The Observatory Database - Reports & Dashboards
The core of the system is the Observatory Database itself.
This database contains reports, dashboards, analysis, and administrative tools.
Observatory Reports
There are five kinds of reports prepared by the observatory: Project, Project Commitment, Program,
Organization and Organization Member. The system also maintains historical copies of each report.
Project Reports are created for each project. A project report contains sections
for identification, status, events, statistics, documents, commitments, and links to commitments.
This one document provides a complete view of the progress and requirements of a particular
project, both now and in the recent past.
Whenever the Observatory receives a new project abstract , the abstract is used
to create or update a project report.
Program Reports are consolidated groups of projects (and/or sub programs) to provide
summarized information about commitments and project performance. Programs can be arranged
to form a very detailed tree structure with the top-level programs summarizing thousands of projects.
A Project Commitment report is created for each individual or group assigned to the
project. These reports exist primarily to record the time-varying of effort associated with each resource. Note that, even if you do project planning with specific people, you can
report group totals using any of our reporting tools.
Organization Reports are consolidations of Project Commitments to provide a single document for each division, department, team, and individual. Like the
Program Reports, these are organized in a tree structure. In most cases this will be the same arrangement as your corporate org chart. If the report summarizes a single person, it is called an
Organization
Member Report.
Observatory Dashboards
The dashboard views (Example) arrange the reports for easy access. They also serve the
very important function of providing a quick scan situation report. Color coded
symbols highlight projects and organizations needing further study.
Management Targets
One of the important concepts of the observatory system is targets. You can specify
targets for time, effort and cost for every project and program.
When targets are exceeded, indicators change colors, and email notifications are sent to designated managers.
Observatory targets can override those set in the originating project.
In the same way you can define available capacity for every organization and see your
capacity shortfalls at a glance in the organization dashboard views.
For more information
Read "The Architecture of Project Observatory"
Adobe Acrobat Format(1.5M)
