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Project dashboards

Project dashboard examples

Project management dashboard examples to copy the thinking from: a project status dashboard and a project portfolio dashboard running on sample data, plus the steering deck.
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Project Status dashboard: Percent Complete, Actual Hours, Budget and Cost Variance tiles, above Status by project.
Sample data: illustrative figures, not business results.

In short

What a project dashboard is

A project dashboard is a single screen showing where the work has got to and what is at risk of missing its date. Teams also call it a project tracking or project health dashboard, and the portfolio version a PMO dashboard. The formats that earn a second look separate two things a status report usually blurs: how much is done, and how much it has cost to get there. Percent complete on its own says nothing about whether the budget survived it. The two below are a status view and a portfolio view, and the same numbers become a steering deck further down.

The examples

Two project dashboard examples

Real Mammoth templates on sample data. Every figure is illustrative. Both run on the same 486-row delivery dataset as the deck below.

  1. Example 01· Template: Project Status

    Project status dashboard

    What is actually stuck, before the status meeting starts?

    Every workstream in one state view, with the slippage and its cost on the second page. The point is that the meeting opens from what the data says rather than from a round of verbal updates: a status that nobody had to be asked for is a different conversation from one that was.

    What is on it· 2 pages · Progress / Slippage & cost

    • Status by project
    • Where the work sits
    • Progress by workstream
    • Overdue work by priority
    • Progress spread by portfolio
    • Progress across the grid

    Your data needsDashboard

    • a rate or percentage
    • a category (~4 values)

    Start with this template

    Project Status dashboard: Percent Complete, Actual Hours, Budget and Cost Variance tiles, above Status by project, Where the work sits, Progress by workstream, Overdue work by priority, Progress spread by portfolio and Progress across the grid.
    Sample data: illustrative figures, not business results.

  2. Example 02· Template: Project Portfolio

    Project portfolio dashboard

    Which programmes are over budget, and by how much?

    Budget against actual cost across every portfolio, with effort planned against effort spent beside it. Cost variance is the number this board exists for, and it is shown per portfolio rather than as a total: a programme 20% under and one 20% over net to nothing, and netting to nothing is how an overrun stays invisible until it is large.

    What is on it

    • Budget by portfolio
    • Over and under budget
    • Planned against actual effort
    • Budget against spend
    • Effort spread by workstream

    Your data needsDashboard

    • a revenue or money column
    • a category (~4 values)

    Start with this template

    Project Portfolio dashboard: Budget, Actual Cost, Cost Variance and Percent Complete tiles, above Budget by portfolio, Over and under budget, Planned against actual effort, Budget against spend and Effort spread by workstream.
    Sample data: illustrative figures, not business results.

The metrics

The metrics a project dashboard is built from

Seven numbers, and the first two are the ones a status report usually blurs together. Percent complete says nothing about whether the budget survived getting there.

Project dashboard metrics: what each one answers and what the data must carry.
Percent completeHow much of the work is done?One completion rule, stated. Tasks closed and effort burned give different answers on the same project, and the gap between them is itself the signal worth showing.
Schedule varianceHow far has the date moved?Baseline dates kept after each re-plan. Overwriting the baseline when a date slips makes every project on time, which is why so many portfolio boards are green.
Budget against actual costWhich programmes are overspending?Committed and spent per programme, never netted to a portfolio total. One programme 20% under and one 20% over sum to nothing, and that is how an overrun stays invisible until it is large.
Effort planned against actualIs it taking the time it was supposed to?Timesheet or estimate data recorded at the same level of the work breakdown as the plan. Effort logged against a programme and planned against a task cannot be compared.
Open risks and blockers by ageWhat has been stuck the longest?A raised date and the status history, not only the current status. Without the history, an item that has been open for five months looks the same as one raised yesterday.
Resource utilisationAre people overloaded on one project and idle on another?Hours booked per person per project against their available hours for the same weeks. Leave out leave and part-time contracts and everyone looks under-used.
Milestones hit on timeDo the dates the project commits to actually land?Each milestone's baseline date and the date it was met. A baseline overwritten at every re-plan turns this into 100% for every project.

Other formats

The same numbers, presented

A steering review is walked through rather than browsed, and a board built for browsing does not survive being projected. The deck is built from the same 486 rows as the two dashboards above.

  1. Programme Review Deck: the deck's title slide, with slide thumbnails in the rail and 486 sample records.
    Sample data: illustrative figures, not business results.

