What Makes a Perfect Progress Dashboard? Insights from Global Experts

Over the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with project control professionals from around the world. These conversations always revolve around one question: what makes a perfect progress dashboard?

Over the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to speak with project control professionals from around the world. These conversations always revolve around one question: what makes a perfect progress dashboard?

The feedback I receive is rich, diverse, and highly detailed. Some professionals emphasize the need for deep schedule analysis, while others focus on visual clarity. However, certain elements consistently appear on everyone’s list of expectations.

Most experts agree that an effective progress dashboard should include a project calendar analysis—showing elapsed time, remaining duration, and total delays. They also expect a clear breakdown of the reasons behind any delays. Many emphasize the importance of critical path analysis, as well as the full range of earned value indicators like Planned Value, Earned Value, Schedule Variance, and SPI.

Another common request is to compare current progress with previous reporting periods, whether weekly or monthly. This allows stakeholders to see the project’s momentum. Some go further, asking for KPI breakdowns from both the early and late curves of the S-curve.

Visual content like site photos is frequently mentioned, as is the inclusion of risk assessments and HSE (Health, Safety, and Environment) status summaries.

Interestingly, these features only scratch the surface. For every dashboard I’ve published online, I’ve received feedback asking for double the level of detail. Every expert brings their own experience and expectations to the table, and each defines “dashboard perfection” differently.

But there is one thing nobody has ever disputed: the importance of simplicity and visual appeal. No matter how much content you include, if the dashboard is not clean, readable, and well-designed, it loses its impact.

So yes—depth matters. But clarity matters more. The perfect dashboard balances both.