Volatility Measurements

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Last updated: Apr 17, 2019
2 min read

ITS Executive Management utilizes project metrics derived from Object Task Lists (OTLs) in ITS Pro to monitor major changes and shifts in IT work. These measurements or "Volatility Metrics" are provided through reports in the following ways (V1, V2, V3, V4, V5, V6, V7):



TASK VOLATILITY   

V1

Task estimate versus actual (closed tasks only)

V1 measures how well the teams are hitting the estimates

V2

Task estimate yesterday versus today

V2 measures how much all the tasks are changing

V3

Task end date estimate versus actual (date of task closure)

V3 measures how well we are estimating task closure dates

V4

Task end date estimate yesterday versus today

V4 measures how much the task end date is changing

V5

Flow of resource hours estimated for each day per task versus actual flow for each day

V5 measures how smoothly resources spend time on tasks each day





MILESTONE VOLATILITY

V6

Milestone date estimate versus actual

V6 measures how well the teams are hitting milestone dates

V7

Milestone date estimate yesterday versus today

V7 measures how much the milestone dates are changing





TIME ENTRY VOLATILITY

V8

Time entry system date versus time entry date

V8 measures how close to the actual day of work people are entering their time






Each day, the following statistics are calculated for all active projects

  • Objects, staff, task count

  • Total estimated and actual hours

  • Average task estimate 

  • Total of tasks started or completed (touched), estimate and actual

  • Totals for completed tasks, estimate and actual

  • Over/under percent  for all tasks, touched and completed 

  • V1, V2, V3, V4, V5, V6, V7, V8 (metric measurements...see above)

  • Each daily row has today’s values, yesterdays and the difference between values, as well as a z-score for each difference score

    All statistics are standardized and represent how many standard deviations away the project is from the portfolio of projects’ mean

    Projects are then ranked by this standardized score

Trend analysis

  • Cumulative and incremental volatility introduced. Is volatility increasing or decreasing?

  • Total estimate over time. Is the project expanding or shrinking in total size?

  • Total average hours per day per resource on a project. 

  • Are the resources excessively multi-tasked?

  • For a given project, total estimated hours per week. Is the project a slow-burning or fast-burning project?

  • Task estimated hours per day. Is the task a slow-burning or fast-burning task?