The Project Portfolio Management (PPM) extension facilitates the simultaneous management of multiple concurrent projects from the planning phase to their execution phase.
To install the PPM extension:
Once installed, you'll see the Project Portfolio tab in the bottom pane that you can open to access all portfolio management features.
The PPM categorizes projects into Departments and sub-departments, providing a hierarchical organization structure for your project portfolio.
The PPM serves two primary functions:
To ensure a quick glance is enough to identify which projects need attention, the PPM by default shows only running projects with the following states:
To include projects in their planning phase (Pending projects), you can adjust the filter settings in the PPM view.
We believe that the state of a project is a qualitative measure rather than a quantitative one. The project state is broken into 3 categories that are manually set by the manager or subordinates to reflect the risk of the project not being completed on time:
Certain automatic rules can affect the Project Status:
Important Note: A project task has both Project Status and State. The project State reflects the actual state of the project (e.g., Pending, In Progress), while the Project Status reflects the risk of the project being delayed.
To help see at a glance which projects need the manager's attention most, all running projects are sorted by their Project Status:
Two special task states are automatically added to a JustDo once the PPM is enabled:
An extension of the standard task states that indicates potential project delays or issues.
The On Hold By Business state is used to designate a task that represents a strip of time, a buffer, during which the project manager couldn't work on the project due to intervention or directive from higher management. It should not be used for regular tasks that are simply on hold in the normal course of the project.
Purpose: The purpose of OHBB is to help in reporting the Net Time that the project took over which the Project Manager had control. You can think of OHBB in the same way you'd think about a long strip of a public holiday within a project's timeline. The Net Time is presented in the Project Card in the Main view of the Project Portfolio tab.
Structural Placeholder: Tasks designated as OHBB are better thought of as serving the purpose of a structural placeholder rather than actual tasks. Since an OHBB task reflects "dead time," it will never change its status. It remains in that status to reflect that situation in the life of the project. This is a key difference between OHBB and a regular On Hold (that should eventually change into another state).
Naming Recommendations: Because OHBB tasks are not representing real tasks, but business reasons for a break in the continuation of the project by the Project Manager, we recommend setting the subject of OHBB tasks after the reason for the OHBB (e.g., "Urgent task by client X"), or alternatively, simply set the subject to: "On Hold by Business."
Two Stages: In the life of an OHBB, there are two stages:
The difference between the two is that while still Ongoing, the End Date of the OHBB, might not be final. But once the OHBB is Completed, the End Date is final, and from there on the OHBB is kept for reporting purposes - that's the reason we don't show OHBB tasks as Late tasks (it is normal for their End Date to be in the past).
Timeline Visibility: The OHBB strips are reflected in the timeline of the project in the project card to help with visibility about the progress.
Duration Calculation: When a task is marked as OHBB, its duration will not be regarded as part of the total project duration, better reflecting that external factors (not project management issues) caused the delay.
Every project in JustDo is structured as follows:
Next to each project, there's a briefcase icon that can be clicked on to show project details in the Project Portfolio bottom pane.
The key fields presented for each project include:
The PPM was designed to facilitate periodic project review procedures through the following tools:
Project Activities provide a quick understanding during periodic meetings about:
The Project Activities view regards only "leaf tasks" (tasks without sub-tasks) as tasks to be presented, treating all non-leaf tasks as "categories" that shouldn't be directly displayed.
Note: Tasks without dates do not appear in the Project Activities view.
The PPM applies special coloring to Gantt chart bars to provide enhanced visual project tracking:
For more information about using the Gantt chart, see How to Use the Gantt.
During meetings, issues often arise that need to be discussed in future meetings. The Issues feature provides:
All Files uploaded to the project are presented in an organized manner.
The idea is that once every 1-2 weeks, each active project should be reviewed and updated by stakeholders in meetings using these PPM tools.
The PPM dashboard provides: