Dashboards for project managers
Every project's real status, before the meeting
Tasks live in Jira or Smartsheet, hours in Harvest and capacity in a planning tool. RapidDashboard joins them in a private data store and answers plain-English questions with a full portfolio dashboard.
Live examples
One question, one full dashboard
Pick a question. RapidDashboard answers with KPIs, charts, the records behind them and an AI summary of what to do next. Hover any chart for values or open its table view.
Show RAG status across all active projects, with cost and schedule performance, and tell me which are red or amber and why.
Portfolio health
Active projects
18
+2 vs last quarter
Red or amber
5
28% of portfolio
Portfolio CPI
0.94
-0.03 vs last month
Portfolio SPI
0.91
-0.04 vs last month
| Item | CPI (cost) | SPI (schedule) |
|---|---|---|
| Phoenix | 0.92 | 0.78 |
| Orion | 0.86 | 0.90 |
| Atlas | 0.88 | 0.97 |
| Halcyon | 0.89 | 0.93 |
| Beacon | 0.97 | 0.88 |
| Cedar | 1.02 | 1.01 |
| Lumen | 0.99 | 1.03 |
| Harbor ERP | 1.04 | 0.99 |
| Meridian | 1.06 | 1.02 |
| Kestrel BI | 1.01 | 1.05 |
| Granite | 0.98 | 1.00 |
| Pioneer | 1.03 | 0.97 |
- Green1372%
- Amber317%
- Red211%
| Segment | Value | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Green | 13 | 72% |
| Amber | 3 | 17% |
| Red | 2 | 11% |
| Project | Client | PM | Main issue | Budget used | RAG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phoenix | Northfield Health | J. Park | 3 weeks behind, integration milestone missed | Red | |
| Orion | Bayside Logistics | R. Castillo | Scope +31%, change order unsigned | Red | |
| Atlas | Ridgeway Credit Union | M. Doyle | Budget 12% over plan after scope change | Amber | |
| Halcyon | Halcyon Foods | S. Iqbal | Reporting scope +24%, not yet billed | Amber | |
| Beacon | Beacon Insurance | T. Nguyen | Data feed from client 2 weeks late | Amber |
What changed and what to do
- Critical: Phoenix is three weeks behind with an SPI of 0.78 and an open customer escalation at Northfield Health.
- Warning: Atlas is tracking 12% over budget because an approved scope change has not been rebaselined.
- Good: 13 of 18 projects are green, and every green project runs within 3% of plan on both CPI and SPI.
AI summary
Five of 18 active projects are red or amber, and portfolio CPI and SPI slipped to 0.94 and 0.91. Phoenix carries the most schedule risk at an SPI of 0.78 with a customer escalation open, and Orion has a 31% scope increase without a signed change order. Recommend an executive check-in on Phoenix this week and a budget rebaseline for Atlas before the next steering committee.
Ask next
- Why is Phoenix behind?
- Show RAG trend by PM
- Which projects share resources with Phoenix?
Which milestones slipped this quarter? Show the schedule, the days slipped and the reason.
Milestones & schedule
Milestones slipped
9
+4 vs Q2
Average slip
11 days
+3 days per slipped milestone
Customer-facing slips
4
2 with SLA terms
On-time milestones
77%
-8 pts 30 of 39 in Q3
What changed and what to do
- Critical: Four customer-facing milestones slipped, and two of those clients have SLA terms in their contracts.
- Warning: Six of the nine slips trace to one shared integration engineer who is assigned across four projects.
- Good: The Meridian portal launched on September 24, on the original date and under budget.
AI summary
Nine milestones slipped in Q3 by an average of 11 days, and the on-time rate fell to 77%. The largest slip is the Phoenix integration build at 21 days, which pushes UAT to October 27. Six of the nine slips share a single dependency on one integration engineer. Recommend adding a second integration engineer to Phoenix and Orion and sending proactive schedule updates to the two clients with SLA terms.
Ask next
- Show the critical path for Phoenix
- Slips by root cause
- Which Q4 milestones are at risk?
What is billable utilization by team member this month? Who is over capacity and who has bandwidth in the next six weeks?
