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12 Must-Have Project Management Dashboards for Better Efficiency

As a busy project manager, you may be managing multiple projects at any given time. When these projects are not tracked properly, you may miss deadlines, lose track of data, and struggle to show your progress to stakeholders. Thankfully, with a project management dashboard, you can have everything under control.

A project management dashboard will help you manage tasks, allocate resources, and improve collaboration using clear visuals and real-time data. Let’s explore 12 project management dashboard examples to see how each one works and which might best suit your needs.

Project management dashboard examples

1. Google Analytics dashboard for multiple websites

Google Analytics (GA4) dashboard is perfect if you manage different websites or apps for a project. It tracks the performance of multiple GA4 properties in one place It gives you a clear view of sessions, total users, new users, and average engagement time across all your sites.

1 GA4

As this is a template, you can easily use this dashboard with your own data in just a few minutes.

  • Why use this dashboard? It aggregates data from multiple sites, making it easy to compare the performance of various GA properties in one place. For example, a marketing agency can know how much traffic is generated for all their clients.
  • What does it help measure? GA dashboard tracks sessions, total users, and new users across all properties. You can monitor the average engagement time per session to see how users interact. The dashboard also analyzes traffic sources to find out where users come from. It compares user behavior and engagement metrics to understand which properties or channels are working for you.
  • Data sources: Google Analytics 4
  • BI tools used: Looker Studio
  • Data connector: Coupler.io   

2. Time tracking dashboard for Clockify

The time tracking dashboard for Clockify is suitable for projects that use Clockify to track time. It provides you with a clear view of how time is spent on different projects, clients, and tasks, helping you manage work better and boost productivity.

2 clockify dashboard

This is a pre-built template available for Looker Studio and Google Sheets that you can use with your own data. 

  • Why use this dashboard? It helps you easily see billable hours and active users. It also shows which clients bring in the most money and where your team’s time goes. Additionally, it helps identify your employees’ overwork or underwork, making it easier to plan and improve work.   
  • What does it help measure? It measures posted hours, active users, billable hours, and billable amounts. It also breaks down hours and billable amounts by client, so you can see how each client is performing.
  • Data sources: Clockify account
  • BI tools used: Looker Studio, Google Sheets
  • Data connectors: Coupler.io

3. Time tracking dashboard for Harvest

If you use Harvest to track time and expenses for projects, then the time-tracking dashboard is best for you. It shows you how time and money are spent on different projects and clients, helping you work and manage your finances better.

This is a pre-made template that allows you to easily create the dashboard with your data.

3 harvest
  • Why use this dashboard? It helps you see billable hours and total hours worked, giving you insights into project profits. It shows which clients bring in the most money and where your team’s efforts go.
  • What does it help measure? It measures total hours, billable hours, billable amounts, and active users. It also breaks down these numbers by client, so you can see each client’s contribution and work distribution.
  • Data sources: Harvest account
  • BI tools used: Looker Studio, Power BI
  • Data connectors: Coupler.io

4. Google Calendar dashboard

Meetings are a big part of project management. They can be recurring (daily, weekly, and monthly sessions) or ad hoc. The Google Calendar Dashboard helps you track and evaluate your meetings.

This ready-to-use project dashboard template can be made with your data in minutes, helping you to manage your time better.

4 google calendar
  • Why use this dashboard? It helps you see how much time you spend in meetings and which types are most common. This information helps you determine whether your meetings are effective or need adjustments.
  • What does it help measure? It measures total meetings, recurring meetings, ad-hoc meetings, vacations, out-of-office times, and canceled meetings. Visuals like pie charts and line graphs help compare these metrics.
  • Data sources: Google Calendar account
  • BI tools used: Looker Studio
  • Data connectors: Coupler.io

5. Project management KPI dashboard

In project management, key performance indicators are very useful. The Project Management KPI Dashboard is vital for keeping your projects on track. It helps you monitor important metrics to ensure deadlines are met, and resources are managed properly.

5 project management KPI
  • Why use this dashboard? It keeps you updated on project progress and helps you identify issues early, making it easier for budget and task management.
  • What does it help measure? The dashboard measures key metrics like projected launch date, project phase, overdue tasks, budget usage, upcoming deadlines, and workload distribution.
  • Types of visualization used. The dashboard displays workload and budget data using bar charts. It also has progress bars for project phases and tables for overdue tasks and upcoming deadlines.

