Speaker 1: Key performance indicators, commonly known as KPIs, are a great way to track your progress on a project. And in this video, I'm going to share with you some key KPIs that project managers need to know. Why are KPIs important? It's really simple. It allows you to know what's going well and what's not going well. You're measuring it against a benchmark that you created when you started the project so that you can understand are we on track and what course correction that we have to do. Project schedule. This is the first KPI you want to look at. It's the one that we all know and we work with constantly, and that is your major milestones and activities that you want to call out in your schedule and your timeline to know are you hitting it or not hitting it. So as a KPI, you have a benchmark of here's my targeted dates that I'm looking at, and you want to know are you past due? Are you doing things in advance? So this is really helpful because it gives you the bigger picture to know if ultimately you're going to be able to deliver on your goal or your goal live date that you have scheduled, which is at the end of this schedule. As well, it's really important too because you may have other activities that have dependencies that are going to push out other stuff too in the future that this KPI is going to allow you to manage. Now, how do you do a really good timeline? One of the easy ways that I share all the time is you create your action plan first. That's all the detail, and then you're going to work backwards from that by going in a more higher level of pulling out what those milestones are and putting it into your project schedule so you can start monitoring and measuring whether you're on track or not on track. Now, before we jump in the next KPI, I actually am going to be sharing with you how to get your hands on an amazing checklist on how to ensure your projects don't fail. Stay tuned for it because I'm going to share with it a little bit later on in this video. Planned versus actual hours. This KPI is one that everybody always asks for because in the beginning of the project, they always want to know how much time is it going to take to finish this project? How much time is this particular milestone or this major activity going to take? Now, of course, you need to have an estimation for that because that's what helps you to understand when is it that you can actually deliver on the project. But as a KPI, you want to have an understanding for the future is if this is what we planned, what are we actually or how many hours actually is it occurring for this particular activity that I planned out for? So that is the the plan versus the actual. So that's a really great KPI. I use that one a lot for future projects because there's a lot of projects that have similarities. So I'll go to past ones and say, you know what? This actually took more time than we anticipated or expected. And then therefore, I then build that into my next plan. I can even use it during a project, which I do recommend as well, not from a standpoint of really doing a detailed leveling or monitoring of it, but just to give me an idea, particularly when something kind of does go off track, why is it going off track and how much time did it take for us to get back on track? Because that will have an impact on my timing, potentially budget as well, depending on who's doing the work. So that's a really great KPI to ensure that you have in your back pocket and you at least have an understanding what you're planning towards. So if you do have to do the actual, you have it right there ready. Budget variance, also known as cost variance. So this is what it is that you plan to spend versus what you actually spend. This is really important because this is how you know, remember the triangle for project management, time, scope, and budget. This is how you know if you're on track with your budget, having this variance. So this is why we all keep track of how much we spend, what the expectation is. That's why we all live in our spreadsheets when it comes to budgets. This is an extremely important one. It's a must. You have to do this. And it's an excellent KPI. And I've made a lot of project decisions based on this particular KPI of understanding my budget and the variance to what it is that I'm trying to do and how much money I actually have to spend. Percentage of tasks completed. So this KPI is to know whether or not where it is in the life cycle that this task is in. Has it started? Is it at zero? Is it completed 100%? Is it about 50% done, 75% done? This is a really nice KPI. It's not a must KPI, but it's a really nice to have KPI because if you're doing Gantt charts, then you need to have that percentage complete because it helps you in order to create the full bar that you need for the Gantt chart. But not only that, if you have a very large team and you don't want to be micromanaging everyone, it's a nice way to understand from a perspective of timing. If they have a period of time to get something done and you're closer to the due date, have they started it yet? Don't know. But if you have this percentage complete, you'll actually know if they have, haven't, and where they are in progress to it. And are they getting close to completion as you're getting close to the due date? Now, this is again, is a subjective one because you're allowing people to tell you I'm at 50%. And so there's trust with your team that they know where they're at from a percentage perspective. So this one, again, is a nice to have. It is very helpful. And it is something that you may want to consider just incorporating into your project plan and your project schedule. Resource utilization. This is another KPI, very similar to the planned versus actual in regards to the hours that it takes to get something completed, but it's in regards to people. How much time are you going to need from this particular person? How much time are they putting into the project? Now, personally, I find this one a very difficult one to do and it's a lot of paperwork. So I find, not my favorite. So maybe that's why I'm struggling a little bit sharing this one with you, but it is one that's out there. Internally, how do you, you guesstimate how much time you need from people? I always give it as a range and I set it up up front. Look it, I probably need on average 25% of the time, but there will be ebbs and flows where I may need someone for 50% for a very short time, maybe even 100% for three days. Who knows? But on average it's 25. So when you start doing utilization rates, it's a lot of micromanaging, particularly when you're trying to find of resources. And you can do this with suppliers and external folks. And what I do with that is usually have them submit hours and have them kind of give me a summary so I can do a cross-referencing if we have some sort of service agreement in place, a statement of work in place, so I can show that they're on track. But this one, it is one that's out there, not my favorite one because I'm kind of of the philosophy when it comes to projects. We have a goal, let's attain it. I'm not asking people to go over and above and put a hundred percent into everything, but you know what? I'm not going to micromanage you either. And let's really ensure that we do good work. And if I have to look at every single hour that you're putting in from the utilization rate perspective, what is it really giving me? What is it really giving me? What am I trying to really achieve here? I think for me personally, it kind of goes against the overall objective of really trying to bring a team together and us all working cohesively as one unit to reach the goal. Now that you know the top KPIs for project management, you need to get this to ensure your projects don't fail. This is for you, free. You can get it at the link, which is underneath this video. Please check it out. You're really going to be glad that you did. If your projects are struggling, you need to watch this next video where I go into a deeper dive in common reasons and how to fix them. On that note, if you could like this video, subscribe to the channel. It tells YouTube we're doing a good job. Until the next video, see you later.