User Manual

🏁 Getting Started

🏁 Getting Started

New To Conduite

What Is Conduite?

Conduite is a Google Spreadsheets™-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that helps you manage the financials of your service business with ease. Conduite provides simple and actionable KPIs that help you track and manage the health of your business.

Conduite comes in 2 parts:

Application

Description
🏠 Conduite Home Your landing page from where you can access all Conduite applications.

🛍️ Conduite CRM

Helps you manage your Business Development pipeline. You can track opportunities and estimate future revenue and margin over time.

💵 Conduite Budget Builder

Helps you build detailed budgets. You'll have clear margin calculations and tables ready to be shared to clients in your proposals.

🗓️ Capacity Planner

Helps you consolidate the work allocations for your team and to know who is working on what and when (present and future).

📊 Conduite Project Dashboard

 Helps you track the financial health and progress of your projects (signed contracts) with limited effort. You'll get an  appreciation of the financial health of your projects in seconds thanks to the (limited) insightful KPIs.
📋 Conduite Project Report Out
 Helps you get a global overview of the financial health and progress of all your projects from a central location.

Where To Start?

Ask your Conduite Administrator to give you access to Conduite Home. From there you will be able to access all Conduite apps. Then install the Google Workspace™ Addon.

The Business Process page details the underlying business process Conduite is built upon. It will help you better understand how things work. The Glossary provides definitions for all concept and Key Performance Indicators used in Conduite. It can be helpful as you learn your way around the applications.

What You Need To Know About Conduite Applications

Based on Google Sheets™ - Google Sheets™ is part of Google Workspace™. It provides a ton of powerful features and tools on top of the typical spreadsheet functionalities. That is what makes Conduite possible: it combines several Google Workspace™ tools and Addons to provide an experience close to a web application.

Conduite Addon - The Addon provides is gives you access to features specific to each file such as transforming data for analysis or submitting data to another Conduite application.

Protected Cells/Tabs - The main downside of spreadsheets is that they can break easily, specially when many people use them. That's not the case for Conduite. We've protected cells and tabs so that you are warned each time you try to edit a cell or tab that you should normally remain untouched. 

The lock sign indicates the tab as a whole is protected.

The popup that appears when you try to edit a protected cell or tab.

Configuration Tab - Each Conduite application has a hidden Configuration tab that contains information that is required for Conduite to function. As a user there is no reason why you would have to edit the content of this tab. This tab should remain hidden.

Adding New Lines - Adding new lines is often how you end up breaking a spreadsheet. Conduite applications are resilient and purposefully built to avoid that. You just need to make sure to copy the formulas to the new lines.

Adding New Columns - We do all we can to make Conduite resilient to adding columns but it's generally not a good idea. Although the applications might keep working, the Addon features might not since we have to make some assumptions about the structure of the file. This is certainly true for Conduite Standard Edition users. For Enterprise Edition users, you can also adjust the source code of the Addon.

🏁 Getting Started

Business Process

Introduction

At the heart of every company there's a business process that orchestrates the main activities that are implemented. Conduite is built for service delivery and consulting organizations that:

For each of these phases, Conduite provides apps and KPIs that help you manage and track the health of your business.

Overview Of The Process

The overall business process can be broken down in 5 steps. It shows show the Conduite apps to support its implementation.

Data Flow Between Apps & Key Roles

1. Develop An Opportunity

Business Development

Your Sales Team develops leads that eventually become opportunities. You manage these opportunities with a CRM in which you qualify key attributes such as client name, amount, probability, start date and duration. The Sales Team keeps updating these attributes as discussions go with the prospects.

What is a Sales Team?

The Sales Team is a group of people in charge identifying potential clients (prospects) and to sell them the services that your company offers.

2. Create & Update The Offer

Business Development

If successful, your Sales Team will convince your prospect to send an offer. You start preparing a document with the appropriate narrative (methodology, risk analysis, ...), budget and timeline. In order to produce the two latter elements, you use a Budget Builder that helps you plan over time the number of days for each role (or person) needed to execute the scope of work. That tool also provides you with the margin you can expect to make on this contract.

In order to secure the availability of the required roles in the event you win the opportunity, your Sales Team sends a Resourcing Request (days / role / period) to your Capacity Manager. S/He can pencil that workload into the Capacity Planner and starts working on potential resourcing conflicts. The Resourcing Request includes the probability of the opportunity so that the expected workload can be weighted.

What is a Capacity Manager?

The Capacity Manager (or Resourcing Manager) is the person who's job is to make sure that there is a consolidated view of who's working on what and when (present and future). As the main resource of your company is people's time, this is an essential function. It will allow you to know whether you have too much work coming up and need to hire, or if you need to make adjustments to manage a slowdown in activity.

As discussions evolve with the prospect, your Sales Team send updated Resourcing Requests to your Capacity Manager in order to for her/him to have the latest information.

3. Sign The Contract & Kick Off The Project

Execution

You've won the opportunity! 🎉 You endure the final administrative hurdles and sign the contract. It's time to kick off the project and set up the internal tooling. You need to configure your Project Dashboard that will help you track the execution of the project with the financial data from the contract (total amount, labor amount, expenses amount, expected margin) and with the most up to date Resourcing Request. That last piece in very important since you want to know how you team is doing against the initial plan.

At this point you can hand over the project to a Project Manager and start executing the scope of work.

What is a Project Manager?

The Project Manager is the person accountable for the proper execution of the project. S/He has to ensure that the client is happy with the work that is being delivered, that the financials of the project are under control and that her/his own team is happy. It's a role that requires  a versatile mix of skills (technical, organizational, relational). Project Managers are key to the success of projects.

4. Manage The Project

Execution

Your team is actively working 🛠️, i.e. spending days, on the project. It's important to have regular updates on how things are progressing in order to avoid bad surprises. You ask your Project Managers to update their Project Dashboards on a regular basis with how much time each person has spent on the project and with how many days s/he thinks will be required to deliver the expected scope of work, i.e. an updated resourcing. The Project Dashboard consolidates this updated information and feeds it back the Project Manager in the form of KPIs that tell her/him how s/he's doing financially.

Your Delivery Manager needs to centralize these updates in order to build a global overview of the situation. You ask your Project Managers to send a Project Report Out that includes specific KPIs from the Project Dashboard, the updated resourcing and a short narrative on what happened in the last period to give context to the numbers. The labor forecast goes the Capacity Manager that can update the Capacity Planner accordingly.

What is a Delivery Manager?

The Delivery Manager is a person in charge of overseeing execution (delivery) of projects. This is a senior role with strong Project Management skills and experience. S/He feeds off the regular project updates to trigger corrective actions in support to Project Managers. S/He is often accountable for the improving the way projects are executed. This role is often combined with the one of Capacity Manager.

With this update cycle in place you are able to keep track of projects (push corrective actions and/or praise colleagues) and of your capacity at all times.

5. Close The Project

Execution

After a lot of hard work, countless client meetings and presentations the project comes to an end. The client is happy 🤩 (or not 😡). Your team organizes a project retrospective in order to learn from what went well and what went wrong.

The Key Metrics

Conduite apps provide a limited, yet powerful, number of metrics that allow you to track and manage the health your business. Most of the KPIs produced by Conduite apps are related to the margin objectives that you want to achieve during the business development and execution phases. 

