Project Planning Improvements

Launched just two weeks ago, the new Projects module is a massive step forward from the old one, particularly the ability to plan your project using a new, interactive Gantt-chart. One of the challenges we didn't sufficiently anticipate was the potential for this new, powerful screen to also confuse, particularly when it comes to editing your existing projects.

First, a very brief bit of background

When you create a project plan, you're able to set the dependencies and durations for milestones and tasks. When you're initially planning a project, everything is neat and clear - the real world hasn't had a chance to make a mess of things yet! But, when you get going on a project, it isn't that uncommon to see reality "break the rules" - milestones and tasks might start early (if your team has a spare spot in their schedule) or they may run late. 

While this reality is all well and good, the planning screen - with its rules around dependencies - gets quite confused and out of sorts. This is why the planning screen will always show the "planned" dates for a project, and why some of our users have been a bit confused about why the "real" dates don't change when they move around their plan. To make things easier all around, we've implemented a number of improvements.

Your Project Plan Now Remembers Your Planned Start Dates

When you were in the planning stages of a project, the Gantt-chart was respecting changes made to durations and dependencies, but it was ignoring changes made to the start date of your project. Effectively, your plan (or baseline) wasn't being saved. This was because we didn't want to lock in the baseline until the plan was committed - at which point your user schedules are filled out with the project's tasks.

We realized this was causing confusion, so now when you shuffle the project start date during planning, it will be preserved.

The Planning Screen now saves your planned start date - instead of always displaying the project start as today!

The Project Plan is Now Better at Re-Scheduling Dates

You've probably seen the Commit to Schedule checkbox on this screen. Once this option is used, the planned dates (aka baseline) is set AND those dates are committed, meaning they're pushed into the start and due date fields of the milestones/tasks. The result is that any task assignees will now see these tasks in their schedules. So at this point, the baseline and the committed dates are the same.

Previously, after this point, editing the dates on the planning screen would only update the old planned dates (baseline), and updating the actual committed dates required you to use the Assign Work screen.

However, we've quickly realized that the planning screen is the more intuitive place to try to update project/task dates - regardless of the status of the project. So now you can use the planning screen to update the start date (except where something has already started) and the due date (except where completed) for tasks and milestones. One small caveat: If a user has manually updated the start/due of their tasks, you'll overwrite their change.

Re-scheduling dates in the plan is easier now that you can see which dates are locked because something has started or completed

Now Tracking Who Last Modified The Project Plan

Because we've just given the planning screen the ability to re-schedule dates - including overwriting any user-defined dates - we thought it would be a good idea to start tracking who and when the plan was modified. Just click the Details tab on the main project screen to see who and when the last change was made.

Choose a Specific Calendar Profile for Accurate Project Scheduling!

You can now configure a specific country + region calendar profile for your system. This means the project plan (and task scheduling) can pay attention to holidays relevant to your region, ensuring your planning is even more accurate.

Better Warnings When the Plan Can't Accept Your Changes

Sometimes you'll try to move a milestone, edit a date, or add a dependency that the project plan can't accomodate. If so, a short and technical sounding error would appear. We've cleaned these up so they make more sense (and look nicer!).

Budget Usage vs Progress is Now Super-Clear

We've added a new floodbar to help you see the hourly budget usage of your project. This has become more important as the progress meter below only pay's attention to the total estimated time remaining on your tasks, so if you haven't set-up many project tasks, then progress will appear far beyond the budget usage!