Blog: Frequently Asked Questions about Costbars Project Pipeline Scheduler

What is Project Portfolio Management (PPM) as facilitated by Costbars?

Costbars facilitates Project Portfolio Management (PPM), which is a structured process for organizations to manage their pipeline of ongoing and new initiatives across both business and IT departments. It emphasizes collaboration between these communities to improve business processes. A key aspect of PPM within Costbars is enabling senior management to make informed decisions about which project investments to undertake within a specific period (e.g., monthly, quarterly, or annually) based on strategic alignment and resource capacity.

How does Costbars help in prioritizing projects?

Costbars employs a prioritization process that calculates a "P Score" (Strategic Priority) for each project, ranging from 0 to 100, with 100 indicating perfect alignment with the organization's operational strategy. This score is determined by assigning Alignment Values to key strategic fields: Investment Categories, Investment Initiatives, Investment Objectives, and Investment Strategies. Users can customize the importance order of these values. The P Score serves as a crucial factor in later project selection stages using bubble chart visualizations.

What is the "Costbars Scoring Algorithm" and what data does it consider?

The Costbars Scoring Algorithm evaluates both in-flight and new projects using various data points to generate a "C Score" (implied, though not explicitly named as such in the provided text, based on its use in conjunction with the P Score for selection). For in-flight projects, the algorithm considers health indicators (Status, Health Cost, Health Hours, Health Issues, Health Risk, Health Schedule, Health Scope), Risk vs Size and Complexity, Cost, and Work. For new projects, it analyzes Status, State, Risk vs Size and Complexity, Cost, Work, ROM Estimate, and Estimation Class. The system also provides feedback on potentially missing business case information like Senior Level Commitment, Expected Benefits, Cost Benefit Analysis, Constraints & Assumptions, and Consequence of Inaction, and allows for manual AI analysis of the business case.

How does Costbars assist with resource management and leveling?

Costbars provides tools for optimizing resource allocation by allowing users to adjust project start and finish dates. The "Leveling" view offers a top-level view of total resource demand, a timeline-based project visualization, interactive project scheduling, and real-time resource allocation analysis. Key features include drag-and-drop timeline adjustments, dynamic resource utilization graphs, over-allocation identification, resource smoothing capabilities, and impact analysis of schedule changes, ensuring projects flow logically based on dependencies.

How are projects selected within Costbars?

Costbars facilitates project selection through a "Bubble Chart" visualization that allows users to filter projects based on their P Score (Strategic Priority) and C Score (derived from the Costbars Scoring Algorithm). This enables a priority-based selection process, favoring projects with higher strategic alignment and better scoring metrics. The system also considers resource availability and can provide automated selection recommendations. All selection rationale and decisions are documented and can be viewed in Tabular and Card views, including the selected status (Yes, No, or Not Assessed) and the detailed Costbars Analysis.

What are the different views available in Costbars for managing projects?

Costbars offers multiple views to cater to different user needs. The Tabular View presents all projects in a detailed spreadsheet-like format with comprehensive data viewing and editing, advanced filtering and sorting, quick comparison across attributes, efficient bulk updates, and a detailed view of project metrics. The Cards View provides a more visual representation of project resource demand, offering at-a-glance project information, quick access to key details, and a more intuitive project tracking experience. The Leveling View focuses on resource management with a timeline-based visualization and tools for adjusting project schedules to optimize resource utilization. The Bubble Chart is used for project selection based on P and C Scores.

What are the key advantages and unique features of Costbars compared to other PPM tools?

Costbars emphasizes user-friendliness and aims to deliver superior personal productivity improvements at an unmatched value. It streamlines PPM processes and project pipeline scheduling with features that are often more expensive in competitor products. Key differentiators include its intuitive design, the use of custom and complex JavaScript for its scheduling engine and algorithms, its ability to track both in-flight and new projects in one pipeline, and its all-in-one team productivity solution that reduces the need to switch between multiple services. Additionally, Costbars offers a free tier with data limitations, spreadsheet synchronization for easy data import and export, and advanced built-in reports with an optional cloud dashboard.

How does Costbars integrate with spreadsheets and other data sources?

Costbars allows users to seamlessly integrate data using spreadsheet templates (Excel, LibreOffice, or OpenOffice Calc). This enables secure, swift, and simple synchronization of data, avoiding the need for cumbersome web form data entry. Users can copy and paste data into designated sheets or drag and drop files onto the canvas to import data. Costbars also facilitates bidirectional synchronization, allowing users to export browser-cached data back into the spreadsheet with just a couple of clicks.