The Jira Project Reporting Academy is back! If you have been following this course, you're closer to learn effectively build an organic way to centralize project data and visualize it with Projectrak (formerly Profields) and eazyBI.
In this third fascicle of The Jira Project Reporting Academy we're diving deeper on how to create powerful and useful reports with the integration of Projectrak and eazyBI, if this is too advanced, we'll recommend to step back and read first how to set the flow of data from these two useful apps, and after how to create the first project chart, where was explained how to set of three gauge charts from the data in a simple grid, with the following result:
Using this kind of chart we can quickly understand the financial status of the project. Having this in sight we will be able to act on solid ground, and have enough knowledge to build reports that help you track your project portfolio... for example, knowing whether we can add new tasks to a project... or whether we should renegotiate the budget with our client first.
But project data is completely flexible: there’s no limit to what you can build! Let’s choose project status as the data baseline to create some interesting reports.
Taking this baseline, note that we’re moving from reports about one project to reports across projects. Depending on how many projects you include, this could be a comparison between disparate projects, a program level report or even a portfolio level report, in case you have included all your projects.
For this purpose, I’m going to define my status taxonomy as follows: ACTIVE, SUSPENDED, CLOSED, BAD PAYER, PROSPECT, RENEWAL. Although I may add new statuses as I encounter new business situations, as a matter of principle I will classify all my projects under one and only one of these situations.
First of all, we define a new Projectrak field to store Project's status:
With this possible options, as shown in following figure:
After this, we can add this new field in our project layout, making it available for all projects.
Of course, you’ll then need to implement the field, entering the value needed in each project. Note that you can edit any number of projects at the same time with Bulk Operations!
Next, we switch to eazyBI to modify the import configuration so that it can read the new field as a dimension and property.
After having changed the configuration, I do a new import to load the most recent data. Now I have values for the new field, which I’ll use to section the new measures.
On the Analyze TAB, click New Report and follow these steps:
Next, let's select the values for the columns as shown below. In this case, I want to see the Budget.
Once data is on a grid, I’m ready to start creating charts. Select the Chart tab and the Pie type to see this final result:
With this chart I can see projects and their budgets within a given status. For example, the image shows how budget is distributed among all active projects. Navigating through different status is as easy as selecting different options in the dropdown on the upper left.
Using this view, management can easily analyze how the budget is distributed in project status and decide, for example, if it’s necessary to modify budgets for suspended/bad payer projects.
Now let’s move to tracking time. It’s a famous limitation that Jira doesn’t have native gantt charts. Well, one possible solution is to create a Gantt chart with eazyBI to obtain a chronological view of ALL projects.
First of all, we define two new date fields in Projectrak: Start date of Project and End date of Project.
Now we can define Start and End date of the projects. As usual, we’ll add the new fields in our Project Layout.
Finally, we set the values in those new fields.
When the project metadata has been implemented, once again we switch to the import data configuration in eazyBI. Once dates are set as properties we can do the import and start reporting with the new measures.
On the Analyze TAB, select New Report, with the following measures and dimensions as shown below:
Select the new column values. First we create a new measure, one for Start date and one for End Date:
Then we select them to define the new columns
This is the resulting grid:
The last step is to go to the GANTT TAB to automatically read the grid data as a Gantt:
With this report, managers have an overview of the projects and can better manage new projects, identifying when they can be scheduled without interfering with other projects.
As a bonus step, I want to show how we can embellish the multi-project Gantt chart above, adding important information that tells us how each project is going.
For this example, I have chosen budget as the dimension that will be tracked. Let’s see the trick!
Let’s jump right into eazyBI to create a new calculated measure that will give me the percentage of budget spent:
Next, let’s add it to the grid after both date fields. Let’s see the visual output. This is a big "a-hah" moment!
eazyBI interprets the percentage value and displays it using colors.
In the final lesson of the Jira Project Reporting Academy will be shown how to combine all the reports we have built into a comprehensive dashboard with vital information for a Project Manager. Stay tuned!
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