Definition of Margin

Margin is a term used in both business and finance to refer to the difference between the price of a good or service and the amount of money required to produce it. It is the amount of money that remains in your pocket once you have delivered a service.

Margin is usually expressed in percentage. Ex: if you sell a product or service for $1,000 with a 40% margin, you earn $400.

In Conduite, margins apply to many things:

Margin Types

Margin Type Description
Margin at Signature ($/%) The margin computed at the time a contract is signed (provided by the associated Budget Builder). For a project this is a static value.
Margin Objective ($/%)

The margin objective that is set for a project. At the beginning of a project that value equals the Margin at Signature. But it can evolve overtime (up or down).

In Conduite, setting a margin objective is the primary way to steer the performance of a project.
Expected Margin ($/%) The margin that we expect to make on a project at any given time based on what was spent and what we think we need to spend to finish the work.

This is central feature of Conduite as it assumes a certain structure for your budgets.

Business Development Phase

Conduite CRM provides the Expected Value (EV) of your Business Development pipeline. It is the dollar amount that corresponds to the sum of the value of the opportunities weighted by their probability. In addition you get:

This gives you a good idea of how much business in being generated. The Expected Value has a capacity equivalent that you can mostly find in the Capacity Planner. Mostly because not all opportunities have a corresponding Resourcing Request.

Execution Phase

During execution your main concern is not know whether your project is over (or under) budget. The Project Dashboard is focused on answering that very question. I provides a single KPIs for that: Execution Efficiency (EE). 

It measures how efficiently your team is executing a project with respect to the margin objective they have. If they are 100% efficient it means that they will achieve 🎯 the margin objective. If they are below 100% 👎, they will not achieve it. If they are above 👍, they will surpass it.

Execution Efficiency is a powerful KPI because it is relative to the margin objective.  The latter might change over the course of a project but the team always knows that they need to hit 100% EE or above. That is the only KPI your team needs.

🏁 Getting Started

Navigating The Documentation

Navigation On Documentation Pages

Each documentation page provides several navigation features to help you get around:

  1. Breadcrumb - Allows you to navigate through the documentation hierarchy.
  2. Page Navigation - Allows you to quickly jump from one section to another within the page.
  3. Book Navigation - Allows you to navigate another page within the same book.
  4. Next / Previous Page - Allows you to navigate to the previous or next page in the book.

Application Documentation

All documentation pages for Conduite Applications follow the same structure in order to make it easier for you to navigate.

Click Me To Expand / Collapse

conduite-logo-256.png

Well Done! 🎉 There's always helpful information in such collapsible boxes.

Glossary

The Glossary is an important resource for Conduite users. It provides detailed definitions (and examples when relevant) of Key Concepts and Key Performance Indicators in Conduite. We encourage you to refer to it as often as needed, in particular in the beginning of your Conduite experience.

🏁 Getting Started

Anatomy Of The Conduite Google Workspace™ Addon

The Conduite Addon displays different content depending on the Conduite application you open it from. The structure remains identical regardless of the Conduite application.

  1. The button that opens up the Addon, located in the Addon sidebar (right side) of your Google Sheets™ file.
  2. The name of the Conduite application
  3. The core of the addon from which you access the features specific to the application you are using
  4. A button that will open the documentation page for the application (new tab)
  5. The button to close the addon
  6. The button to open the addon menu, with the following options
    • Conduite Website - Opens a new tab to the Conduite website
    • Report A Issue - Opens a new tab to the ticket submission form
    • Refresh - Reloads the addon

🏠 Conduite Home

What Is It?

Conduite Home is the central location that allows you to access all of Conduite applications. Upon opening the application, the sidebar will automatically be loaded.

Features

All of the features are accessible via the sidebar that can be opened from the Conduite menu.

Open Application Buttons - Links to the centralized Conduite applications: Capacity Planner, CRM, PRO Database.

Make Copy From Template - Allows you to create a copy of one of the Conduite template applications: Budget Builder, Project Dashboard. You need to specify the name of the destination file. The new Budget Builder file will be placed at the root of your Google Drive. The new Project Dashboard file will be placed in the centralized destination folder specified in the Configuration file (Conduite Administrators).

🛍️ CRM

What Is It?

The CRM is an application that allows to manage the opportunities in your Business Pipeline and get accurate sales forecasts.

Key Concepts

Business Pipeline

A Business Pipeline, or pipeline,  is a visual representation of the stages involved in a sales process. It is a structured approach to managing a business's sales process and helps organizations to track their progress in acquiring new customers and generating revenue.

The pipeline typically consists of several stages, including lead generation, lead qualification, proposal, negotiation, and closing. Each stage represents a milestone in the sales process and helps sales teams to identify where a lead is in the sales cycle.

The pipeline is valued by the sum of the Expected Value (EV) of the opportunities in contains.  Once won, the EV associated to a opportunity disappears from the pipeline so more must be added in order to keep a EV level high enough.

Labor

In a budget, labor refers to the cost of all the employees needed to execute a contract. In Conduite that cost is computed based on the Daily Rates and the number of days needed.

Expenses

In a budget or contract, the expenses (or direct costs) refer to all the non labor costs that are needed to execute the contract. For example:

These items are usually charged at cost to the client. Therefore you cannot specify a margin for direct costs.

Key Performance Indicators

The one and only KPI that you need to manage your pipeline is the Expected Value. The objective of your Sales Team is to keep Expected Value to a certain level in order to make sure that you will have enough work in the future.

Expected Value ⭐
Expected Value

The Expected Value (EV) of an opportunity is the value of the opportunity weighted by the probability of winning the opportunity. It is the key metric allowing you to measure the health of you Business Pipeline. 

The EV of an opportunity is expected to evolve over time. If won the EV of an opportunity will be equal to the Total Value of the opportunity (probability equal to 100%).

Where

Component of EV

The EV of an opportunity is composed:

EV Monthly Average

The spread of the EV over the duration (in months) of the contract.

Using The Application

Typical Workflow

  1. Configure your Business Pipeline in the Setting tab. This is required once when you start using Conduite. It should not change very often.
  2. Add and update opportunities in the Opportunities tab as often as necessary in order to reflect the most accurate situation of your pipeline.
  3. Update the dashboards and analyze the performance of your Sales Team.

Structure & Features

Settings

This tab is used to configure your pipeline by defining its stages. You can have as many stages as you want but we recommend having as few as possible.

Probability ranges should not overlap. These ranges are used to warn you in case the probability of an opportunity is set to a value that falls outside of the stage's corresponding range.

Opportunities

Fill in all the attributes, even if the value is zero.

This tab contains the list of opportunities in your pipeline. Opportunities are qualified with the following attributes:

Attribute Description
Name

The name of the opportunity.

 

Tip: It is usually good to follow a standard naming convention. Ex: <client_name> | <opportunity_name>.
Stage The stage of the opportunity.
Probability (%)

The probability that best represents your chances of winning the opportunity.

 

If you input a value that falls outside to the stage range defined in the Settings tab, a validation warning will appear in the shape of a red arrow in the top-right corner of the cell.

 

Won opportunities should have a probability of 100%.

