising clicks.

Sales overview dashboard 

A sales overview dashboard helps you visualise metrics related to sales activities within a period. You can use it to track key performance indices like:

• Unit sold (the number of products sold in the period)
• Total sales revenue (the total income generated from sales in the period)
• Sales growth (the percentage increase or decrease in sales compared to the previous period)
• Sales by channel (revenue generated from the different sales channels)
• Top products (the best-selling products)

The pictured sales overview dashboard gives a snapshot of total units sold and sales growth rate for the period to help the user assess their sales performance. Then, it offers visualisations for various metrics—a bar chart showing sales per rep, a line graph showing sales growth by market segment, and a pie chart showing sales by channel.

This lets users quickly see where they’re doing well and where they need improvement. For example, they can immediately see that the online sales channel needs improvement.

Advantages of project management dashboards

Using project management dashboards has many benefits, including; 

Increased visibility

Project management dashboards centralise all project data, allowing stakeholders to see different aspects of the project at a glance.

They make critical project information clearly visible and easy to find, even across multiple projects. You can immediately track progress, evaluate budget utilisation, identify bottlenecks, and more, all without rummaging through spreadsheets or endless email threads.

Faster decision making

Project management dashboards empower project stakeholders to make informed decisions promptly. Project stakeholders need information to make decisions about a project, and project management dashboards provide immediate access to this information (from deviations to plans to potential risks and more).

When a project is in full swing, and timing is critical, a project dashboard will provide real-time data about key project metrics, empowering you to pivot quickly or adjust strategies to keep your project on track.

Enhanced communication

A project management dashboard improves communication among the project team and other stakeholders. It is like a communication hub that keeps everyone informed and aligned.

When the dashboard is shared, everyone can assess the same data (an easy-to-digest snapshot of the project), reducing the chances of miscommunication. 

Enhanced collaboration

Dashboards highlighting upcoming deadlines, task assignments, and issues generally prompt team members to engage in discussions about project progress and obstacles. This open communication encourages teamwork and proactive problem-solving.

Also, some project dashboards include a section for team collaboration, where users can share suggestions and ideas for improvement.

Improved accountability

Project management dashboards act like scorecards, providing clear visibility into team and individual performance. When everyone can see the project’s progress and their individual contributions, accountability naturally increases as they are motivated to stay on top of their tasks.

Also, dashboards do not only show areas that need improvement. They also show successes and milestones achieved, and these can serve as positive reinforcement.

What are common mistakes to avoid in project dashboards?

Project dashboards are powerful tools for successfully managing and delivering a project. However, certain mistakes can reduce their effectiveness. The most common mistakes that reduce project dashboards’ effectiveness, which you must avoid, are:

Overloading with metrics 

A project dashboard should provide an overview of a project. However, including too many metrics will clutter your dashboard and make it overwhelming. As a result, it may become difficult to grasp the most crucial information quickly.

For this reason, do not overload your dashboard with excessive metrics. The best practice is to focus on the most critical metrics. If a metric is not essential to understanding the project's health, you may as well leave it out of the project dashboard.

Ignoring users’ needs

If a dashboard does not address the needs of its users, the information it provides may be irrelevant or unhelpful. For example, a dashboard with high-level metrics like ROI and strategic alignment will be unhelpful to a development team that needs to assess daily task progress and sprint metrics.

So, avoid building your dashboards without considering the specific needs and priorities of its users. Instead, before building, engage the stakeholders who will use these dashboards to gather insights on what they find valuable.

Not updating the dashboard regularly

Remember that data changes regularly. A project dashboard that is not updated with current information becomes obsolete and can lead to poor decisions.

Integrate your data sources for real-time updates to ensure your dashboard always reflects current information. If automating your data feed is not feasible, set a consistent schedule for updating the dashboard and stick with it. Also, ensure everyone who will use the dashboard knows of this schedule. 

Poor design

A poorly designed dashboard can be confusing and hard to read, making users miss essential information.

So, when building your project dashboard, avoid poor designs like:

• Cluttered layout (including too many metrics)
• Inconsistent visuals (using different styles and colours inconsistently)
• Lack of prioritisation (failing to prioritise the most critical information)
• Poor colour choices (using inappropriate colours)
• Ineffective use of visual elements (choosing the wrong type of visualisations)

Takeaway: Build effective project management dashboards with Starhive

Whatever your project, using a project dashboard can be the difference between having a chaotic or relatively smooth project management experience. A well-designed dashboard provides an overview of the project, helping stakeholders quickly understand its status and identify challenges. This improves decision-making to ensure the successful execution and delivery of projects. 

This article discusses the steps for building project dashboards and the common mistakes to avoid while at it. Following these guidelines will help you create effective project dashboards. When it comes to choosing a tool to create your dashboard, you can’t go wrong with Starhive.

Starhive is a no-code app-building platform that businesses around the world use to track their projects. Our dashboard builder and different views allows you to easily create intuitive and engaging dashboards that cater to your team’s needs.

Ready to streamline project management and boost daily productivity? Book a demo and see how Starhive can help you!