The core of the work

The dashboard a leadership team actually opens

Most dashboards go unopened because they answer a question nobody is asking. This one starts from the executive’s real constraint, not from the tool’s capability.

“Can I press a button and it gives me a beautiful Gantt chart or a beautiful slide that I can share with my leadership team? Because normally we’re asked to come and present. And I hate writing slides.”

Director, Business Operations — international pharmaceutical group
The five views

Anatomy of a steering setup

Five views, one project identifier that binds them all, and a single rule: whatever needs attention is visible without clicking.

01

Health

Portfolio state on one page: progress by phase, late milestones, plan against actual. The default view.

02

Calendar

Inflection points over the next four to twelve months, with RAG status and detail on click. The view that replaces meeting preparation.

03

Resourcing

Actual effort by project and phase, available capacity, contributors. Restricted access: this view carries data identifying individuals.

04

Investment

Committed against invoiced, actual against plan, by quarter and by phase. Under-investment is flagged as clearly as overspend.

05

Leadership

A view that produces the leadership pack. The logic is documented, the figures come from the model, nobody recompiles by hand.

An example, with fictional data

The figures below are illustrative. The structure is the one running in production at an international pharmaceutical group.

Illustrative data · real structure
LivePortfolio steering — Health viewData to 31.08 · Refreshed 01.09 04:10
Active projects15715 of them on the fast track
2026 milestones6053 not reached
Invested / plan Q14.2 / 20.1CHF millions, closed months
Portfolio FTE11.9peak in March

Milestone progress

ActualPlan
0255075100AODFAJ70%100%

A rolling twelve months. The last point is the last closed month — partial months are never shown.

Status by workstream

Technology transferOn track
Reporting automationOn track
Data platformAt risk · plan
Procurement integrationAt risk · no plan
Change managementOn track

Status entered by the project manager, never computed. A non-green status requires a comment.

The rules we apply

  • Around ten indicators, no more. Beyond that, a leadership team’s attention wanes.
  • The age of the data is on screen. A number without a refresh date is not a number.
  • Only closed months are shown. A partial month misleads, every time.
  • Status entered by the project manager is kept distinct from status computed by the system. Both belong — not in the same place.
  • Refresh frequency follows business frequency. If the source is weekly, refreshing three times a day adds nothing.
  • What leaves the dashboard cannot be edited offline. The figure shown to the leadership team is the system’s figure, not a version retouched along the way.

What we say in advance, not afterwards

  • A dashboard is no substitute for a decision. It removes the excuse for not making it.
  • The leadership pack is produced by the system: it mirrors the source and cannot be edited. Your comments go beside it: that is the price of a figure that stops moving once it is shared.
  • Linking spend to a project assumes your finance system knows which project it belongs to. When it does not, we say so at the framing stage — and we choose another way in.
Contact

Let us begin with your costliest point of friction

Talk about your portfolio steering →See an example setup