Three years ago, I was meeting with one of my employees and thinking to myself, "This is bad. This is really, really bad." I had just experienced the moment of realization that I couldn’t keep up with the work that my team was doing. I was holding 1:1 meetings with my team members regularly, but I couldn’t keep track of who-worked-on-what, much less the actual status of each project. In addition to these meetings, I was having my team email weekly updates to me, but that became a flurry of emails that I started to regret. I knew of several project management tools out there, such as Basecamp and Microsoft Project Server, but I needed something fast and I didn’t have budget to buy anything.
After doing some sketching and some brainstorming with my team, I decided to dive in and build my own system. I have enough programming and database knowledge to get myself into trouble, and I thought this could be a fun challenge for a few evenings and weekends. After about 2 weeks, I released Scoreboard to the team.
How does Scoreboard work?
Scoreboard was designed specifically for a learning and development team; however, it can be used to manage nearly any kind of team working on a variety of projects. With Scoreboard, team members can:
- Enter their projects, adding detailed information for each project
- Update the status of their projects whenever they want
- See their project workload (total hours, along with a breakdown of project type)
- View the workload of other individuals or the entire team
Adding a Project to Scoreboard
Adding a project is as easy as filling out this form:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
About the Category, Status, and Type of Work fields
The Category dropdown field has values that are specific to my organization, essentially allowing us to more intelligently group our projects together.
The Status dropdown field has the following values:
- Not Started
- In Progress
- QA
- Customer Review
- Completed
- On Hold – Temporary
- On Hold – Indefinitely
- Archived
The Type of Work dropdown field has the following values:
- Consultation / Needs Analysis
- Curriculum / Course Design
- Curriculum / Course Development
- Facilitation
- Evaluation
- Metrics / Analytics
- Coaching
- Customer Support / Administration
- Program Design / Management / Execution
- Communication and Marketing
Viewing Projects in Scoreboard
Every member of the team can view projects using the page below; there are no permissions or restrictions. You can use the Owner filter to view a specific team member’s workload or you can view all projects at once.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Editing Projects
You can click the edit link next to each project to update its information.
Why is it named Scoreboard?
While I was programming, I happened to look up while watching ESPN and I noticed a detailed scoreboard during SportsCenter. I noticed how it had a ton of great information concisely packed into a small amount of real estate. That was my inspiration for naming the system Scoreboard.
Note: My intent is not to imply a sense of competition between employees by using the name Scoreboard. The amount of projects completed or hours worked is only one factor in evaluating employees at the end of the day.
Team Adoption
I ask my team to update their project information in Scoreboard at the end of each week. This usually takes them 5-10 minutes, and I’ve heard several people tell me that it also helps them manage their own workload and priorities. I also do my best to incorporate team feedback and ideas into Scoreboard, making updates to it whenever my schedule allows.
Running Reports
The database behind Scoreboard allows me to run queries to produce monthly, quarterly, and annual reports without any issue at all. I can slice and dice reports however I need, and I can easily export them to Excel. Simple and fast, which is exactly what I need.
Interested in using Scoreboard for your team?
Get in touch if you are interested in getting set up with Scoreboard for your team. I can install Scoreboard for you within a week, for a fraction of what other similar systems cost. I can also customize the system, if there are certain fields and/or features you’d like to see.
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