Lost opportunities should have a probability of 0%.
Labor (LB) - Value

The labor value of the opportunity.

 

Tip: Use a Budget Builder to estimate this number easily and accurately.
Labor (LB) - Margin (%)

The percentage of margin you expect to make on labor on the opportunity.

 

Tip: Use a Budget Builder to estimate this number easily and accurately.
Expenses (EP) - Value

The expenses value of the opportunity.

 

Tip: Use a Budget Builder to estimate this number easily and accurately.
Start

The month in which you estimate you will start executing the work in the event you win the opportunity. Use the year-month format. Ex: 2023-05 for May 2023.
Duration The duration, in months, of contract in the event you win the opportunity.
Budget Builder The link to the Budget Builder file for this opportunity.
Total Value

The total value of the opportunity.

💡Computed Field
Expected Value (EV) - Total

The total Expected Value of the opportunity.

💡Computed Field
Expected Value (EV) - Margin

The Expected Value Margin of the opportunity.

💡Computed Field

We recommend keeping the opportunities sorted according to their stage.

⛑️ Adding An Opportunity

In order to add an opportunity you simply need to:

  1. Insert a row where ever you want in the table (Right Click > Insert row above / below).
  2. Copy the formulas for the computed fields.

Validation conditions will be copied automatically.

Dashboard

The Dashboard tab provides charts to analyze the health of your pipeline based on the Expected Value.

Make sure that the dashboards are updated with the latest data from the Opportunities: 🐙 Conduite Addon > ⚙️ Update Dashboards.

Stage Filters

All the charts are filtered by the Stage filters located at the top each section

The Stage filters allow you to specify which stages should be taken into consideration on the charts. Simply check the box for the stages that you want to include in the analysis.

Active Stages Section

This section displays data only for Active stages.

Chart Description

Expected Value - Total

  The total Expected Value of the the pipeline.

Expected Value - Monthly Average

 The monthly average Expected Value of the pipeline for the Period.

Period & Period Duration

 The period that the pipeline covers (start of first opportunity to end the last opportunity).

Expected Value per Quarter (Margin, Revenue)

 The distribution of the Expected Value over quarters, with the split by Expected Value Margin and Expected Value Revenue.

Expected Value per Quarter & Stage

 The distribution of the Expected Value over quarters, with the split by Stage.

Expected Value per Stage

The distribution of the Expected Value by Stage.
Won Stages Section

This section displays data only for Won stages.

Chart Description

Won - Total

 The total amount won

Total Won per Quarter

  The distribution of the won amount per quarter.

Dashboard Data

This is a read-only (protected) tab. Do not modify it.

This tab provides access to the underlying data used to create the chart in the Dashboard tab. The "ℹ️ Data Source" link located on top of each chart points to the corresponding table in this tab.

Normalized Data

This is a hidden and read-only (protected tab). This tab should remain hidden. Do not modify it.

This tab contains the data used to create the pivot tables in the Dashboard Data tab.

Configuration

This is a hidden and read-only (protected tab). This tab should remain hidden. Do not modify it.

This tab contains the ID of the Conduite configuration file.

Conduite Addon

Dashboards

Dashboards require data from opportunity to be processed. This menu item updates the Dashboard tab with the latest data from the Opportunities tab. Make sure to trigger action if you want to look at the dashboards after the Opportunities tab has been updated.

Opportunities

This feature allows you to display a detailed financial view of an opportunity. You can search an opportunity by name and get matching results.

💵 Budget Builder

What Is It?

The Budget Builder is an application that allows you to create detailed budgets and timelines. It also provides ready to use tables and charts that you can use include in your proposal and offers.

Key Concepts

Margin

Margin is a term used in both business and finance to refer to the difference between the price of a good or service and the amount of money required to produce it. It is the amount of money that remains in your pocket once you have delivered a service.

Margin is usually expressed in percentage. Ex: if you sell a product or service for $1,000 with a 40% margin, you earn $400.

In Conduite, margins apply to many things:

Margin Types

Margin Type Description
Margin at Signature ($/%) The margin computed at the time a contract is signed (provided by the associated Budget Builder). For a project this is a static value.
Margin Objective ($/%)

The margin objective that is set for a project. At the beginning of a project that value equals the Margin at Signature. But it can evolve overtime (up or down).

In Conduite, setting a margin objective is the primary way to steer the performance of a project.
Expected Margin ($/%) The margin that we expect to make on a project at any given time based on what was spent and what we think we need to spend to finish the work.

Daily Rates

The Daily Rate is the cost of a staff member for one day of work. Each person in your company has a different daily rate. For the sake of simplicity Conduite assigns a daily rate for each role of your company (developer, project manager, designer, domain expert, ...). Daily rates are needed for all the roles that you want to include in your budgets.

The Daily Rate can be expressed in two ways:

In other words, the difference between the loaded and unloaded rates is your margin. The amount of margin you add to the Unloaded Rates is specific to your organization and to the contracting mechanisms between your clients (ex: government contracts often have specific rules for rates calculation).

The daily rates are combined in a summary table a Rates Card that specifies:

Labor

In a budget, labor refers to the cost of all the employees needed to execute a contract. In Conduite that cost is computed based on the Daily Rates and the number of days needed.

Expenses / Direct Costs

In a budget or contract, the expenses (or direct costs) refer to all the non labor costs that are needed to execute the contract. For example:

These items are usually charged at cost to the client. Therefore you cannot specify a margin for direct costs.

Budgets

A budget refers to a financial plan that outlines the expected labor costs and expenses associated with the project or service being provided under a contract. The budget is usually an integral part of the contract and serves as a basis for determining the financial obligations of each party involved.

Conduite works with budgets that have the following (simple) structure:

The Budget Builder computes the margin for labor (value and %) automatically. The margin on labor is the margin of your contract.

Resourcing Request

Sending a Resourcing Request is a way of booking a set of human resources for future work. It is a compilation of allocations for a period of time: someone working on something for a certain number of days over a period of time.

In Conduite, Resourcing Requests are sent in 2 instances:

Key Performance Indicators

The main purpose of the Budget Builder is to help you compute precisely the total cost of a contract and its associated margin.

In addition, the Budget Builder will provide:

Using The Application

Typical Workflow

  1. You identify the main workstreams / phases of execution of the contract.
  2. You outline the main activities for each work stream.
  3. You specify which roles will be involved in each activity and the number of days per month you estimate necessary.
  4. You specify any expenses / direct costs associated with the activities.
  5. You review the budget numbers (labor, expenses, margin) and make sure that everything makes sense according your prospects needs and constraints.
  6. You copy/paste some of the tables and charts in your offer.

Any table you copy from the Budget Builder into a Google Doc can be copied as Linked to spreadsheet. If you update the numbers in the Budget Builder, the tables will automatically update in the Google Doc 😎.

Structure & Features

If any monetary value (totals, rates, unit costs) does not have a Loaded or Unloaded mention next to it, it then refers to Loaded value (what you charge to your client).

Setup

This tab allows you to configure the main attributes of your budget.