    Programme Review Deck

    And when the audience is a steering committee rather than a screen?

    Every programme for a steering audience: progress, effort, cost and risk.

    Project · Presentation

From example to live dashboard

Pretty is easy. Current and true is the hard part.

Any of these can be drawn in a slide. What makes one worth keeping is the five steps underneath it, and they are the same five whichever example you start from.

  1. 01

    Connect the source

    The dashboard reads the system, not an export somebody saved to their desktop. 100+ tested connectors, plus anything with a REST API.

  2. 02

    Prepare it once

    Cleaning, joining and reshaping are recorded as steps you can read, change and re-run, not a formula buried three sheets deep.

  3. 03

    Check it before anyone sees it

    Data checks run with the refresh and flag the rows that fail, so a broken upstream file shows up as an alert rather than as a wrong number in a meeting.

  4. 04

    Put it on a schedule

    Refresh on a schedule and the dashboard stays current on its own. Starter refreshes weekly, Team daily, and Pro every three hours.

  5. 05

    Publish it and send the link

    Public, password-protected or sign-in only. Every sharing mode is available on every plan, including the free one.

Sharing

Everyone can see it.
Nobody pays to look.

Most dashboard tools charge for every person who opens one, which is why so many dashboards end up as a screenshot pasted into a message. Mammoth charges for the people who build. Viewers are unlimited and free on every plan, including the free one.

  • You pay for

    The people who build

    Anyone connecting a source, preparing data or publishing a dashboard counts as a platform user.

  • You never pay for

    The people who look

    Viewers are unlimited and free on every plan, including the free one. A board, a client list or a whole company: the number does not change the bill.

Plans differ in how many builders and published dashboards a workspace gets. Drafts, viewers and every sharing mode are unlimited and free on all four. Full pricing.

Project dashboard questions

What belongs on a project dashboard?
Enough to answer where the work is and what it is costing, and little else. Status by project, progress by workstream, overdue work ranked by priority, and budget against actual with the variance shown. The failure mode is a board that lists every task field the tracker happened to export, which is a report rather than a dashboard: nobody opens it twice.
What is a PMO dashboard?
A project dashboard one level up: every project or programme in the portfolio on one screen, with budget against actual cost and effort against plan, so a project management office can see which ones need attention. The project portfolio dashboard above is that view; the project status dashboard is the one a single delivery team works from.
How do I build a project dashboard?
Start from the meeting it has to replace, usually the weekly status round, then work through five steps.
  1. Connect the tracker where the work lives, such as Jira, Asana or a spreadsheet, and the finance export that holds the budget.
  2. Agree what done means and keep the baseline dates after every re-plan, or every project will look on time.
  3. Put progress and cost on the same strip, because percent complete says nothing about whether the budget survived.
  4. Add the exceptions underneath: overdue work ranked by priority, and projects over budget shown one by one rather than netted.
  5. Schedule the refresh before the meeting and send the link, so the hour goes on the exceptions instead of collecting updates.
Can I use Excel to create a project dashboard?
Yes, for one project from one source. It stops working when the work sits in a tracker, the effort in a timesheet and the budget in a finance export, because someone then rebuilds the joins by hand every week. That rebuild is the job a prepared, scheduled dashboard takes over.
Is this a replacement for Jira, Asana or Monday?
No, and it would be a poor one. Those are where the work is tracked, tickets, assignments, transitions, and their own dashboards are the right place to watch a sprint. This is for the layer above that: several workstreams or portfolios, often from more than one system, with budget and effort alongside delivery. If all your work lives in one tracker and its built-in board answers your question, use that.
Can it combine projects from more than one tool?
That is the case it is actually for. Delivery data in one system, time or effort in another and budget in a finance export is the ordinary situation, and it is why the reporting gets rebuilt by hand each month. The joining is recorded once as a recipe and replayed, so next month's exports land in the same shape without anyone redoing the mapping.
How current is it?
As current as the schedule you put it on. Starter refreshes weekly, Team daily, and Pro every three hours. Overnight is genuinely enough for a weekly steering review; the case for hourly is a board being read live in a meeting where the numbers are being argued about.
Do the project sponsors need licences to look at it?
No. Dashboard viewers are unlimited and free on every Mammoth plan, including the free one: only the people building count as platform users. A steering committee, a client and a delivery team can all be given the link at no per-viewer cost.

Last reviewed against the template catalogue.

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