How to track projects’s KPIs in jestor

Excel is used by many professionals from different areas, such as finance, operations, project management and many others! Even though it’s so used by several people, Excel can prove to be quite difficult when it comes to functions and formulas, and often requires a long learning curve.

This makes it difficult to follow the evolution of projects through the platform due to hard formulas, a large amount of information and possible human errors that prevent a simple and intuitive understanding of the key performance indicators (KPI).

Fortunately, jestor exists to end PMs headaches. It offers a user friendly interface, connected information and a database. So it’s possible to evaluate the progress of KPIs with a few clicks and find all information related to an item.

Walkthrough: Tracking projects’ KPIs in Jestor

1º) Open your jestor, click on the “+” icon on the left menu, choose the option “Table”, name it “Excel Projects” and click on “Create”. Add new fields by clicking on the column header with a “+” and following the steps below:

• Change the name of the “name” field to “Project”;
• Add a user field and name it “Owner”.

2º) Click on again in the “+” icon on the left menu, choose the option “Table”, name it “Excel Projects Tasks” and click on “Create”. Add new fields by clicking on the column header with a “+” and following the steps below:

• Change the name of the “name” field to “Title”;
• Add a user field and name it “Owner”;
• Add a connect table field, name it “Project”, select the “Excel Projects” table and connect to it.
• Add a date field and name it “ Start Date”;
• Add a date field and name it “ End Date”;
• Add a number and name it “Complexity”
• Add a checkbox field and name it “Done?”

3º) Fill in the information in each of the tables. You’ll notice that the column “Project” will be connected to the other tables, so when a record is created, it reflects in the other.

In the complexity column, don’t forget to set the level from 1 to 5.

4º) To create a Dashboard. Click on the “+” icon on the left menu, choose the option “Dashboard”, name it “Project Dashboard” and click on “Create”

5º) Click on the “Add component” button, choose “Complex indicator”, name it “Progress”, 

In item “1. Define the operation of the indicator”, select the option “Ratio % (x/y)”.

In item “2. Define ‘x’”, select the following options:

• In “Select the table it is in”: Choose “Excel Projects Tasks”;
• In “Select the variable ‘x’”: Choose “Complexity”;
• In “Select the operation for ‘x’”: Choose “Number of record in the interval”;
• In “Choose the period analyzed”: Choose “All time”.
• In “Select a filter for ‘x’ (optional)”: In the first field, select the column “Project” and in the third, the name of the project;
• Again in “Select a filter for ‘x’ (optional)”: In the first field, select “Done?” and in the second one select “It’s True”.

In item 3 “Define ‘y’”, select the following options:

• In “Select the table it is in”: Choose “Excel Projects Tasks”;
• In “Select the variable ‘x’”: Choose “Complexity”;
• In “Select the operation for ‘x’”: Choose “Number of record in the interval”;
• In “Choose the period analyzed”: Choose “All time”.
•  In “Select a filter for ‘y’ (optional)”: In the first field, select the column “Project” and in the third, the name of the project;

6º) To finish, click on “Create”.

After this creation process is completed, a dashboard with the percentage of the project progress will be displayed. As the “Done?” column is filled, the percentage value will increase. You can also create other components such as calendars for showing delivery dates and other indicators.

In jestor, creating a dashboard for tracking KPIs is much simpler than in Excel, without complicated formulas and with much more efficient views. As you use your jestor, you’ll see that the benefits are even greater than you think.