Attribute Description
Period - Type

You can choose between:

  • weeks for shorter contract up to 12 weeks
  • months for longer contracts up to 12 months
Period - Start The number of week (1-52) or month (1-12) in which you expect the contract execution to start.
Workstream The main phases / components of the contract. This is a way to group the activities of the contract. You can have up to 13 workstreams.
Role The list of roles in your company. You can have up to 33 roles.
Unloaded Rate

The unloaded rate for a role.
Loaded Rate

The loaded rate for a role. This is a function of the unloaded rate and the margin.

💡Computed Field
Margin (%) The margin you what to make on a role

The columns Role, Unloaded Rate, Loaded Rate and Margin define your Rates Card. A similar one is used in the Project Dashboard.

Labor

Each line of this tab specifies the amount of days (Labor) a role needs to execute an activity over time. That activity being part of a workstream. You decide the level of detail you need. Once you are done you will have built your labor budget and project timeline 👌. You can actually use this tab as Gantt Chart.

Make sure that the columns Workstream, Activity and Role are filled in if there are days allocated to a line. Otherwise these days will not be taken into account in the other tabs.

Column Description
Workstream The name of the workstream. Choose from the list.
Activity

The name of the activity.

Tip: Keep it short.
Role The role of the person that will be executing the activity. Choose from the list.
Rate

The Loaded Rate associated to that role.

💡Computed Field
Periods 12 columns in which you specify the number of days needed for that role (and activity). Leave blank (or input 0) if no days are necessary.
Total - L

The total value of corresponding to the number of days for that role (and activity) based on its Loaded Rate. This is what you will charge your client.

💡Computed Field
Total - UnL

The total value of corresponding to the number of days for that role (and activity) based on its Unloaded Rate. This is what it will cost you.

💡Computed Field
# Days

The sum of days across all periods for that role (and activity).

💡Computed Field
⛑️ Adding An Activity

In order to add an activity for a role you simply need to:

  1. Insert a row where ever you want in the table (Right Click > Insert row above / below).
  2. Copy the formulas for the computed fields.

Validation conditions will be copied automatically.

Expenses

This tab allows you to specify any expenses / direct costs for the client associated with the execution of the contract for each workstream over time.

Make sure that the columns Workstream and item are filled in. Otherwise these items will not be taken into account in the other tabs.

Column Description
Workstream The name of the workstream. Choose from the list.
Item

The name of the item.

Tip: Make it explicit for your client
Unit Cost - L The Loaded Unit Cost of the item. This is the amount you will charge your client for each unit of that item.
Margin (%) The margin you will make on that item.
Periods 12 columns in which you specify the number of items needed for that workstream. Leave blank (or input 0) if no items are necessary.
Total - L

The total value of corresponding to the number of items needed based on the Loaded Unit Cost. This is what you will charge your client.

💡Computed Field
Total - UnL

The total value of corresponding to the number of items needed based on the Unloaded Unit Cost (Loaded Unit Cost without the Margin). This is what it will cost you.

💡Computed Field
⛑️ Adding An Expense / Direct Cost

In order to add an expense for a role you simply need to:

  1. Insert a row where ever you want in the table (Right Click > Insert row above / below).
  2. Copy the formulas for the computed fields.

Validation conditions will be copied automatically.

Budget - Summary

This is a read-only (protected) tab. Do not modify it.

This table provides you with an overall summary of the budget for labor and expenses, per workstream. This use useful to provide a snapshot of the costs to your client.

Budget - Detailed

This is not a read-only tab. Do not modify the configuration of the pivot tables.

Labor - This table provide the detailed cost and number of days for each workstream by activity. You can expand/collapse workstreams as needed.

Expenses - This table provide the detailed for each workstream by item. You can expand/collapse workstreams as needed.

Overall Summary

This is a read-only (protected) tab. Do not modify it.

This tab provides an overall summary of your budget in addition to an analysis of the the margin.

Table Description
Total Per Period (Loaded) The total value (labor + expenses) of the contract over time (loaded rates).
Summary Totals for Labor, Expenses and Margin.
Chart Description

Total Per Period (Loaded)

 Chart representation of the Total Per Period table.

Cost Distribution - Total

 The distribution of the contract value between labor and expenses / direct costs.

# Days / Role / Period

This is a read-only (protected) tab. Do not modify it.

This table provides the number of days per role per period. This is in effect the Resourcing Request that will be needed to update your Capacity Planner.

Labor Value / Role / Period

This is a read-only (protected) tab. Do not modify it.

This table provides the total value of labor per role and per period. It's a similar view than the previous tab but converting days into monetary value. This is useful to picture how costs are spread over time.

Expenses Value / Period

This is a read-only (protected) tab. Do not modify it.

This table provides the total value of expenses per workstream and per period. This is useful to picture how costs are spread over time.

Configuration

This is a hidden and read-only (protected tab). This tab should remain hidden. Do not modify it.

This tab contains the ID of the Conduite configuration file and other computed configuration parameters.

Conduite Addon

Resourcing Request

This feature allows you to send the Resourcing Request by email to the Capacity Manager as specified in the Conduite Configuration file. The request based on the # Days / Role / Period tab.

This is useful to inform the Capacity Manager that s/he needs to update the Capacity Planner for an opportunity.


🗓️ Capacity Planner

What Is It?

The Capacity Planner is the application that allows you to keep track of who is working on what and when (past, present, future). This is crucial to understand the workload of you team and take data-driven capacity decisions:

Key Concepts

Capacity

Capacity refers to the amount of work your team can execute at any given time. It is measured in days. Capacity is planned for each team member individually.

Availability

The total amount of days a team member can work in a given month. Someone working full time will have a capacity of ~20 days per month, considering that s/he will not take vacation days and that there are no holidays in that month.

Allocations

The fact of allocating a certain number of working days to a staff member to work on something.

Remaining

The number days that a staff member can still work based on his/her availability and allocations.


Resourcing Requests

Sending a Resourcing Request is a way of booking a set of human resources for future work. It is a compilation of allocations for a period of time: someone working on something for a certain number of days over a period of time.

In Conduite, Resourcing Requests are sent in 2 instances:

Key Performance Indicators

The Capacity Manager has a key role in compiling Resourcing Requests in order to provide the following KPIs accurately to other stakeholders in your company.

Utilization ⭐

The Utilization is the percentage of time worked (or allocated) over the availability. It tells you how busy your team is overall, regardless of the time of work it is doing. 

You want to bring Utilization as close to 100% possible.

Interpretation

Billability ⭐

The Billability is proportion of available time your team spends on billable work. It is a key metric influencing the overall profitability of your organization.

Billable work is defined as an allocation with the Contract Type tag set to Client or Opportunity in the Capacity Planner.

You want to bring Billability as close to 100% possible, although it is expected for your team to spend some amount of time on non-billable tasks (admin, internal projects, etc...).

Interpretation

Using The Application

The Availability and Allocations data are processed automatically (equivalent to triggering 🐙 Conduite > ⚙️ Update Capacity data) each time the file is opened.

Typical Workflow

Business Development Phase

  1. The Sales Team creates a budget for an opportunity using the Budget Builder.
  2. It sends the associated Resourcing Request (# Days / Role / Period tab) to the Capacity Manager.
  3. The Capacity Manager integrates that request into the Capacity Planner.