Resource utilization
Billable utilization
81%
target 75 to 85%
Over capacity
3
+1 people above 100%
Under 60%
2
0 people with bandwidth
Open capacity
267 hrs
next 4 weeks across 7 people
Upper target: 85%
- Billable
- Internal
- PTO and admin
| Billable | Internal | PTO and admin | |
|---|---|---|---|
| W35 | 248 hrs | 44 hrs | 28 hrs |
| W36 | 252 hrs | 42 hrs | 26 hrs |
| W37 | 255 hrs | 40 hrs | 25 hrs |
| W38 | 260 hrs | 38 hrs | 22 hrs |
| W39 | 257 hrs | 40 hrs | 23 hrs |
| W40 | 259 hrs | 38 hrs | 23 hrs |
What changed and what to do
- Critical: Jamie Ortiz is at 118% across four projects and stays above 100% for the next four weeks. Phoenix, Orion and Atlas all depend on Jamie.
- Info: Lee Chen and Ana Ruiz have about 140 open hours between them over the next four weeks.
- Good: Team billable utilization holds at 81%, inside the 75 to 85% target band for the sixth straight week.
AI summary
Team billable utilization is 81%, inside the target band, but the load is uneven. Jamie Ortiz, Priya Shah and Devon Hart are above 100%, while Lee Chen and Ana Ruiz sit below 60% with 267 open hours across the team in the next four weeks. Recommend moving Phoenix integration testing from Jamie to Lee and reviewing assignments with each PM before the next sprint.
Ask next
- What can Lee take from Jamie?
- Utilization by role
- Show allocation for Q4 projects
Show earned value for Project Phoenix: planned value, earned value and actual cost, with CPI, SPI and estimate at completion.
Earned value · Project Phoenix
CPI
0.92
-0.03 EV ÷ AC
SPI
0.78
-0.06 EV ÷ PV
Budget burned
72%
66% complete AC ÷ BAC
Estimate at completion
$696K
+$56K vs $640K budget
- Planned value (PV)
- Earned value (EV)
- Actual cost (AC)
- Budget at completion $640K
| Planned value (PV) | Earned value (EV) | Actual cost (AC) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb | $40K | $38K | $41K |
| Mar | $95K | $88K | $96K |
| Apr | $160K | $145K | $158K |
| May | $235K | $205K | $224K |
| Jun | $315K | $270K | $296K |
| Jul | $395K | $330K | $362K |
| Aug | $470K | $380K | $418K |
| Sep | $540K | $421K | $458K |
| Step | Change |
|---|---|
| Budget (BAC) | $640K |
| Integration rework | +$38K |
| Extended UAT | +$14K |
| Contractor rate | +$9K |
| Travel savings | -$5K |
| Forecast (EAC) | $696K |
$696K
estimate at completion (BAC ÷ CPI)
- Budget at completion
- $640K
- Earned value to date
- $421K
- Actual cost to date
- $458K
- Variance at completion
- −$56K
What changed and what to do
- Critical: Phoenix has earned $421K against $540K planned, an SPI of 0.78. At this pace UAT and go-live move out by several weeks.
- Warning: Integration rework adds $38K to the forecast, the largest single driver of the $56K overrun.
- Info: Spend has used 72% of budget for 66% of the work, so a CPI of 0.92 means each dollar delivers about 92 cents of planned value.
AI summary
Project Phoenix has earned $421K of value for $458K of cost against $540K planned, giving a CPI of 0.92 and an SPI of 0.78. The estimate at completion is $696K, $56K over the $640K budget, driven mainly by integration rework. Recommend resequencing UAT to start on finished modules, adding integration capacity, and agreeing a revised baseline with Northfield Health this month.
Ask next
- What if CPI recovers to 0.97?
- EVM for all fixed-fee projects
- Show Phoenix hours by role
Which active projects have scope changes? Show original vs current estimate, budget burn and any work not yet billed.
Scope change & budget burn
Projects with scope change
6
of 18 active projects
Avg estimate increase
+18%
+4 pts vs original estimate
Unbilled scope
$48K
2 projects no signed change order
Awaiting client
4
+1 change orders
- Raised 23
- Estimated 19 83%
- PM approved 14 74%
- Client signed 10 71%
- Invoiced 8 80%
- Paid 6 75%
- Orion · Bayside Logistics$194K / $160K
- Halcyon · Halcyon Foods$104K / $90K
- Atlas · Ridgeway Credit Union$218K / $246K
- Beacon · Beacon Insurance$96K / $141K
- Lumen · Lumen Studios$52K / $90K
What changed and what to do
- Critical: Orion and Halcyon have burned $48K past their contracted budgets on scope the clients have not signed, and none of it is billed yet.
- Warning: Orion's estimate is 31% above the original. The PM approved the change, but the client sponsor has not.
- Info: Four change orders are approved internally and waiting on client signature, the longest for 19 days.
