Project Revenue Win-Loss Graph

When bidding for projects, you win some and you lose some.  It’s like any sales process.  Each project has it’s own percentage of win/loss.

Of course, that can be frustrating.  You perform a bunch of research, develop a preliminary project plan, and then develop a project propsal, only to learn that somebody else go tthe job.  Or worse, the propective client goes dark and you never hear from them again.  They don’t come back and thank you for all your hard work in developing the plan and proposal.  Instead, they just ignore you.  They’ve obviously moved on, but don’t have the couirtesy to tell you.

That’s life.  🙁

But at least you have a nice project funnel to predict possible future revenue.  And it works from that percentage of win/loss you enter into each project.  Consider the following scenario:

Project A: Win percentage: 90%, $45,000
Project B: Win percentage: 75%, $80,000
A sales funnel says you about 82% chance of winning a deal, and the expected revenue is about $100K.

Of course two projects is not really enough.  You should put a lot more projects into the funnel for the estimation to be accurate.  The more projects in the hopper, the more likely the averages are to be real.

Check out this video too:
https://www.stdtime.com/videos/revenueforecast.htm

 

Field Names

This video will show you how to change terminologies in Standard Time®. They can be changed throughout the entire system or in a specific place. It can be customized however you choose.

For instance, let’s say you use the word “Program” or “Plan” instead of “Project.”  Or, the word “Assembly” instead of “Category.”  Use the techniques in this video to change them in the system.

Project Billing Rates

If you are billing clients for projects, you definitely want a system that gracefully handles multiple billing rates.

Ultimately, you want to potentially have different rates for each project, and for each user or role on the project.

Let’s say Josh is the project manager on the Alcoa job.  And Alice is the engineer.  Rates for Josh and Alice will not likely be the same.  Now let’s take another example.  Ted is the now the project manager on the Union Pacific job, and Josh is taking a lower engineering role.  Again, the rates for Josh and Ted are not likely going to be the same.  They have different roles, so their billing rates should be different.

The video below is describing this exact scenario.

Personalized Timesheet Columns

Customize what is seen in your timesheet. Not only can you choose your favorite projects, you can also choose the columns you see, and the totals at the top and bottom.

This video describes choosing timesheet columns.  Various project fields can help when filling out your timesheet.

Employee Availability Chart

Do you have an engineer available for a project?  How do you know?  What tasks are they working on?  Are they over-worked?  Or under?

There are answers to all these questions.  Scroll down and watch this video for some ideas.

Get a bar chart of upcoming work an engineer is assigned to.  How is the chart built?  It comes from projects the employee is assigned to, and specific tasks.

Here are a few other videos to learn more:

http://www.stdtime.com/videos/resourceallocation.htm

http://www.stdtime.com/videos/employeeavailability.htm

 

Timesheet Tasks

With the Standard Time® timesheet see only the projects and tasks you’re working on. You don’t have to wade through all your coworkers stuff, only your own!

Clients and Project Relationships

If you’re like most companies, you perform multiple projects for each client.  You may perform them serially, or several at once.  Each one may have different billing rates.  They may have different tasks.  Different starting and due dates.  Watch the video below to see the relationship between projects and clients.  This is a good way to manage projects.

Supply and Demand Project Management

A certain PMO office which we talked to defined project management ‘supply and demand’ this way.  (The video below describes it in detail.  Scroll down.)

1. Demand: Product line managers ask employees to work a certain percentage of their daily schedule on a series of projects.

2. Supply: The actual employees supply their hours to the projects they want to work on.

Hopefully, the demand and the supply end up the same.  But sometimes not.  Sometimes, employees don’t feel the priorities are correct, or tactics on the ground don’t work out exactly as the managers planned.  In any case, there may be a gap between the demand and the actual hours supplied by employees.  It is that gap that should be understood.

Are managers asking for too much?  Or setting unrealistic priorities that can never be executed by employees?  Or misunderstanding the ground-pounders?

Or… are employees just overriding the strategery set forth by upper management?  Do they ‘get’ the vision at all?  Or are they just unable to execute the plan?

Usually, the supply and demand do match.  People try to get along.  And strategies like this usually work out just as planned.  But if they don’t, perhaps a meeting of the minds is justified.  But at least you know when gaps exist.  It’s a tool to help align management and staff.

Hope it helps!  🙂

Project Portfolio Management

Watch this video below for tips on managing portfolios of projects.  A project portfolio contains one or more projects with similar characteristics.  For instance, you might put all your consulting projects into one portfolio.  Or, you might put marketing or sales together.  Or, there may be completely different lines along which your projects naturally fall.  Those belong in portfolios.

Once you have placed projects into a portfolio, you can do special things with them.  Try running reports for all projects in a portfolio, or comparing one portfolio against another.  You can see project revenue for a single selected portfolio.  Or you could filter the resource allocation chart for a selected portfolio.

Consider how you might group your projects for effective portfolio reporting.