Project Execution Phase

  1. The Project Manager prepares the bi-monthly Project Report Out (PRO) and updates the resourcing forecast for his project.
  2. The Project Manager fill and sends the PRO.
  3. The Capacity Manager receives the updated project resourcing and updates the Capacity Planner accordingly.

Structure & Features

Settings

This allows you to configure the Capacity Planner.

Column Description
Allocation Types

Different types work allocation that allow to categorize, at the highest level, what your staff is working on. By default Conduite suggest:

  • Client: A client contract that has been signed (billable).

  • Internal: An internal project or initiative (non billable).

  • Opportunity: An opportunity that is currently in the pipeline (CRM) and for which there is a resourcing request.

All allocation types are considered when computing Utilization but only billable allocation count towards your Billability.
Teams The list of teams that make your organization and that have staff that is allocated to projects. This is useful to breakdown Utilization and Billability by team.
Roles

The list of main roles that are needed on projects.

Tip: We don't recommend using the full list of role from your Rates Card but instead focus on the main roles a project needs to be executed (regardless of seniority). Ex: Project Manager, Developer, Designer, Expert.
Probability

The list of possible values for the probability of an allocation.  The number of days of an allocation is weighted by its probability.

The probability of allocations that are not opportunities should be 100%.

Tip: Carefully choose the lower limit of the range in order not to introduce too much uncertainty in your capacity.

Availability

This tab defines the number of days that a staff member can effectively work per month. This number takes into account the following elements:

Column Description
Staff The name of the staff
Team The team to which the staff belongs
Comments Any information allowing to understand the availability of the staff. Ex: mention holidays.
Period Columns that represent an period of 18 months for which the capacity is planned.
⛑️ Adding A Staff

In order to add an expense for a role you simply need to:

  1. Insert a row where ever you want in the table (Right Click > Insert row above / below).
  2. Copy the formulas for the computed fields.

Validation conditions will be copied automatically.

Allocation

This allows contain all the work allocations for signed or internal contract / projects as well as opportunities that have a resourcing request and that have a high enough probability. There is one work allocation per person per contract / project.

Column Description
Allocation Type The type of allocation
Contract / Project

The name of the contract / project.

Tip: Use a standard naming convention. For ex: <client name> | <project name>.
Probability

The probability of the contract / project. 

The probability should be 100% for anything that is not an opportunity.
Staff The name of the staff member.
Team

The team of the staff member

💡Computed Field

Role

 The role of the staff member of the project.

Period

The number of days allocated for a staff member per month (over 18 months).

The column in yellow corresponds to the column of the current month.
⛑️ Adding An Allocation

In order to add an allocation:

  1. Insert a row where ever you want in the table (Right Click > Insert row above / below).
  2. Copy the formulas for the computed fields.

Validation conditions will be copied automatically.

Remaining

This is not a read-only tab. Do not modify the configuration of the pivot table.

Make sure that the table is up-to-date with the latest data from the Availability and Allocations tab: 🐙 Conduite > ⚙️ Update Capacity data.

This tab shows you a table summarizing the number of days remaining for each staff member per month. Here you can easily identify who is under or over booked.

If you click on the plus sign next to a staff member's name you can expand the row and see the detail of all allocations. Allocations appear as negative numbers.

The default cell coloring helps get a quick overview of the situation:

Cell Color Range
 Green 

Remaining days between 0 and 3.

The staff member has some open capacity.
 Yellow 

Remaining days between 4 and 6.

The staff member has open capacity.
 Red 

Remaining days 7 or more.

The staff member has a lot of open capacity.
 Grey 

Remaining days < 0.

The staff member is over booked.

Utilization

This is a read-only (protected) tab. Do not modify it.

Make sure that the table is up-to-date with the latest data from the Availability and Allocations tab: 🐙 Conduite > ⚙️ Update Capacity data.

This tab shows the utilization data.

Table Chart
The table displays the % Utilization and the number of remaining days for each team The chart displays the overall % Utilization (line) and the number of remain days (columns).

Billability

This is a read-only (protected) tab. Do not modify it.

Make sure that the table is up-to-date with the latest data from the Availability and Allocations tab: 🐙 Conduite > ⚙️ Update Capacity data.

This tab shows the billability data.

Table Chart
The table displays the % Billability for each team The chart displays the team specific % Billability (lines) and the overall billability (columns).

Normalized Data

This is a hidden and read-only (protected tab). This tab should remain hidden. Do not modify it.

This tab contains the data used to create the pivot tables and charts in the Remaining, Utilization and Billability tabs. It combines the data from the Availability and Allocations tabs.

Column Description
Allocation Type Same as in the Allocation Tab // "_availability" if Availability
Projet Same as in the Allocation Tab // "_availability" if Availability
Probability Same as in the Allocation Tab // 1 if availability
Staff Same as in the Allocation Tab
Team Same as in the Allocation Tab
Role Same as in the Allocation Tab
Period Same as in the Allocation Tab
Allocation -(Allocation x Probability) // 0 if Availability
Availability Same as in the Availability // 0 if Allocation

Configuration

This is a hidden and read-only (protected tab). This tab should remain hidden. Do not modify it.

This tab contains the ID of the Conduite configuration file and other computed configuration parameters. 

Updating The Capacity Planner

Updating Availability

The availability data should be updated each time something affects the effective number of days that staff member can work on a given month. For example:

If a staff member leaves your organization, put his/her availability to zero for the rest of the period range. Do not delete him/her until there are allocations associated to him/her.

Changing The Period Range

Capacity planning is done on the basis of a rolling period range. Conduite offers up to 18 months of visibility. You will regularly need to push the period forward to plan the capacity of your team in the future. This can be done automatically using the menu item 🐙 Conduite > 📅 Update Period Range.

Adding / Removing Teams

You can add and remote teams in the Settings tab. Be aware that doing so will break the Utilization and Billability charts since the pivot table they rely on will also change. You simply need to update the Data Range of the charts to fix the issue.

Conduite Menu

Update Capacity Data

The Remaining, Utilization and Billability tabs are based on the combined processing of the data of the Availability and Allocations tabs. This menu triggers the data processing.

Make sure to trigger this menu item if you want to look at the Remaining, Utilization and Billability tabs after the Availability or Allocations tabs have been updated.

This menu item is triggered automatically each time the file is opened.

Update Period Range

This menu allows you to easily modify the period range.

In order to do so:

  1. Go to the Allocation tab.
  2. Select the cell corresponding to the month that should be the new lower period range.
  3. Click the menu 🐙 Conduite > 📅 Update Period Range.

This will do the following:

  1. Move allocation data (Allocation tab).
  2. Move the availability data (Availability tab)
  3. Update the period range (first row of both tabs)

You can always revert these changes by using the undo feature of Google Sheets.

Example

See the following Allocation tab. The current period ranges from June to November. The current month is August

Staff 2023-06 2023-07 2023-08 2023-09 2023-10 2023-11
Diego 10 10 8 8 2 2
Leo 5 5 10 10 15 15

You want move the period forward so that it starts in August. You select the cell 2023-08 and you click the 📅 Update Period Range menu. The resulting Allocation will be as follows.

Staff 2023-08 2023-09 2023-10 2023-11 2023-12 2024-01
Diego 8 8 2 2    
Leo 10 10 15 15    

Help

This menu item opens the sidebar and loads this help page.

