How can you quickly know the status of your projects?
Efficiency question :
When an organization manages several projects at once, managers may struggle to obtain a quick overview of progress. Information is often scattered across files, reports and management tools, requiring repeated checks to understand the actual situation.
A Gantt chart for each project displays tasks, deadlines, durations, dependencies and progress. Managers can quickly identify completed activities, work in progress and delays.
Combining Gantt charts from several projects in a centralized dashboard makes it possible to compare progress, identify at-risk projects and see the entire project portfolio.
This approach supports decision-making, improves team coordination and focuses management attention where it is most needed.
Key issues:
The primary consideration is having reliable, current and consistently presented information across all projects.
Each project needs a structured schedule, clearly defined tasks, identified owners and indicators to measure progress.
Standardizing information is essential to consolidate data from multiple projects. Methods for calculating completion percentages, delays and variances must be consistent to support comparisons.
Managers must also be able to move between different levels of detail, from a portfolio-wide overview to individual tasks within a specific project.
Challenges:
The main challenge is combining data from projects with different durations, structures and levels of complexity.
Gantt charts need a sufficiently consistent underlying structure for consolidation while retaining the flexibility required by each project.
Update frequency is another challenge. A dashboard can only reflect reality when task owners regularly update progress and deadlines.
It is also important to avoid overcrowding the dashboard. Managers must quickly distinguish projects on schedule, delayed projects and those requiring intervention.
Technology:
Microsoft Excel can be used to develop customized Gantt charts for each project. Each file can contain tasks, start and end dates, durations, dependencies, owners and completion percentages.
Power Query can retrieve, standardize and automatically consolidate data from multiple Excel files into a common model.
Microsoft Power BI can then provide a dashboard bringing the projects together. Gantt charts can appear individually or be stacked in a consolidated view, making it possible to compare schedules and progress on a shared timeline.
The dashboard can also display completion percentages, overdue task counts, upcoming deadlines, variances from the original plan and the number of at-risk projects.
Interactive Power BI filters let managers move from a portfolio-wide view to detailed analysis of a project, team or owner.
Depending on the configuration, data can refresh automatically to display the latest available information without manually producing new reports.
Developer's advice:
To build an effective dashboard, start by standardizing the data structure used for each project. Excel files may differ visually, but the information needed for consolidation must follow a common structure.
Assign a unique identifier to every project and task to support data relationships and prevent consolidation errors.
In Power BI, favor a two-level presentation: a summary view that quickly identifies projects requiring attention and a detailed view showing the selected project's Gantt chart.
When stacking multiple charts, use a consistent time scale to make schedules easier to compare.
The objective is not to multiply charts, but to help managers quickly understand project progress, which projects are on schedule and where intervention will have the greatest impact.