AI summary
Six of 18 active projects carry scope changes that raise estimates by an average of 18%. Orion and Halcyon are over their contracted budgets with $48K of work performed and no signed change order. Four change orders wait on client signature. Recommend a change order review with the Orion and Halcyon sponsors this week and a rule that work starts only after client sign-off.
Ask next
- List unsigned change orders
- Scope change by client
- Margin impact of scope change
Sample data for a fictional company. Your dashboards run on your own connected systems.
Sound familiar?
Where the numbers live today
Status decks take a day
The weekly report gathers input from eight project leads and becomes a slide leadership reads in ninety seconds.
Slips surface at stand-up
A milestone is usually at risk for a couple of weeks before someone mentions it out loud.
Three views of capacity
Hours sit in Harvest, plans in Smartsheet and assignments in Jira, and each tells a different story about who is busy.
Scope changes drift
Extra work gets approved in a meeting, and the trail from original estimate to change order stays hard to follow.
Metrics glossary
The metrics behind these dashboards
How each number is defined, so everyone reads it the same way.
- Cost performance index (CPI)
-
Earned value delivered for each unit of cost spent. Below 1.0 means the work is costing more than planned.
FormulaEarned value (EV) ÷ Actual cost (AC)
- Schedule performance index (SPI)
-
Earned value delivered compared with the value planned by this date. Below 1.0 means the work is behind schedule.
FormulaEarned value (EV) ÷ Planned value (PV)
- Schedule variance (SV)
-
The difference between value earned and value planned to date, in currency.
FormulaEV − PV
- Estimate at completion (EAC)
-
The forecast total cost if current cost performance continues to the end of the project.
FormulaBudget at completion (BAC) ÷ CPI
- Budget burn
-
The share of the approved budget already spent, best read beside percent complete.
FormulaActual cost to date ÷ Approved budget
- Resource utilization
-
The share of available hours spent on billable or planned project work.
FormulaBillable (or allocated) hours ÷ Available hours
Connections
How your systems connect
Supported APIs and exports sync into a private RapidDashboard store you approve. Dashboards read from that store, so source systems keep their normal load.
Smartsheet / Asana / Monday.com
PullsPlans, milestones, baselines, RAG status, owners
Official REST APIs on a scheduled, audited sync into your private store.
Jira
PullsIssues, sprints, blockers, story points, epics
Atlassian REST API, mapped to projects and milestones.
Harvest
PullsBillable and non-billable hours, rates, project cost
Vendor API, so actual cost and utilization come from the same hours.
Float
PullsScheduled allocation, capacity, time off
API sync that compares planned capacity with actual hours.
What you can build
Dashboards and reports teams build next
Portfolio health
- RAG status across all projects
- CPI and SPI by project
- Cross-project dependencies
Schedule & milestones
- Milestone slippage with reasons
- Critical path alerts
- Customer-facing risk flags
Resources & budget
- Utilization by person and role
- Six-week allocation heatmap
- Earned value and budget burn
Automated reports
- Weekly portfolio summary
- Monthly steering committee pack
- Scope change audit trail
Project-level access for client work
Project plans, client contracts and rates are commercially sensitive. RapidDashboard keeps them in a private data store with project-level access, so PMs see their own projects and PMO leadership sees the portfolio. AI features are optional and run on enterprise endpoints whose terms prohibit training on your data.
FAQ
Project Management dashboards: common questions
What should a project management dashboard show?
Most PMO leaders start with portfolio RAG status, milestone slippage, earned value (CPI and SPI), budget burn against percent complete, and resource utilization. RapidDashboard builds each view from a plain-English question against your live project, time and capacity data.
How are CPI and SPI calculated?
CPI is earned value divided by actual cost, and SPI is earned value divided by planned value. A value of 1.0 means on budget or on schedule, and anything below 1.0 means over budget or behind.
What is a good resource utilization rate?
It depends on the role and business model. Many professional services firms set a billable target band, such as 75 to 85% for delivery staff, and watch anyone above 100% as a delivery risk. RapidDashboard tracks each person against the target you set.
Can RapidDashboard connect to Smartsheet, Jira and Harvest?
Yes. Smartsheet, Jira, Harvest, Asana, Monday.com and Float connect through their official APIs. Data syncs on a schedule into a private store, so status, hours and capacity line up by project.
Can it replace the weekly status report?
Yes. Because RAG status, milestones and budget update from source systems, the portfolio dashboard stays current without manual compilation. Many teams schedule an automated weekly summary for leadership from the same data.
Keep exploring
Related example dashboards
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