📊 Project Dashboard

What Is It?

The Project Dashboard is the application that allows you to track the financial performance of a project. It does so by providing the project teams with simple yet powerful KPIs on Labor and Expenses.

Key Concepts

Margin

Margin is a term used in both business and finance to refer to the difference between the price of a good or service and the amount of money required to produce it. It is the amount of money that remains in your pocket once you have delivered a service.

Margin is usually expressed in percentage. Ex: if you sell a product or service for $1,000 with a 40% margin, you earn $400.

In Conduite, margins apply to many things:

Margin Types

Margin Type Description
Margin at Signature ($/%) The margin computed at the time a contract is signed (provided by the associated Budget Builder). For a project this is a static value.
Margin Objective ($/%)

The margin objective that is set for a project. At the beginning of a project that value equals the Margin at Signature. But it can evolve overtime (up or down).

In Conduite, setting a margin objective is the primary way to steer the performance of a project.
Expected Margin ($/%) The margin that we expect to make on a project at any given time based on what was spent and what we think we need to spend to finish the work.

Daily Rates

The Daily Rate is the cost of a staff member for one day of work. Each person in your company has a different daily rate. For the sake of simplicity Conduite assigns a daily rate for each role of your company (developer, project manager, designer, domain expert, ...). Daily rates are needed for all the roles that you want to include in your budgets.

The Daily Rate can be expressed in two ways:

In other words, the difference between the loaded and unloaded rates is your margin. The amount of margin you add to the Unloaded Rates is specific to your organization and to the contracting mechanisms between your clients (ex: government contracts often have specific rules for rates calculation).

The daily rates are combined in a summary table a Rates Card that specifies:

Labor

In a budget, labor refers to the cost of all the employees needed to execute a contract. In Conduite that cost is computed based on the Daily Rates and the number of days needed.

Expenses / Direct Costs

In a budget or contract, the expenses (or direct costs) refer to all the non labor costs that are needed to execute the contract. For example:

These items are usually charged at cost to the client. Therefore you cannot specify a margin for direct costs.

Budget

A budget refers to a financial plan that outlines the expected labor costs and expenses associated with the project or service being provided under a contract. The budget is usually an integral part of the contract and serves as a basis for determining the financial obligations of each party involved.

Conduite works with budgets that have the following (simple) structure:

The Budget Builder computes the margin for labor (value and %) automatically. The margin on labor is the margin of your contract.

Capacity

Capacity refers to the amount of work your team can execute at any given time. It is measured in days. Capacity is planned for each team member individually.

Availability

The total amount of days a team member can work in a given month. Someone working full time will have a capacity of ~20 days per month, considering that s/he will not take vacation days and that there are no holidays in that month.

Allocations

The fact of allocating a certain number of working days to a staff member to work on something.

Remaining

The number days that a staff member can still work based on his/her availability and allocations.


Contract

In Conduite, a contract represents opportunities that has been won and signed. It is defined by:

Attribute Description

Timelines

  The start and end date planned at the time of signature

Scope of Work

A description of the purpose of the contract and of the main activities.

Labor - Amount

 The monetary amount representing the labor involved in the execution of the contract.

Labor - Margin at signature

The margin that we expect to make on labor based on the planning assumptions at the time of signature. This is the reference value for the execution of the contract.

Expenses / direct costs - Amount

 The monetary amount representing the expenses / direct costs involved in the execution of the contract.

All of these attributes are computed in the Budget Builder.

Project

A project is a temporary organizational artifact that corresponds to the execution of the scope of work defined in a contract by a group of people. Project are always associated to a contract and by extension to a Budget Builder.

Projects are defined similarly to contracts (labor and expenses), but account for all types of margins:

In a nutshell, the performance of a project is the difference between the margin objective and the expected margin.

Project Report Out (PRO)

The Project Report Out is a project update that Project Managers send on a regular basis. In Conduite, they are expected to send it twice a month on every 2nd and 4th Thursday.

The PRO is sent from the Project Dashboard of a project and contains the main project KPIs as well as narrative components that detail was was done in the previous and upcoming project periods.

Field Description
Project ID

This is a unique identifier for the project. This is the ID of the Google Spreadsheet file.

💡This field is preloaded.
Project Name

The name of the project

💡This field is preloaded.
Project Status

A traffic light indicator that reflects the current overall status of the project.

Tip: Make sure to set a clear definition for each color in order to have consistence across PROs and projects.
Labor - Execution Rate

The current Execution Rate of the project.

💡This field is preloaded.
Labor - Execution Efficiency

The current Execution Efficiency of the project.

💡This field is preloaded.
Expenses - Margin Accrued

The current Accrued Margin on expenses of the project.

💡This field is preloaded.
What happened in the last 2 weeks?

A summary of what has been done in the last 2 weeks or since the last PRO was submitted.

Tip: Make sure to include any context that helps understand the values of the project KPIs.
What is planned for the next 2 weeks?

A summary that details what the project team expects to do in the next 2 weeks.

Tip: Make sure to include any strategy adjustment details.

Key Performance Indicators

Main KPIs

Labor - Execution Rate ⭐

The Execution Rate (%EX) is a financial indicator that tells you how much (%) budget you've spent to date related to the amount you think you need to execute the project, i.e. Expected Execution Budget.

It is not (exactly) an indicator of progress  of execution of project activities, i.e. it does not tell us if the project is close to completion. Ex: the last activity of the project is a one week training. This activity represents 30% of the budget but only one week of work.

Labor - Execution Efficiency ⭐

The Execution Efficiency (EE) is a KPI that tells you whether your team is on track to be in budget or not. In other words, whether the team will meet its Margin Objective on labor. 

It compares how much labor you would have spent of the Execution Budget (EB) based on your current Execution Rate (%EX) to what you a have spent to date.

Project teams should manage their project to achieve and Execution Efficiency 100% or above.

Because it is a percentage, you can instantly assess the financial health of a project, regardless of the Margin Objective.

It is the main KPI that allows you to trigger adjustments of strategy and/or objectives (client approach, margin, scope, ...).

Interpretation

Examples

Let's consider a project that has a Labor budget (LB) of $1,000 and a Margin Objective (MO) of 40%. The resulting Execution Budget (EB) is:

Let's consider the following scenarios:


 Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3
spent $200 $150 $400
remaining $300 $550 $190
Execution Rate (%EX)
Execution Efficiency (EE)

Let's analyze these numbers and discuss possible actions:


 EE Status Possible Actions
Scenario 1 120% 🎉
  • Increase the Margin Objective
    The team wants to bank the extra margin

  • Invest the additional margin
    The team decides to do more for the client
Scenario 2 86% 🚨
  • Decrease the Margin Objective
    The team considers it will not be able to make for the lost margin

  • Decrease the scope
    Convince the client to do less work in order to decrease the remaining costs

  • Ask for extra budget
    In order to completely or partially make for the lost margin

  • New working approach
    In order to increase the efficiency of the team and make up all or part of the lost margin
Scenario 3 102% 👌
  • Nothing
    The team is executing as planned

Intermediate KPIs

Labor - Execution Budget

The Execution Budget (EB) is the amount of money for Labor that the project team has to execute the project. It is equal to the total Labor (LB) amount of the contract to which we subtract the Margin Objective (MO) of the labor component.

