Before you report
Project Trend Analyzer
Read a project's reports as a run instead of one at a time, and catch the indicators that are sliding while each report on its own looks fine.
Open a sheet of indicators over time: a row per report with a column per indicator, or the other way round. It is read inside your browser; nothing is uploaded.
Indicators over time
Drop a spreadsheet here
A row per report (month, week or sprint) with a column per indicator: CPI, SPI, open risks, open issues, forecast cost, status. Or a row per indicator with a column per period. Several projects can share a sheet with a Project column.
A slow slide hides in plain sight
A schedule index of 0.97 is fine. So is 0.95, and 0.93. Read one report at a time, nothing looks alarming; read as a run, the project has slipped a little every month since February. The same goes for open issues creeping up while the status stays green, and for a forecast that jumps the month after everyone agreed it was stable.
What is found
For each indicator: whether it is better or worse than three reports ago, and how many reports running it has got worse. Sudden jumps for the worse, much bigger than its usual change. Pairs of indicators that get worse at the same times, which often share a cause. And every report marked green while an indicator underneath had been getting worse for three reports or more.
Which way is good
Up is good for a performance index or percent complete, and bad for open issues or a cost forecast. The page reads this from each indicator’s name and shows it in the table, where it can be changed; an indicator whose name does not say is left unjudged until you set it.
What this does not do
It reads the numbers it is given, not how they were measured. It does not judge milestone dates, which the Milestone Trend Analyzer does, or whether one report’s status fits its own numbers, which the Status Report Evidence Checker does. Indicators that move together are shown as moving together, not as one causing the other.