6. Project management executive dashboard

The project management executive dashboard provides a high-level overview of project performance. It helps executives in decision-making and ensures projects stay on track.

6 executive dashboard
  • Why use this dashboard? Build an executive dashboard when you need to make quick, informed decisions. It will also help you show progress to stakeholders. It offers a clear view of key project metrics which allows executives to quickly identify issues and effectively allocate resources. 
  • What does it help measure? The dashboard tracks project status, budget allocation, resource use, and other key milestones.
  • Types of visualization used. The project management executive dashboard uses bar charts for budget and resource data, line graphs for tracking project progress, and pie charts for visualizing resource distribution.

7. Project risk management dashboard

The project risk management dashboard helps you identify, assess, and manage risks in your projects. It provides a view of all potential issues, helping you take action to mitigate them. This dashboard is useful for project managers and risk management teams who need to track and address project risks on a regular basis.

7 risk management
  • Why use this dashboard? It helps you monitor risk levels. You can track their status and ensure timely mitigation. This improves project outcomes.
  • What does it help measure? It measures total risks, open risks, improving risks, closed risks, and the percentage of mitigated risks. These are again categorized by severity (extreme, high, medium, low).
  • Types of visualization used. The project risk management dashboard uses bar charts to display risk mitigation phases and summary boxes to show the count and status of risks by severity.

8. Multiple project management dashboard 

If you are managing multiple projects simultaneously, you can track them all at once using the multiple project management dashboard. You can see projects on track, identify any issues early, and allocate resources.

8 multiple projects
  • Why use this dashboard? It allows you to track many projects at once. This ensures that you can manage and prioritize your tasks well.
  • What does it help measure? Project status, completion percentage, overdue tasks, last milestone, due dates, budget, and expenses.
  • Types of visualization used. Project status, completion percentage, overdue tasks, last milestone, due dates, budget, and expenses.

9. Issue tracker dashboard

The issue tracker dashboard helps you keep track of project issues. It shows the status and resolution of issues, making problem-solving quicker. It is ideal for support and project teams who need to resolve project issues quickly.

9 issue tracker
  • Why use this dashboard? It helps monitor the number of created and resolved issues, improving project health and resolution times. You’ll stay on top of project issues, monitor their status, and resolve them on time for smooth project progress.
  • What does it help measure? It tracks created versus closed issues, issue resolution time, and the current status of all issues.
  • Types of visualization used. It uses line charts to show created versus closed issues over time. The pie charts show the issue status. The summary boxes are used for resolved/unresolved issues and average resolution time.

10. Project budget dashboard

The project budget dashboard is useful to track and compare your budget to actual spending. It shows financial progress and future costs, which will help you stay on top of your project’s financial health.

10 project budget dashboard
  • Why use this dashboard? Project managers and finance teams get a clear view of project financials. You’ll gain insights into spending patterns and budget deviations. Finally, it will help you stay within the project budget. 
  • What does it help measure? It measures the percent complete, the percent budget spent, and the forecasted total cost. These metrics allow you to assess project financials accurately.
  • Types of visualization used. The dashboard uses bar charts to compare budget and actual costs over time. The line graphs show the percent complete. And, the tables list initiatives with budget and actual spending.

11. Agile Project Dashboard 

Agile project management delivers projects in iterative cycles. It focuses on flexibility, collaboration, and customer feedback. The Agile Project Dashboard tracks the progress of tasks, sprints, and features in real-time.

11 agile project
  • Why use this dashboard? It monitors ongoing work and sprint progress, identifies risks, and makes quick adjustments. This dashboard makes it easy to manage projects with dynamic requirements.
  • What does it help measure? The dashboard tracks overall project progress, task status, start and finish dates, story points, and duration.
  • Types of visualization used. It uses tables to list tasks, responsible team members, and status. The Gantt charts visualize timelines and task dependencies.

12. Project status dashboard

The project status dashboard gives a clear view of a project’s current status and the extent to which it is complete. It helps project managers and teams prioritize tasks and manage the project effectively.

