Elevate Your Variance Analysis Reporting with Deltek’s New Narrative Score Feature

Product User CommunityProject Management

August 16, 2024

Sharine Ali

In the realm of government contracting, precision, consistency and efficiency are vital for project success. We understand these needs and have introduced a new feature within Deltek PM Compass that will streamline and enhance your variance analysis reporting process. Meet the Narrative Score feature, a practical and user-friendly tool, designed to assist you in creating and refining high-quality narratives for your stakeholders.

What is the Narrative Score?

The Narrative Score is a generative AI (GenAI) capability that is part of our AI-powered intelligent business companion, Deltek Dela^™. This feature evaluates your variance analysis narrative against a set of industry best-practice criteria and provides a score and actionable tips to help you quickly and effectively improve the quality of your reports. By leveraging GenAI, Narrative Score offers suggestions to enhance clarity, completeness and overall narrative quality when the score is low.

Key Features of the Narrative Score

Deltek strives to improve its products by adding innovative features like Narrative Score to PM Compass. Narrative Score enhances existing PM Compass product capabilities.

• Assessment Against Best Practices: The feature evaluates your narrative based on seven critical criteria:
• • Challenges and Mitigations: Detailed explanations of project challenges and how they were addressed.
  • Clarity and Conciseness: Clear definition of variances without redundancy.
  • Completeness: Comprehensive coverage of all significant factors contributing to the variance.
  • Future Outlook: Plans for addressing similar challenges in the future.
  • Language and Style: Use of straightforward language, avoiding technical jargon.
  • Metrics and Quantification: Inclusion of quantifiable metrics to illustrate progress.
  • Structure: A structured flow including introduction, background, impact assessment, and recommendations.
• Improvement Tips: For scores of 3 or below, the feature provides specific tips to help refine your narrative.
• Azure OpenAI Integration: Secure and tailored AI assistance by storing your Azure OpenAI account credentials in EPM Security Administrator.

Deltek's deep industry knowledge ensures that the GenAI prompts for the Narrative Score feature are expertly crafted to address the specific challenges and needs of government contractors, providing tailored AI-driven guidance that enhances report quality and consistency.

Helping Government Contractors Overcome Challenges

Government contractors often face the challenge of producing consistent and detailed variance analysis reports under tight deadlines. Gathering data from various work owners with different skill levels can be a time-consuming and inconsistent process. The Narrative Score feature directly addresses these issues by providing AI-driven assistance to streamline the creation and review of narratives.

How Narrative Score Can Benefit for Your Organization

• Increased Efficiency: Significantly reduce the time spent on reviewing and approving variance narratives, allowing your team to focus on core tasks.
• Improved Quality: Enhance the clarity, accuracy, and comprehensiveness of your reports, leading to better stakeholder trust and effective risk mitigation.
• Consistent Reporting: Ensure that all narratives adhere to industry best practices, resulting in more consistent and reliable reports.

Addressing Earned Value Management Pain Points

For government contractors, Earned Value Management (EVM) can be a critical aspect of project management. It provides a comprehensive view of project performance and progress by integrating project scope, schedule, and cost. However, one of the persistent challenges in EVM is the creation of high-quality variance analysis narratives that explain and justify variances accurately and effectively. Low-quality narratives can lead to significant issues, including:

• Inaccurate Performance Reporting: Low-quality narratives can result in misinterpretation of project status, leading to incorrect conclusions about performance.
• Stakeholder Distrust: Inconsistent and unclear narratives can erode stakeholder confidence, impacting project approval and funding.
• Non-Compliance Risks: Inadequate explanations may fail to meet regulatory or contractual requirements, resulting in potential penalties or loss of contracts.
• Inefficient Root Cause Analysis: Without clear and detailed narratives, identifying the true causes of variances becomes challenging, hindering effective corrective actions.
• Increased Workload: Teams spend excessive time revising and clarifying narratives, reducing overall productivity.

The Narrative Score feature helps mitigate these pain points by providing structured, AI-driven guidance to enhance the quality of variance analysis narratives, ensuring they meet the high standards required in EVM reporting.

How to Use the Narrative Score

Using Deltek's PM Compass Narrative Score feature is straightforward and practical, designed with the end-user in mind:

1. Activate the Feature: Ensure you have an Azure OpenAI account. Store your credentials in the EPM Security Administrator and test the connection.
2. Generate Narrative Score: In the new Assisted Explanation of Variance workflow, enter your proposed narrative content and click the "Generate Narrative Score" button.
3. Review and Refine: The Narrative Score will assess your content based on the seven criteria and provide a score. If any criterion scores 3 or below, you'll receive tips to improve your narrative.
4. Iterate for Improvement: Adjust your narrative based on the feedback and regenerate the score until it reaches an acceptable level.
5. Share Results: The score report can be printed and shared with team members to collaborate on improving the narrative.

A Practical Example: How Narrative Score Enhances Your Variance Analysis Reporting

Imagine you're working on a complex project with multiple subcontractors. Variances have occurred due to unforeseen challenges, and you need to explain these in your variance analysis report. Here's how the Narrative Score can assist:

1. Draft Your Narrative: Write a detailed explanation of the variance, including challenges faced and mitigation steps.
2. Generate Score: Click on the "Generate Narrative Score" button to receive an assessment based on best practices.
3. Receive Feedback: The tool provides a score and suggests improvements, such as clarifying certain points or adding quantifiable metrics.
4. Refine Narrative: Make the recommended changes to enhance clarity and completeness.
5. Finalize Report: Regenerate the score to ensure all criteria are met satisfactorily, then finalize your report with confidence.

Deltek's Commitment to Purposeful & Responsible AI

Deltek is dedicated to not only providing powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tools but also ensuring they are used responsibly and securely. The Narrative Score feature is part of Deltek Dela, an AI-powered intelligent business companion that embodies Deltek's principles of purposeful and responsible innovation. Count on Deltek, your trusted partner, to prioritize your business needs while leveraging AI safely and securely.

Upgrade Today

The Narrative Score feature is a practical and efficient tool that brings the power of GenAI to your variance analysis reporting process. By enhancing the quality and consistency of your narratives, it helps ensure your reports meet the high standards expected in government contracting.

Experience the benefits of smarter, more effective narratives with Deltek PM Compass and take your project management to the next level.

We're excited to also announce that the Narrative Score feature will soon be available in Deltek Cobra, enhancing your earned value management (EVM) capabilities with GenAI assistance.

Stay connected with Deltek for more updates and continuous improvements in our AI capabilities. We are committed to helping you achieve greater success through innovative and responsible solutions.

Feel free to share your feedback and suggestions through Deltek's Idea Portal as we continue to evolve and enhance our offerings to meet your needs. Together, we can make project management more efficient, accurate, and impactful to drive project success.

• Artificial Intelligence
• Cost Management
• Earned Value Management
• Project Portfolio Management

Sharine Ali