As you probably know, we are implementing a new feature in TargetProcess 3: the Timelines.
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Basically, a timeline is a projection of the cards (Projects, Features, User Stories, etc.) on a time scale. In the screen above only Projects are selected as cards. But it’s possible to show various cards such as Features, User Stories and Bugs on one and the same timeline.
Cards can be grouped by swimlanes, and each card type comes with a predefined set of swimlanes. In the screen above projects are grouped by teams.
Timelines are used in planning mostly for:
- project portfolio management
- people portfolio management
- roadmapping
- tracking project load, people load, team load
I’m going to publish a series of posts on using timelines. For a start, let’s see how they can help in project portfolio management.
You need to select projects as cards to be able to see them in a timeline:
Let’s take a look at how projects appear as cards on the time scale:
1. Project is planned but has not started yet. This card has dotted transparent borders.
You can update the start/end dates by stretching the card with drag-and-drop:
Note: TargetProcess 3 will never freeze the start/end dates for the planned projects, you can change them whenever you need.
2. Project is done. The card will stretch from the start date to the end date (that’s the time when all planned user stories and bugs are done).
Obviously, the planned and actual end dates may be different. We hide the planned end dates by default, but you can show them if the option “Planned in the past” is on, to compare the planned and the actual end dates.
3. Project is in progress. The card is in progress from the start date till the date when we expect that the last user story will be done (the forecast end date). The actual (white) and the forecast (transparent) dates are split by the current date (the green vertical line).
The planned end date is also shown. If the planned end date is earlier than the forecast end date, the project will be delayed. Even more, if a project is delayed, and another project should kick off right after the delayed project was supposed to have ended, this card for this project will be pushed to the lower line:
If projects are planned across teams, timelines can be used as an overview of the team’s projects. You need to select Teams as swimlanes:
You can move projects from one team to another by drag&drop.
There’s a field called “Owner” for Projects. You can identify a Product Owner, Project or Product manager, CEO, etc. as an Owner, and group projects by owners:
Projects can be also grouped by tags. For example, you can mark some projects with the “risky” tag just to make a note that a special attention should be paid to them, or the “background” - for the projects that people can work on if they have any gaps in their higher priority work. You need to select tags as swimlanes in the board config, and the timeline will look as follows:
The tags are not mutually exclusive. You can assign several tags to a project, and it will appear in several swimlanes.
If you still need mutually exclusive tags, you can create a drop down custom field as a workaround. This can be the case if there are several projects for Targetprocess and several projects for the fifteen puzzle.
In my next post I will show how to use timelines for roadmapping.
