Tactical Management Support
Dashboard Alerts, Forecasts, and Reminders
As the designated manager of an Observatory Project, Program or Organization you will receive
email notifications when your attention is required. These notifications contain a
brief synopsis of the problem and a link to the relevant document.
Dashboard Alerts
Dashboard alert messages are produced when, during the recalculation of Program or
Organizational data, one of the target or capacity indicators changes to the red status condition.
For programs, there are three target settings: 1). Time of Completion,
2). Effort at Completion,
and 3). Cost at Completion. For Organizations, the targets are based upon resource
demand vs. capacity for the next 1, 4 , and 13 week moving periods.
If you are not interested in receiving these alert messages then they can be
disabled.
Forecasts
One of the great benefits of collecting historical information is that it
allows you to see trends that portend future problems. Unfortunately, you
still have to look at the data to see them.
The Observatory Forecaster is an automated agent that periodically reviews the capacity and trend
information of every project, program and organization in the observatory.
Trend Forecasting uses
the method of least squares to produce trend lines, and compares the trends with the
target settings. If, during a moving time window (generally set to about 6 months into the future), the
trend indicates that the Time, Effort, or Cost target may be exceeded then a forecast
is issued.
Capacity Forecasting uses moving averages of the workload plan and the capacity
plan to identify future times when capacity appears to be significantly exceeded.
The issuing of a forecast creates a forecast document which describes the problem. This document
contains the data used to derive the forecast and a button to launch Observatory Explorer
to display the information and the trend line for your review. You will be notified when
the forecast is issued and periodically re-notified when it remains in effect for
an extended period of time. When the forecast is withdrawn the forecast document will be removed
from the database.
For more information
Read about Forecasting in the System Guide
Adobe Acrobat Format
Html Format
Reminders
Reminders are automated messages that are created when periodic project reports
are overdue. There is a escalation method that first notifies the project manager
responsible for the project. After a longer period of inactivity the Program manager
is notified. When a reporting source (such as a Project Gateway Repository) stops sending
reports, the system administrator is notified.
To proactively prevent the problem, the system will send every project manager a
weekly reminder to "get his or her report in"!The observatory administrator
sets the timing and text of this reminder.