Because the Margin Objective might change during the course of execution, the Execution Budget can also change. In any case, the project team's objective should always be to spend less or equal than that amount.

Labor - Expected Execution Budget

The Expected Execution Budget (EB_E) is the amount of labor that the project team plans to spend to execute a project. It is based on what has been spent to date and the amount it has forecasted to execute the remaining scope.

At the beginning of a project the Expected Execution Budget is equal to the Execution Budget. But as the project is executed the Expected Execution Budget can, at any given time, be lower or higher than the Execution Budget:

Labor - Expected Margin

The Expected Margin (%EM) is the computed from the Expected Execution Budget (EB_E) and labor (LB) amount of a contract.

It can differ from the Margin Objective (%MO) depending on how the project is going.

Interpretation

Using The Application

Typical Workflow

Project Setup

These steps are performed once at the beginning of the project.

  1. You fill in the Project Sheet with the financial data from the contract and/or the Budget Builder.
  2. You fill in the Contact List with the contact information of the most important project stakeholders.
  3. You update the Labor and Expenses Tracking tabs with the initial data from the Budget Builder.
  4. You make sure that the Rates tab has the correct Unloaded Rates.

Project Execution

These steps are executed on a regular basis by the Project Manager in order to update the project resourcing and financials.

  1. Dashboard Tab
    • The Project Manager updates the Current Month.
  2. Labor Tracking Tab
    • The Project Manager pulls the spent time from your time tracking system and updates the spent column of the Labor Tracking Time.
    • The Project Manager updates the resourcing for the future periods.
    • The project Manager looks at the KPIs (in particular %EX, EE) and decides how to adjust (or not) the project execution strategy. This can lead to an update of the Margin Objective for Labor.
  3. Expenses tab
    • The Project Manager updates the spent amount since the beginning of the project for each expense item.
    • The Project Manager updates the estimated amounts to be spent on each expense item until the end of the project.
  4. Dashboard Tab
    • The Project Manager looks at the consolidated performance of the his/her project.
    • S/He can decide to adjust the execution strategy and eventually update the Margin Objectives.
  5. Project Report Out
    • The Project Manager sends a Project Report Out (🐙 Conduite Addon) and provides context on the current values of the project KPIs and strategy adjustments.

Structure & Features

Project Sheet

This tab contains project administrative information as well as all the financial configuration.

Project Section

Attribute Description
Project Name The name of the project. 
Client The name of the client.
Project Manager Email The email of the Project Manager. This is required to receive the PRO Update.
Task Management Tool The link to the task management tool (Asana, Trello, Basecamp, ...) used to coordinate work on the project.
Budget Builder The link to the Budget Builder. This is required to automatically seed the financial sections of this sheet. See the Seed From Budget Builder menu option.

Planning Section

Attribute Description
Period Type Choose whether the project is planned over months or weeks.
Period Start The number of the month or week on which the project execution starts (ex: May is 5, last week of the year is 52).

Contract Financials Section

This section contains the financial data as per the contract or the Budget Builder. This is the baseline data at the moment the project starts (or at the signature of the contract).

These values are not expected to change during the execution of the project (unless there was a data entry error).

Attribute Description
Contract - Value

The total value of the contract.

💡Computed Field
Contract - Margin (%)

The overall margin percentage of the contract at signature

💡Computed Field
Contract - Margin ($)

The overall margin value of the contract at signature

💡Computed Field
Labor - Value The amount of the labor component of the contract.
Labor - Margin (%)
 The margin percentage on the labor component of the contract.
Labor - Margin ($)

The margin value on the labor component of the contract.

💡Computed Field
Expenses / Direct Costs - Value The amount of the expenses component of the contract.
Expenses / Direct Costs - Margin (%)
 The margin percentage on the expenses component of the contract.
Expenses / Direct Costs - Margin ($)

The margin value on the expenses component of the contract.

💡Computed Field

Financial Objective Section

This section defines the Margin Objectives for both Labor and Expenses / Direct Costs.

The Margin Objectives (%) are expected to change during the execution of the project as the project strategy is adjusted.

Attribute Description
Labor - Margin Objective (%)
 The Margin Objective percentage on Labor.
Labor - Margin Objective ($)

The Margin Objective amount on Labor.

💡Computed Field
Labor - Execution Budget

The value of the Execution Budget.

💡Computed Field
Expenses / Direct Costs - Margin Objective (%)
 The Margin Objective percentage on Expenses / Direct Costs.
Expenses / Direct Costs - Margin Objective ($)

The Margin Objective amount on Expenses / Direct Costs.

💡Computed Field

Contact List

This tab contains the contact information of the main project stakeholders. It notably important to identify the Project Manager on the client side.

Attribute Description
Name
 The name of the stakeholder.
Email The email of the stakeholder.
Role The role of the stakeholder in the project
SPoC Is that stakeholder the Single Point of Contact on the client side?

Labor Tracking

This tab allows you to track the amount of labor spent and forecasted for each staff member allocated to the project. One line corresponds to a staff member.

Attribute Description
Staff The name of the staff member allocated to the project.
Role The role of the staff member.
Unloaded Rate

The Unloaded Rate associated to the role of the staff member.

💡Computed Field
Spent (h)

The number of hours spent on the project to date by the staff member. This comes from your time tracking system.

Make sure that the period types are up-to-date.
Spent ($)

The monetary value of the hours spent to date by the staff member on the project (function of the Unloaded Rate).

💡Computed Field
Remaining ($)

The monetary value of the number of remaining days planned for the Forecast period (function of the Unloaded Rate). 

Make sure that the period types are up-to-date.

💡Computed Field
Periods

The number of days planned for the staff member on the project.

Each period has a type:

  • Past - Period that is in the past
  • Current - The current period
  • Forecast - Period in the future

Only the Forecast periods and taken into consideration to compute the remaining work.

Make sure to keep the period types always up-to-date.

It also provides the labor related KPIs:

⛑️ Adding An Staff Member

In order to add an staff member you simply need to:

  1. Insert a row where ever you want in the table (Right Click > Insert row above / below).
  2. Copy the formulas for the computed fields.

Validation conditions will be copied automatically.

Expenses Tracking

This tab allows you to track the invoicing of Expenses / Direct Costs. One line corresponds to one expense item.

Attribute Description
Workstream
 The workstream to which this expense is related.
Item
 The name of the expense item.
Unit Cost - Sold
 The Unitary Cost of the expense item as charged to the client.
Margin
 The percentage of margin done on the expense item.
Invoiced

The number of items invoiced to date.

Make sure that the period types are up-to-date.
Remaining

The number of items remaining to invoice as per the current and forecasted periods.

Make sure that the period types are up-to-date.
Periods

The number of items that are expected to be invoiced for each period.

Make sure that the period types are up-to-date.

It also provides the expenses related KPIs:

⛑️ Adding An Expense Item

In order to add an expense item you simply need to:

  1. Insert a row where ever you want in the table (Right Click > Insert row above / below).
  2. Copy the formulas for the computed fields.

Validation conditions will be copied automatically.

Performance

This is a read-only (protected) tab. Do not modify it.

