Red Light, Green Light

PERFORMANCE TO SCHEDULE was determined bycounting the number of seats deployed per month andcomparing that to the rollout schedule established at theproject's inception.

DELIVERY OF BUSINESS RESULTS was gauged inthis case by looking at two variables: if the rollout was ontarget to achieve the anticipated cost savings associatedwith moving to Windows 95, and if the team was migratingusers successfully. The former was measured, as it was inthe performance-to-budget criterion, by counting the savingsgenerated by the number of seats deployed per month. Thelatter-in essence, customer satisfaction-was measured byuser surveys and help desk activity, if printer mappingswere installed correctly, if shared-driver access wasmaintained after the upgrade and if new Windows 95 userswere able to do at minimum everything they had been able todo previously. While user satisfaction is difficult tomeasure quantitatively, Clarke says, planning managers triedto stick to hard-and-fast numbers where possible-a certainnumber of negative responses in the user surveys wouldautomatically require a yellow or red rating, for example.

THE DASHBOARD'S RISK-MITIGATION measureisn't meant to take the place of a full-blown weightedrisk-assessment methodology, which is calculated separatelyfor larger projects. Rather, it serves simply as a way totrack potential hazards to a project, explains Clarke, whowas chief information officer for the Mid/Lux unit at thetime. Project managers identify potential risks at theoutset, establish plans to mitigate those risks, thenmeasure each month how well the risk is beingcontrolled. For the Windows 95 rollout in the Mid/Lux unit,the risk was that the core build of the new OS wouldn't beavailable on time. Parameters were determined by measuringwhether MicrosoftMicrosoft was meeting its promised deliverytargets. Of course, risks can and do surface suddenlymidproject. For example, Clarke discovered in the earlymonths of the Windows 95 rollout that the software his teamhad installed wasn't fully Y2K compliant, which meant thatthey had to go back and modify the workstations they hadalready upgraded. Alles zu Microsoft auf CIO.de

True Colors

Generally a green score overall indicates all four criteriaunderneath are green as well, though there is some latitudein that judgment. Similarly, if there's red anywhere in thedashboard, it's usually red "on top," or overall, as well.