12 project status
  • Why use this dashboard? It helps you track progress and find areas that need attention, making sure the project milestones are met and resources are utilized well.
  • What does it help measure? It measures task status (not started, in progress, complete, overdue, on hold), task priority, completion percentage, budget (planned vs. actual), and pending items.
  • Types of visualization used. The dashboard uses color-coded graphics to show task timelines, status, and priorities. It has Gantt charts for timelines, pie charts for task status and priority, and bar charts for budget and pending items.

Features to look for in a project management dashboard

Now that we have explored various project management dashboards for different use cases, let’s look at the key features every project management dashboard should have to track projects easily and effectively:

Customization: Options to add, remove, and modify widgets, charts, and data points to focus on the important metrics of the project. For example, you might want to highlight budget tracking for financial projects. You can add a budget tracking widget to show budget allocation, spending, and remaining funds.

If you want to emphasize task completion rates for IT projects, you can track task completion rates with a progress bar. Or, you can use a burn-down chart which displays the number of completed versus pending project tasks.

Interactive visualization: Interactive visuals help you understand complex data at a glance. You can click on charts and graphs to get more details, filter project information, or see trends over time. 

In an interactive Gantt chart, users click on a task to view its details, dependencies, and progress. 

Collaboration and shareability: Effective dashboards for project management integrate messaging tools like Slack to facilitate team collaboration. You should be able to share dashboards easily with colleagues, stakeholders, and clients. Team members can leave comments on a task status update, ensuring that everyone is aware of the progress and any issues.

Automated refresh: Set up automated data refresh while connecting the data sources to a business intelligence (BI) tool. This will ensure the dashboards have updated data. You can do this with the help of data connectors like Coupler.io.

For example, a project manager can see real-time budget updates. If costs start to exceed projections, they can adjust spending plans immediately.

Embedding options: The dashboard must support embedding to integrate into other platforms like company intranets, websites, documents, or presentations. This provides access to project data from any location. You can embed using HTML code, URLs, and iframes.

For example, embedding a dashboard in a project management tool like Jira can give direct access to project metrics. You can do this without switching platforms.

Drilldowns for in-depth analysis: With drill-down features, you can click a metric to view the details. This is useful for in-depth analysis and understanding the root causes of issues. 

For example, if a project is behind schedule, you can drill down into specific tasks to see which ones are causing the delay and why.

Bonus: How to create a project management dashboard from scratch?

You can create a project management dashboard using BI tools (Looker Studio, Power BI, Tableau) and spreadsheet applications (Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel).

You manually load the data from project management software into these data visualization tools. Or, set up an automated connection. Manual loading includes downloading the data from project management software and uploading it to BI dashboard tools. Dashboards built with this data are static and do not update automatically. 

Alternatively, you can use Coupler.io, an automated reporting solution. It loads data to your desired destination tool on a set schedule.

The process is simple and includes only 3 steps:

Step 1: Collect data

Choose the source and destination from the dropdowns and click Proceed in the form below to create a connection. You’ll be offered to get started with Coupler.io for free with no credit card required.

For example, we selected Jira as the source and Looker Studio as the destination. Then connect your source account and specify the data to export. 

13 source

Step 2: Transform data

In the next step, you’ll see a preview of the project data. You can modify and transform this data by: 

  • Renaming, rearranging, hiding, and unhiding columns project data columns
  • Sorting and filtering project data
  • Adding new columns using custom formulas 
  • Combining data from other projects 
14 transform

Step 3: Load data and schedule transfer

Once the data is ready, move to the next step to configure the destination.

Click Setup a Schedule. Toggle the Automatic data refresh button to automate the data export. Specify the interval, days of the week, time preferences, and time zone.

15 data refresh

Click Save and run the importer to export project data from your project management source to the BI tool. This data will be updated as frequently as every 15 minutes in the destination.

That’s it! Explore your data using different visualization options in the BI tool. 

Now, you can make custom project management dashboards to track task completion rates, overall project progress, and more. 

The best way to create project management dashboards 

To get started, you can always use a template, which saves time and gives you a professional and well-structured design. Coupler.io offers customizable templates that can be adapted to specific needs, making them versatile and user-friendly. 

On the other hand, creating dashboards for project management from scratch offers complete customization but requires more time and expertise. In the end, the choice between a template and building from scratch depends on the complexity of your project, the skills of your team, and the time you have available.

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