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Costbars Project Pileline Scheduler

Easily Manage your pipeline of project investments!

Costbars Project Pipeline Scheduler

Project Portfolio Management (PPM)

PPM is a generally accepted process for managing an organizations pipeline of the continuous growth of initiatives to be undertaken by the Business and the IT Community. These two communities must work together to deliver impoved business processes. Sr. Management must decide what project investments will be undertaken this period (usually monthly, quaterly or annually)

  1. Prioritize Projects (P Score):Calculate Strategic Priority based on custom Alignment Values and Order of Importance. P Score ranges from 0-100, where 100 indicates perfect alignment with operational strategy.
  2. Score Projects (Costbars):Evaluate projects using multiple data points including health indicators, costs, hours, Size vs Complexity metrics, and additional project metadata.
  3. Level Resources:Optimize resource allocation by adjusting project start and finish dates. View resource demand changes across the timeline as projects are rescheduled.
  4. Select Projects:Utilize the bubble chart visualization to filter projects based on P Score and C Score ranges. Run selection analysis to identify optimal project combinations.
  5. Review Resource Demand:Analyze resource requirements for selected projects and make scheduling adjustments as necessary to optimize resource utilization.
  6. Finalize Selection:Make final project selections or eliminations to achieve desired strategic outcomes and resource balance.
Watch the interactive 5 step presentation on YouTube and/or follow along below.

1. Prioritization

Prioritize New and In-flight Projects

For each project choose Alignment Values for the following fields:Investment Categories, Investment Initiatives, Investment Objectives and Investment Strategies. Use the spreadsheet for rapid data entry or use our forms.

Afterwords re-arrange the order of values to suit your preference of importance. The system will calculate a P Score (Strategic Priority) which can be used later for strategic alignment scoring in the bubble charts. The P score score is based on how well each project aligns with your strategy.

Our four key Strategic Alignment fields:

  1. Investment Category - Classification of project type
  2. Investment Initiative - Specific organizational initiative alignment
  3. Investment Objective - Project goals and intended outcomes
  4. Investment Strategy - Strategic fit and approach

2. Scoring

Costbars Scoring Algorithum

The Costbars PPM process leverages your data inputs such as health indicators, costs, hours, Size vs Complexity and other metadata on projects to score projects. This is the next step after completion of Strategic Prioritization. Take time to load costs and hours and to enter accurate data for each project to ensure informed decision-making.

  1. Health Indicators on Inf Flight Projects
  2. Resource Hours Estimates
  3. Size vs Complexity Factor
  4. Other Metadata
How We Score Projects

This algorithmic tool helps score in-flight projects and new projects. Key features include:

  • In-flight project scored on Status, Health Cost, Health Hours, Health Issues, Health Risk, Health Schedule, Health Scope, Risk Vs Size And Complexity, Cost, Work:
  • New Projects scored on: Status, State, Risk Vs Size And Complexity, Cost, Work, ROM Estimate, Estimation Class
  • Provides feedback that these Business Case fields may be empty: Senior Level Commitment, Expected Benefits, Cost Benefit Analysis, Constraints & Assumptions, Consequence of Inaction
  • Provides for the ability to manually ask AI to perform an additional analysis by reading the Business Case

What's different about Costbars?

Our user-friendly software delivers superior personal productivity improvements at an unmatched value, streamlining PPM processes and project pipeline scheduling with features that cost less than competitors. Our intuitive design makes it easier than ever to optimize your workflow. Custom and complex javascript is used build our scheduling engine and costbars algorithms.

Tabular View

This view presents all projects (both inflight and planned) in a detailed tabular format that allows:

  • Comprehensive data viewing and editing
  • Advanced filtering and sorting capabilities
  • Quick comparison across multiple project attributes
  • Efficient bulk updates and data management
  • Detailed view of project metrics and status
Cards View

Offers a more visual presentation of project resource demand that provides:

  • Visual representation of project status and progress
  • At-a-glance project information
  • Quick access to key project details
  • More intuitive project tracking experience
01

Track company-wide projects and initiatives without enterprise software. Use our tools to interrogate data from your rigid enterprise solutions.

Go from tracking progress at the milestone level all the way down to the smallest level of detail. Never lose sight of the bigger picture again. Use our spreadsheet, copy and paste your own data into the Timebars sheet and the MetaData sheet. Drag and drop the file on the Canvas to import the data

02

Everything you need in one place

Stop jumping from one service to another to communicate, store files, track tasks and share documents. Costbars offers an all-in-one team productivity solution. Use our spreadsheet, copy and paste your own data into the Timebars sheet and the MetaData sheet. Drag and drop the file on the Canvas to import the data into the app.

03

Get fulll functionality for free.

The free use of our products has data limitations. These limitations are based on the number of projects, tasks, and Pubsets. When you buy a subscription you can manage larger projects, sprints or portfolios again.

04

Sync data with our spreadsheet.

Use spreadsheet templates (Excel, LibreOffice, or OpenOffice Calc) to synchronize data with all our products securely, swiftly, and simply, avoiding clunky web form data entry. You data will be stored in the browser and in the spreadsheet. In two clicks, get the browser cached data back in the spreadsheet.

05

Advanced Built-in Reports or Cloud Dasboard.

Set internal delivery estimates and track progress toward company goals. Our customisable reports and optional cloud dashboard helps you keep key stakeholders informed.

3. Leveling

Level Project Resource Demand

Leveling is easily done by looking you project dependancies first and make sure the flow of the project pipelinn is valide. choose the Leveling view to...

You can level your projects at any time, it does not have to be done in any particular order. This visual resource management tool provides:

  • Top-level view of total resource demand
  • Timeline-based project visualization
  • Interactive project scheduling
  • Real-time resource allocation analysis
  • Visual feedback on resource conflicts

Key features:

  • Drag-and-drop project timeline adjustment
  • Dynamic resource utilization graphs
  • Over-allocation identification
  • Resource smoothing capabilities
  • Impact analysis of schedule changes

4. Selection

Select Projects With Bubble Chart

The Costbars selection process leverages your data

  1. Health Indicators on Inf Flight Projects
  2. Resource Hours Estimates
  3. Size vs Complexity Factor
  4. Other Metadata

This algorithmic tool, found on the Bubble Chart helps project selection based on both the P Score and the C Score. Key features include:

  • Priority-based selection process favoring high-priority projects
  • Resource availability validation
  • Automated selection recommendations based on your inputs.
  • Documentation of recommendations and decisions.

The tool stores selection and decision rational and is viewable in Tabluar and Card Views:

  • See the Selected column for Yes, No or Not Assessed values
  • See Priority (P Score), C Score and other metadata in these views.
  • Detailed selection rationale in the Costbars Analysis field.