This tab is a consolidated view of the financial performance of the project based on the overall Expected Margin of the project (also broken down for Labor and Expenses / Direct Costs). It compares it to the current margin objective and  margin at the time of contract signature.

This view is useful to understand how the project is doing based on initial objectives.

Rates

This is a read-only (protected) tab. Do not modify it.

This tab contains the list of Unloaded Rate for each role at your organization.

Configuration

This is a hidden and read-only (protected tab). This tab should remain hidden. Do not modify it.

This tab contains the ID of the Conduite configuration file and other computed configuration parameters. 

Conduite Menu

Seed From Budget Builder

This menu item allows you to seed the Project Sheet tab financial and planning sections with the data from the Budget Builder. This feature requires you to specify the link to the Budget Builder file.

Submit Project Report Out

This menu item opens the sidebar and allows you to submit a Project Report Out (PRO) form. This is usually done by the Project Manager. It is preloaded with the data from the Project Dashboard.

Make sure to update the Project Dashboard with the most up-to-date data before submitting a PRO.

Do not edit the preloaded fields.

The PRO will be added to the PRO Database and an email will be sent to the user submitting the PRO from, Project Manager and any other person specified in the Conduite Global Configuration File. That email also contains the resourcing forecast from the Labor Tracking tab.

Help

This menu item opens the sidebar and loads this help page.

📋 Project Report Out Database

What Is It?

The Project Report Out Database is the file where all Project Report Outs (PRO) are stored. It provides you a company level overview of the financial situation of all your projects based on their last received PRO.

Key Concepts

Project Report Out

The Project Report Out is a project update that Project Managers send on a regular basis. In Conduite, they are expected to send it twice a month on every 2nd and 4th Thursday.

The PRO is sent from the Project Dashboard of a project and contains the main project KPIs as well as narrative components that detail was was done in the previous and upcoming project periods.

Field Description
Project ID

This is a unique identifier for the project. This is the ID of the Google Spreadsheet file.

💡This field is preloaded.
Project Name

The name of the project

💡This field is preloaded.
Project Status

A traffic light indicator that reflects the current overall status of the project.

Tip: Make sure to set a clear definition for each color in order to have consistence across PROs and projects.
Labor - Execution Rate

The current Execution Rate of the project.

💡This field is preloaded.
Labor - Execution Efficiency

The current Execution Efficiency of the project.

💡This field is preloaded.
Expenses - Margin Accrued

The current Accrued Margin on expenses of the project.

💡This field is preloaded.
What happened in the last 2 weeks?

A summary of what has been done in the last 2 weeks or since the last PRO was submitted.

Tip: Make sure to include any context that helps understand the values of the project KPIs.
What is planned for the next 2 weeks?

A summary that details what the project team expects to do in the next 2 weeks.

Tip: Make sure to include any strategy adjustment details.

Key Performance Indicators

Labor - Execution Rate ⭐

The Execution Rate (%EX) is a financial indicator that tells you how much (%) budget you've spent to date related to the amount you think you need to execute the project, i.e. Expected Execution Budget.

It is not (exactly) an indicator of progress  of execution of project activities, i.e. it does not tell us if the project is close to completion. Ex: the last activity of the project is a one week training. This activity represents 30% of the budget but only one week of work.

Labor - Execution Efficiency ⭐

The Execution Efficiency (EE) is a KPI that tells you whether your team is on track to be in budget or not. In other words, whether the team will meet its Margin Objective on labor. 

It compares how much labor you would have spent of the Execution Budget (EB) based on your current Execution Rate (%EX) to what you a have spent to date.

Project teams should manage their project to achieve and Execution Efficiency 100% or above.

Because it is a percentage, you can instantly assess the financial health of a project, regardless of the Margin Objective.

It is the main KPI that allows you to trigger adjustments of strategy and/or objectives (client approach, margin, scope, ...).

Interpretation

Examples

Let's consider a project that has a Labor budget (LB) of $1,000 and a Margin Objective (MO) of 40%. The resulting Execution Budget (EB) is:

Let's consider the following scenarios:


 Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3
spent $200 $150 $400
remaining $300 $550 $190
Execution Rate (%EX)
Execution Efficiency (EE)

Let's analyze these numbers and discuss possible actions:


 EE Status Possible Actions
Scenario 1 120% 🎉
  • Increase the Margin Objective
    The team wants to bank the extra margin

  • Invest the additional margin
    The team decides to do more for the client
Scenario 2 86% 🚨
  • Decrease the Margin Objective
    The team considers it will not be able to make for the lost margin

  • Decrease the scope
    Convince the client to do less work in order to decrease the remaining costs

  • Ask for extra budget
    In order to completely or partially make for the lost margin

  • New working approach
    In order to increase the efficiency of the team and make up all or part of the lost margin
Scenario 3 102% 👌
  • Nothing
    The team is executing as planned

Expenses - Accrued Margin

Expenses - Margin Accrual Efficiency ⭐

Using The Application

Typical Workflow

  1. You open the PRO Database tab and filter the list to display only the last PRO. That gives an overview of the financials for all your projects.
  2. You open the Project Sheet tab in order to dive deeper into a specific project and appreciate the trends of its KPIs.

Structure & Features

PRO Database

This is a read-only (protected) tab. Do not modify it.

This tab displays the main fields of a PRO. Some fields are hidden to make the table more readable. If you want to see the full details of a PRO use the menu 🐙 Conduite > 📄 View Full PRO.

Field Description
Date

The date the PRO was sent and received.
Project Name The name of the project
Status The status of the project at the time of the PRO.
LB - %EX The Execution Rate of the project at the time of the PRO.
LB - EE The Execution Efficiency of the project at the time of the PRO.
EP - %AM The percentage of Accrued Margin on expenses of the project at the time of the PRO.
EP - MAE The Margin Accrual Efficiency on expenses of the project at the time of the PRO.
Last PRO An "X" sign tags the last PRO of a project.
PRO Age The age of the PRO in days. Ex: 21 means that the PRO was received 21 days ago.

Project Sheet

This tab allows you to deep dive into a project data over time. Use the Project dropdown to select the project of interest.

The tab is composed of several sections.

Section Description

Last Project Report Out

  A table that displays the KPIs from the last PRO of a project.

Evolution of Project KPIs (Chart)

A chart that show the evolution all project KPIs over time.

All Project Report Outs

 A table that displays all PROs for a project ordered by ascending date. This is the source of the chart.

Configuration

This is a hidden and read-only (protected tab). This tab should remain hidden. Do not modify it.

This tab contains the ID of the Conduite configuration file and other computed configuration parameters. 

Conduite Menu

View Full PRO

This menu item opens a detailed view for a PRO in the sidebar. You need to be on the PRO Database tab to use this feature and to select any cell of an opportunity before triggering it. The sidebar will display the details for the selected PRO.

You can navigate to the previous and next opportunity by clicking the arrows located at the top of the sidebar.

Filter > Show All PROs

This menu item shows all the PROs and orders them in descending order of date.

This view is useful if, on a specific occasion, you want to browse through all PROs.

Filter > Show Last PROs Only

This menu item only shows the last PROs that were received for each project and orders them in descending order of date.

This is the most useful view for the day-to-day use of the PRO Database.

Help

This menu item opens the sidebar and loads this help page.