In the project, a service provider’s margin is earned or burned. Even so, those wanting to deliver projects better often buy software first – the wrong place to start. teamspace is the tool; it models and automates a process it cannot replace. Good project delivery is built in layers, from the top down: first the goal, then the sub-disciplines and metrics, and only at the end the way it is mapped in the system. This process guide first describes that path – and then shows what the core process actually looks like in teamspace.
Guiding principle: To steer is to correct. Only finding out at the end of a project whether it was worth it is not controlling – maturity means running plan, hours and margin in one model and seeing deviations before they escalate.
Five layers: from goal to lived practice
Before you set anything up in teamspace, clarify the layers above it – and keep one layer below in mind: the people who ultimately live the process. Each one answers a different question and builds on the one before:
- Goal & core question. At its heart, project delivery answers: How do we deliver reliably and profitably? “Reliably” (deadline & quality) and “profitably” (margin) carry equal weight – one without the other is no success.
- Sub-goals – three guiding disciplines. The core question breaks down into three mindsets you steer separately:
- Early warning instead of after-the-fact reporting: make deviations visible while the project is running – not afterwards.
- Resources before tasks: first work out who has time and when, then distribute the work.
- Margin as the leading metric: profitability is the yardstick against which everything is measured.
- Measurable data. You can only steer what you measure. The metrics of project delivery – project margin, realisation rate, earned value, budget consumption, schedule variance, resource utilisation – and whether teamspace delivers them, are set out in Key figures for project delivery.
- Modelling in the tool. Now – and only now – teamspace comes in. The decisive lever: plan, scheduled capacity, booked hours and costs sit in one record with several views – no double entry, no reconciling Excel against time tracking. That is precisely what makes earned value, margin and early warning automatable at all.
- Rollout & training – the people. A mapped process is still only a promise. Value emerges when the team actually lives it: every task kept up to date with progress, every hour booked promptly and onto the right work package. That takes rollout, training and shared conventions (When is a task “done”? What gets booked onto which package?). This closes the loop: earned value and margin from layer 3 are only as reliable as the bookings from layer 5. Helpful: Rolling out teamspace in your company and the exercise “Your first project”.
The crux: most people jump straight to layer 4. Then you have well-maintained projects – but without a defined goal (layer 1), without metrics (layer 3) and without a team that books promptly (layer 5), delivery doesn’t get any better, just more digital.
Stocktake: where do we stand today?
Every improvement starts with an honest stocktake: How do we really deliver projects at the moment? A maturity-level scale helps here – six levels whose core is data integration (not the tool):
| Level | Maturity | How to recognise it |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Unplanned | Ad hoc, no plan, no target, no analysis. |
| 1 | Manual | Plan in Excel/MS Project, time tracking kept separately. |
| 2 | Structured | Systematic capture, but data sources still separate. |
| 3 | Assisted | Plan, resources and hours in the same system. |
| 4 | Largely automated | Earned value, margin and early warning run automatically. |
| 5 | Fully automated | End-to-end steering with escalation, barely any manual effort. |
Honestly place your project delivery at one level. The jump almost always succeeds one level at a time – and the most important is from 2 to 3: only once plan, capacity and hours sit in one model do margin and earned value become automatically calculable.
Where do we want to go?
The target picture is not “level 5 for everyone”. It’s the level that fits your project size, your risk and your effort – and that can deliver the layer-3 metrics you genuinely need.
And an important point about working together: we provide the core process – the stages from project-out-of-the-order to the analysed close are set up in teamspace and proven. But the details – what your project types look like, which statuses and traffic-light thresholds you set, what counts as “billable” – we don’t know those, you do. A good approach therefore emerges jointly.
The core process in teamspace
This is what the predefined core process looks like – as a control loop of plan → book → reconcile → warn early. Every stage has its own article; the list of steps at the top of this page is the short version.
1. Project from the order. The won order turns into the project – from the order, from a template or by copying. How order and project relate (which hours flow back at which rate) is explained in Projects and orders working together.
2. Structure & plan. You build up subprojects, work packages, phases and milestones, plan effort and dependencies and set the schedule in the Gantt chart. Which instrument is good for what is shown in The instruments of project management.
3. Schedule capacity. Resources before tasks: before work is distributed, you work out in the resource schedule who has time and when. The framework behind it is explained in Understanding capacity planning.
4. Book time. During delivery the team books project times onto tasks and work packages – up to date daily, because only booked hours make progress and margin visible. For whole weeks the time matrix helps.
5. Steer & correct. Early warning instead of after-the-fact reporting: you maintain status and progress and react to warnings and alarms before anything tips over. The methods behind it (planned/actual, earned value, traffic light) are explained in Methods of project controlling.
6. Analyse & close. At the end comes the planned/actual balance: analysing projects shows contribution margin and planned/actual for the single project, the project reports the overall economic view. After that it is archived.
Transition: As soon as billing begins, the billing process takes over – the run from order to invoice is set out in From quote to invoice.
Going deeper
These articles belong to project delivery but aren’t needed for every start:
- Open items in projects & on the work package – checklists and to-dos on work packages.
- Minutes & status reports – generate status reports from real teamspace elements.
- Analysing capacities – read the utilisation of scheduled staff.
- Project types and directories – set up the project structure (for administrators).
You’ll find the complete list of all articles on this process at the bottom of the process page under “All articles for this process”.
Related topics
- Key figures for project delivery Key figures Concept
- Methods of project controlling Controlling Concept
- Project delivery on teamspace.de – goals, maturity levels and metrics at a glance