Do you ever struggle to gain a clear, unified view of portfolio and project progress?
As teams work in different tools, data and information is scattered across silos, and you can lack the insights you need to make informed decisions.
When working in the paradigm of xPM, the freedom of work is important, and unified reporting ensures you never lose the overview of initiatives’ progress and impact.
Freedom doesn’t have to mean fragmentation.
Working under the xPM paradigm, the connection is important and its up to the PMO to align and unify reporting. A great tool for this is KPIs and it's important to ensure that your KPIs are comparable. The process of evaluating and standardizing KPIs is what sets you up for success.
With standardized KPIs it doesn't matter how departments or teams work, it could be in agile, waterfall, or hybrid environments - unified reporting allows you to consolidate data from multiple tools into a single, clear view.
Not only does this provide a better foundation for decision-making – it also leads to happier employees and better results. Different work types flourish under different systems and methodologies. Unified reporting looks only at the relevant data for assessing progress or issues, but trusts that people can get the work done in the right way.
By allowing people to work in the tools, they prefer they can work more efficiently. It can even improve data quality: if people like the system, they’re more inclined to use it. Unified reporting tools then collects and rolls up the data for reporting and insights.
Establishing standardized KPIs is a process that should take your organization’s goals and structure into account. It is a continuous process and the more you engage with your organization - and your data, the better your KPIs become. The following presents some of the core tenets of creating KPIs for unified reporting.
Your organization has strategic goals on multiple levels. The way the strategic goals are expressed across the organization varies. In one organization revenue growth may be the main contributor to the strategy while another leans into maximizing customer satisfaction. Identifying the common strategic aim plays into your reporting strategy. Mapping KPIs to these different expressions can provide a good direction.
Clarity ensures quality. When working with KPIs make sure that the measuring is consistent. If translations or adjustments are required - how wil it be calculated and when in the process. Always specify what your KPI measures in order to ensure consistent measuring and aligned reporting. How is each KPI measured, which calculations does it require, and what is its relevance?
Your KPIs should work for all levels of the organization to ensure adoption and consistency. Engage your stakeholders in the selection process and be aware of anything you choose not to measure as well. If there are outliers that are difficult to align, be aware of this as well and flag the data for careful review.
It’s important that people can work in their preferred tool while still reporting on their progress. Assessing the existing technology and tools is your foundation for choosing an xPM solution that can collate and roll up data from different systems. Choose a solution that lets you enter data once – but use it in many different contexts.
Too many KPIs muddle the picture and make it difficult to create alignment. It's natural to want to know everything but information overload can paralyze action. If you focus on what matters and measure that, you can make decisions and act faster. Trust that with good, relevant KPIs a lot of other things will fall into alignment.
What you measure - matters.
KPIs are only useful if they drive actions that make a change. Your metrics should illuminate where adjustments can be made, such as resource allocation or project prioritization. Following up on your data and KPIs is also what allows you to asses whether the KPIs are an accurate portrayel of the state and progress of the work in your organization.
Your organization never stands still – so why should your KPIs? Conduct regular reviews and continually align with your stakeholders and your organizational strategy. Are we still measuring the right things? Are we still capturing data in the right way? Do the reports allow us to set in with the right action - at the right time? That’s what gives you the edge.
When you start working according to the xPM methodology, you'll see more results because employees are wasting less time trying to adhere to strict processes or protocols that don't fit their way of working. Transitioning to xPM means more freedom, but the right kind of freedom. If you do it right, you align your organization, eliminate information silos, and set yourself up for better decisions. And unified reporting is essential to keep the overview as the organization moves faster than ever.
