Information year report
The information year report contains an assessment of all running projects on the aspects time, money and quality in comparison with the project descriptions as decided upon (Salmela, H&Spil, TAM, 2002). A good example is the financial year report where you immediately can see if a company made profit or loss on the balance sheet. Therefore an information year report tool has to show all the projects that have been done in the last year so far. The tool also should show in a second how the results of those projects are with respect to time, money and quality. Further the criteria that asses the process, people involved, communication plans and progress evaluation are also of use for assessing a year report.
A tool for the information year report
As can be seen in the tool the 3 criteria to assess the product are the axes of the tool, i.e. time, money and quality. By keeping up all the time, money and quality of each project, this tool can show if the company is healthy or not, which then can be used as a tool for continuous learning and improvement (Dymoke-Bradshaw and Cox, 2004). In the tool managers can see if a project is done well, and by zooming in that project as done in project 6 it can be see why it was a success looking to the process criteria as people involved, communication plans and progress evaluation.
It should be stated that with time is meant how much time is spent on the project, with money how much money the project has made (so net profit) and with quality of a project is meant how the process of the project is evaluated by the employees as the customer.
An important aspect when doing a project is the confidentiality between customer and the company which has to be controlled by different controls of access, like an access log for customers so that they can see how the project is going on. Important in this case is the information management of the company for the different project, were for example the finance manger needs information if they can afford the project or not. This is the tactical management level were targets, production, capacity, budgets, purchasing and expenses have to be known before accepting a project.
If a project is accepted and there is not spent much time for a project with high quality and it made a lot of money, then it is project number 8 in the tool. This is the ideal situation for a company to be. Spending less time means that a company can do more projects. And of course if you get a lot of money with high quality in less time means that your profit is also high which can result in high turnover. The worst situation is when you spend a lot of time in a project which made very less money with low quality. This is project 2 in the tool. Of course a project can be between e.g. project 1 and 5, which means that there is space for improvement in quality.
All the extreme possible configurations the projects can have in the tool has been put in the table below for clarification.
Time | Money | Quality | |
Project 1 | Low | Low | Low |
Project 2 | High | Low | Low |
Project 3 | High | High | Low |
Project 4 | Low | High | Low |
Project 5 | Low | Low | High |
Project 6 | High | Low | High |
Project 7 | High | High | High |
Project 8 | Low | High | High |
So this tool specifies the product and process criteria which can contribute to the evaluation process. By zooming in each project and evaluating how the process has been done by asking questions to the stakeholders will give detailed insight and may form a base for improvement in the processes throughout the organization.