Three progress indicators are enough
A dashboard with twenty indicators does not get read. Three are enough to know whether a project is doing well: workload variance, remaining buffer and this week's overloads.
Project dashboards tend to grow. Each committee adds an indicator, none is removed, and you end up with a page nobody reads in full.
Workload variance
What the project will require according to the team, minus what was planned. It says whether the project costs more than planned, and by how much. In our example, the line relocation shows +106 hours.
Remaining buffer
How much margin is left before the next important milestone. A milestone held with an intact buffer and a milestone held with an exhausted buffer are not the same situation. Here, 0 of 3 days are left before the restart.
This week's overloads
How many people exceed their capacity this week, and by how much. It is the most concrete indicator: it names a person, a week, a number of hours. Here, Martin, with 6 hours too many in week 46.
Why these three
They answer a committee's three questions: does the project cost more than planned? Will it hold its dates? Can the team keep up? And they are all calculated from the team's reports, with no re-entry.