Program Management Metrics

Program management is about more than just tracking tasks and completion
dates; it’s about optimizing the use of resources to get more done faster,
better, and more profitably. Here’s how to approach program management
metrics to improve the performance of your team.
In business strategy, information is king (or queen)—and project management
is no exception. By using strategic program management metrics during and
after a project, project managers can ensure a project is on track and on
budget, resolve challenges before they become problems (like missing a
major deadline or blowing the budget), and use trends and patterns to make
adjustments to processes or resources to improve future performance.
The use of program management metrics takes the guesswork out of project
management, helping to make projects more predictable, sustainable, and
productive.
8-Step Practical Approach to Program Management

Metrics
Below are eight steps for a practical approach to program management.
These will help determine which project management metrics are best for your
company, how to implement them more successfully, and how to use that
information to make strategic adjustments.
1. Identify Your Project Management Goals
Your project management metrics approach should first start with an
understanding of what is important to the company regarding project
fulfillment. This can help guide the project management metrics you choose
and how those metrics are analyzed.
Some common project management goals include:
 Optimal Productivity: Finetune systems to achieve the best output
for the inputs.
 Improved Predictability: More accurately determine costs,
timelines, and resource requirements to fulfill current and future
objectives.
 Increased Gross Profit Margins: Maximize total profits and reduce
the cost of goods sold to improve gross profit margin.
 Improved Customer Satisfaction: An increase in customer
satisfaction scores, increased customer retention, decreased service
complaints, or changes in reviews or responses online.
 Increased Employee Engagement & Satisfaction: Improved
workflow to better engage and support your employees to improve
productivity and reduce turnover.
 Decreased Actual Cost: Prevent going over budget on projects and
optimize costs to improve profitability.
2. Determine Which Project Management Metrics are Right for Your Company
It’s important to choose metrics that are relevant to your company. Based on
the project goals you selected above, which project management metrics
must be generated to measure performance in these goals?
Consider metrics that help track:
 Time or schedule to deliver project output
 Scope of project deliverables

 Cost of delivering project output
 Quality of final deliverables
After you come up with your list of metrics, take a second to review and
eliminate any metric that is:
 Similar to another metric
 Not vital or necessary to measuring performance

 Difficult or subjective to measure
 High effort, low benefit
Trimming down your list to the high-impact essentials simplifies the tracking
and analysis process, and saves you unnecessary time, effort, and
complication.
3. Choose Metrics to Track Ongoing Project Performance
Not all project management metrics are meant to be measured at the end of
the project. Many metrics should track the ongoing progress of the project to
make sure you’re on track with costs, timeline, and resource management.
These metrics may include:
 Actual Cost of Work Performed (ACWP): This indicates how much
of the budget has been spent to date for comparison to your
projected need to make sure your spends are on track.
 Planned Hours vs. Actual: How many hours were used to date
compared to the number of hours allotted?
 Task Completion: How many tasks are overdue compared to tasks
being completed on time?
 Risk/Change Analysis: What, if anything, disrupts or changes
project completion? Consider scope change, deadline/budget
changes, change in resources, etc.
4. Choose How Each Metric Will be Measured
Determine your standard of measurement for each project management
metric. Will completed tasks be measured in number of total tasks or in
percentage of total project complete? Are hours rounded up to the nearest 15
minutes or measured to two decimal points? Is cost variance measured in
dollars or by percentage? How is project satisfaction measured?
5. Design Methods for Collecting Project Management Metrics
Measuring project management metrics for your company is important.
However, it shouldn’t supersede the actual work being done. That’s why it’s
important that the methods you use to track and measure your project
management methods are relatively simple to collect and compare.
 Automated (Whenever Possible). In the perfect project
management world, all metrics would be gathered automatically.
Use project management software (with time and cost tracking) to
automate data collection whenever possible. Any manual entries or
subjective contributions are less reliable data sources. It also means
it’s more difficult and time consuming to collect information.
 Timely. Information should be accessible in a timely manner. It
should be available and analyzed before it becomes irrelevant.
 Consistent. In order for your data to be consistent to ensure
accurate comparative analysis, your data collection methods need to
be consistent.
Measuring program management metrics needs to be consistent, clear, and
fair to all users. They should also be supported by real information and
measured in a replicable way.
6. Note All Changes to Metrics or Data Collection Process
Your project management metrics are used to compare performance over
time. This means if there is ever a change in the metrics you are tracking or
how the data is being accumulated, it should be clearly noted in reports. This
helps signal—and may even help measure—discrepancies in comparative
analysis.
7. Measure Project Progress
The frequency with which you measure project progress depends on the
length of the project and the amount of resources involved. The longer and
more complex the project, the more important mid-project metric reporting is
to track actual progress compared to budget and scope. This can help identify
bottlenecks, mismanagement of resources, or other areas where adjustments
could be made to improve project outcomes.
8. Always Complete a Project Debrief
Many companies make the mistake of tracking project management metrics
mid-project but fail to complete a final project debrief. Debriefing the final
processes and numbers can be one of the most beneficial data points for
improving long-term performance.
Consider:
 Risk/Reason Analysis. Were there any unforeseen risks or
challenges that stopped or delayed progress on the project?
 Budget Analysis. Was the project below budget, on budget, or
above budget? At what point did this trend occur?
 Resource Analysis. Which resources performed as anticipated?
Were any less productive than anticipated?
 Project Analysis. Did the final project meet specifications?
 Trend Analysis. Are there any trends between this project and
others that might signal a need to make adjustments to resources,
budgeting, scoping, etc.
Additional Tips:
Don’t Go Overboard With Project Management Metrics
Don’t have too many metrics, especially if those metrics are similar. It’s easy
to go overboard with metrics, especially when those metrics are proof of
performance as a project manager. Measure the metrics you need to optimize
systems, measure changes in performance, and measure important data
points that inform business decisions such as hiring/resource acquisition but
be selective and intentional. Don’t waste your time—or your supervisor’s time
—with metrics that don’t provide significant information.
Don’t Swing Reporting to Improve Numbers
It can be tempting to set low goals or generous timelines to help improve
performance outcomes. However, it’s important to remember that project
managers aren’t working for the data; they’re working for the company.
Remember that data points, missed deadlines, downward trends, or increased
waste are a signal that something can be done better. The best project
managers see decreased performance metrics as opportunities for
improvement. Instead of trying to find a way to make the numbers look better,
they dive into the data to find why a trend is occurring and fine-tune the
system to improve the trend in the future.
Final Thoughts
Information is the critical component in doing things better, faster, and more
sustainably. The best companies are those that do what they do well, do it
consistently, and are always seeking to find ways to improve. Mavenlink is
designed to accomplish that as a modern project and business management
platform that provides businesses with an easier way to manage and
collaborate on projects while empowering them with data.

Program Management Metrics

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Program management is about more than just tracking tasks and completion

8-Step Practical Approach to Program Management

 Scope of project deliverables

 Not vital or necessary to measuring performance

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