Imagine juggling 50 to 100 active projects at any given time and not having a clear, real-time view of where each one stands. Sound familiar?
Maybe you rely on weekly project updates from your project managers, which they send through emails or spreadsheets. You spend hours compiling all that into a master update for leadership, only to realize, by the time you’ve finished, the data is already outdated.
If you’re nodding your head, it’s time to rethink your process. Let me introduce you to the idea of a Project Health Management System.
Never heard of it? That’s okay. I made up the term ;-). But stay with me seeing it’s less about the name and more about what it solves.
A Project Health Management System isn’t a specific product you can buy off the shelf (at least that I am aware of). It’s a structured approach, supported by tools, that gives you a real-time, reliable, and centralized way to track and monitor project performance, budgets, and escalations. It’s designed to reduce manual overhead, improve transparency, and enable better executive-level decision-making.
Let me walk you through how I set this up using Atlassian Jira but do note the concept applies broadly across similar tools such as SAP, or Microsoft Products.
How We Set It Up in Jira
We created a dedicated Jira environment accessible to all key stakeholders across the organization. Each time a new engagement / Project request comes in, we create a new Jira issue of type Project. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- Workflow: Each project is associated with a custom workflow that reflects general project phases: e.g., Initiation, Execution, Closure.
- Documentation: We attach links to contracts and relevant documentation right in the Jira ticket.
- Details: We give it a unique identifier and include key information like budget, estimated effort, known risks, and any client-specific notes gathered during the pre-engagement.
Once contracts are signed and everything’s greenlit, the project moves into the Initiation phase. A project manager is assigned, who can now see all historical context, without needing multiple handover meetings to understand why certain decisions were made during pre-engagement.
The project manager handles the initiation, resource assignment, timelines, budget forecasts, and then moves the ticket into Execution. From there, they start managing the project and provide weekly updates around the status, track time or cost overruns, and raise any flags directly in Jira.
Weekly Check-ins and Real-Time Oversight
Every week, I meet with all project managers. I ask them to update the status in Jira prior to our meeting and then we screen-share the Project overview dashboard, and go through each active project. We discuss current status, blockers, escalations, and whether anything needs my support or a course correction.
From a leadership perspective, this setup is a game-changer. It made the workload transparent across the team and we can slice and dice the data however leadership want budget tracking, delivery milestones, risk exposure, etc.
And if leadership wants real-time access, we can grant it to them directly, so they’re never in the dark.
Why This Works
- Single source of truth for all projects
- Less overhead for updates, no more outdated spreadsheets
- Improved accountability for project managers
- Real-time insights for leadership
- Transparency in workload per assigned resources
- Trust and confidence in delivery by our executives
What Are You Using?
I hope this blog gives you some inspiration. And to re-confirm the idea isn’t to push a particular tool, but to encourage you to build a system that works for your organization and scales as your project portfolio grows.
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