Project tabs

Every project has the same tabs. Each one shows the plan from a different angle, built from the same information, so a change you make in one tab shows up everywhere.

Five main tabs run along the top, with sub-tabs beneath them:

Tabs open read-only. Choose Edit in a tab's toolbar (or press E) to make changes there, and Done when you've finished. The Planner is the exception: you can change it without choosing Edit. Click any item, such as an activity, product or role, to open its details in a panel at the side.

Some tabs aren't included on every plan. A locked tab shows a lock icon and links to the plans you can upgrade to.

Overview

General

The project's home page. It shows the introduction, scope and client, then helps you bring the plan together:

• Project progress: whether you've added people, activities and products, and what to do next
• Health: how many problems the Health Check has found, with Open Health Check
• Integrate: prompts for connecting the people, activities, products and tools you've added
• Shortcuts to the Roadmap and Lifecycle, with a count of what each contains

Roadmap

The whole plan on one page. Phases run across as columns and your top-level groups run down as lanes. Each product sits in the phase and lane of the activity that produces it, below the products it depends on, with lines showing the dependencies. Milestones are lines across their phase, drawn after the work they expect.

You can't drag products on the Roadmap. To move one, change the phase or the Accountable party of the activity that produces it. Products that can't be placed are listed under Issues, with what's missing. Choose Compact, Normal or Expanded to change how much detail each product shows, or Full screen to present it.

Lifecycle

Your phases and milestones on a timeline. Gates are diamonds and plain milestones are circles, each labelled with its acronym. The Milestones table shows each milestone's status and achievement. Expand a row to see its criteria and their results, or use With open criteria to show only the milestones still waiting on one. In edit mode, add phases and milestones, mark milestones reached and record results. See Phases and milestones.

Below the timeline, governance processes appear as bars across the phases they apply to. Continuous processes run the full width.

Attachments

Files that belong to the project, such as contracts, specifications or meeting minutes. See Attachments.

Organisation

Organisation

An org chart of everyone involved in the project. Groups contain roles, and either can be internal or external. Governance bodies, such as a project board, are shown with dashed lines to their members. In edit mode, choose Add Party to add a group or role, and add governance bodies to show who makes decisions.

Staff Guide

Everything one role does on the project, on one page. Choose a role to see its activities by phase with their RACI and hours, the processes it's responsible for, and the governance bodies it sits on. Role Pack turns this into a PDF briefing for the person in the role (see Offline copies).

Activities

WBS

The work breakdown structure: your work packages and the activities in each. Switch between a list and a diagram. Search and filter by phase to find an activity quickly. In edit mode, add work packages and activities, nest work packages inside each other, and move activities between them. A warning icon marks an activity whose products can't be placed on the Roadmap.

Workflow

Your activities grouped by phase, so you can see what happens when. Expand a phase to see its activities, each with its duration, trigger, roles, effort, and how many products it produces and depends on.

By Process

Your activities grouped by the governance process they support, such as Quality Assurance or Risk Management. View opens a process's details: its phases, roles, entry and exit criteria, and a link to where it's defined. In edit mode you can add processes.

Responsibilities

The RACI matrix: which roles are Responsible, Accountable, Consulted or Informed for each activity, with their hours. Switch to Process to see who governs each process instead. In edit mode, click a cell to set or remove a responsibility.

Effort

Estimated hours by role and phase, as a table or a chart over time. Roles follow your organisation chart, and each row includes the hours of the roles beneath it. In three-point projects the figures are PERT estimates, and a line above the table shows the uncertainty range. Switch to Actuals to compare actual hours with the estimate, and use CSV to download the table. See Estimating for how the figures are worked out.

Tools

The software and systems used to deliver the work, each with the activities that use it. Open a tool to see its supplier, owner and links. In edit mode, choose Add Tool, or link and unlink activities from the tool's details.

Products

Products

Every product the project produces, with its type and a status in each phase (Draft, Updated, Issued or Re-issued). Products marked as deliverable to the client are flagged. Switch between a list and a diagram, and filter by phase or status. Copy copies the list to paste into a spreadsheet.

Integration Pathway

Choose a product to see everything that feeds into it: the products it depends on, and the products they depend on in turn, back to the start. Use it to check that the inputs to a key deliverable are planned in time.

Impact Assessment

Choose a product that has changed to see what it affects downstream: the products that depend on it, and the activities, processes and roles involved. Use it to judge the knock-on effect of a change before you make it.

Planner

A board for tracking the work day to day, with cards in columns such as Backlog, In Progress and Complete. See Planner.

Outside the tabs

• Health Check: a review of the plan for anything missing or inconsistent, with fixes. Open it from the project menu, under the project name at the top, or from Open Health Check on the Overview (see Health Check).
• Exports: offline copies of the plan, such as the PDF Export, Management Plan and Poster. Open it from the project menu (see Offline copies).
• Settings, Team Members and Comments: also in the project menu, under the project name at the top.