What Are KPIs, And How Can They Help You In Project Management

When we face a project, KPIs are fundamental to our good management. Do you know what they are and how to use them?

“What cannot be measured cannot be managed” The key performance indicators or KPI for its acronym in English (Key Performance Indicator) refer to a series of actions carried out within your project to achieve the proposed objectives.

These indicators must be consistent and in line with both time and what you want to achieve when you start managing a project with your team. Once you have them clear, the workflow changes and becomes more accessible.

Every strategy needs actions and actions, objectives.

We will not move an entire work team without the need to achieve something, but when we have a large project in hand that has to be executed by many people in our team, defined actions are the key, and this is where the KPIs play an essential role. Fundamental role.

Working with these indicators is the best way to know if your results are in line with the objectives of your strategy and if your company is obtaining the correct results that will give that long-awaited success to that project.

KPI Types

Today almost everything can be measured, and it is this number that gives us the final result.

There are KPIs of efficiency, effectiveness, capacity, productivity, quality, profitability… There are the KPIs that your project requires. If you combine good performance indicators with process mapping, your task is guaranteed success.

Work with indicators that help you see the progress of your project clearly; here, we cannot tell you what they may be because it will depend on your type of project and the people that make up your team, but we leave you 3 keys to that you can begin to know which KPI is the right one for your management:

• An indicator: Fundamental! The whole point of using this project management tool is to help you identify the priorities that will lead to specific actions. The most common is to number from 1 to 10 the importance of each step. Ten being the highest and 1 the lowest. The number obtained will represent the performance obtained in the process.
• Objectives: The starting point. The value of the KPI. Your project or your company indicates it.
• Tolerance: If the goal is not achieved, there is a tolerance limit that shows the seriousness of the result. Maintaining a margin of tolerance when working as a team is essential. The progress of the process is what will make your project move forward, and if this process is critical, some action must be taken with priority 10

How to design KPI?

For KPIs to be meaningful and effective, they must be part of a robust process. Detail an operational work plan that tells your team clear actions to take. This will help them understand the priorities and the first actions to start the process.

For example. If we are dealing with an advertising campaign on social networks, there are steps that we must determine before executing it.

We need our Social Media Manager to design the strategy that the campaign should follow, the target audience, and the media in which it will have a presence. Once we have this ready, the designer will determine the graphic line of the campaign; based on that; we design the copy and the rest of the actions. Thus, we involve the entire team one by one to publish the campaign successfully. Although the works and activities are complementary, some prioritize more than others.

A well-defined KPI will help you to indicate to your Social Media Manager that without their part of the work is not done; the others cannot advance.

Involve your whole team

In project management, it is important to involve the entire team. And in KPI design, you can’t forget it.

Talk to your team about the project, what the company wants to achieve, and the goals for a successful project. When you do these meetings, the KPIs take shape on their own, and having the whole team in the process helps you to be the ones who set priorities without having to impose them. The key will always be teamwork.

Let’s do it!

You have the project, you have the objective, and you have the team… And now? Let’s do it!

Divide your KPI into primary, secondary, and practical.

Give the primary ones the keys of action that your directors or clients indicate to you; these KPIs will be the priority 10 that marks an advance for your objective. These indicators are helping the company and the progress of the project.

The secondary KPIs are the ones you work on internally with your team, individual tasks that set the pace of the work; these indicators have time and specific individual actions. They tell you that process and strategy go hand in hand on the right path to achieving those goals.

Practical. The day today. These indicators can involve the entire team or only a part of them; they show the tests and actions already carried out and need constant review and monitoring. The important thing is to understand that each useful indicator is an action, not a set of steps.

Results

Now that you are clear about the main KPIs and how to establish them, you can find more precise data to improve decision-making in your company, but it will also be very useful when presenting results.

Take your team and plan a final meeting, a project closure. Here, real-time and dynamic analysis help them complete their tasks and receive feedback. Here you can obtain valuable and helpful information to present your results to the company or the client.

Analyze the information and the results of all the actions and tasks carried out for this project.

Once you have all this information, present to the company or your client a report, it can be written or a meeting that shows if the project was successful or not.

Very important! Don’t forget to go back to your team, let them know the conclusions, and make them part of the good news.