How much more efficient (and stress-free) would you be if it was easier to create and view future work? Well, your wait is over: CA PPM 15.4 is here. This blog is our first look into the new enterprise portfolio planning feature known as Roadmapping, which supports your top-down planning needs with drag-and-drop ease.
New Roadmap UX
When you log into CA PPM 15.4’s new UX, you land on the Project Management page. Click on the Roadmap icon, outlined here in red, which takes you to the Roadmap List page.
Three layouts help you create and visualize your roadmap items: Timeline, Board, and Grid.
Timeline Layout
In the Timeline layout you can see roadmap items you are planning by months, quarters, and years. The roadmap items are displayed as bars indicating Start and Finish dates, circles indicating just a Start date, or diamonds indicating just a Finish date.
As a portfolio manager, you can easily create planned work by clicking and dragging your mouse on the roadmap or uploading your items using a CSV file.
Three advanced features assist with planning and organizing work:
- Scenarios:Create variations of the same roadmap to evaluate different strategies
- Metrics:Add up to three numeric metrics per roadmap item and view them in the timeline
- Saved Views:Save different views of any roadmap in any layout with personalized changes for each user
These advanced features can help you convey the work to different stakeholders, from development teams to executives, in a way that is meaningful to them.
Board Layout
The Board layout is a drag-and-drop view that can immediately indicate operational status. The organization of work can be grouped using global or roadmap-specific “picklists,” which can be used for Timeline swim lanes, color coding, and Board columns.
Grid Layout
The Grid layout provides spreadsheet capabilities where additional information can be added to work being planned. The portfolio manager can further define and provide high-level detail for investments such as cost, capacity, ROI, and rank.
This additional information will lead to more informed decisions on strategic initiatives and future work in the pipeline.
Setup
Your CA PPM administrator sets up the new user interface, and it is very easy to get access to this great new capability. Users just need to be assigned new Roadmapping security rights in the system.
Have you used the new roadmap feature? Share your experience, tips and opinions by joining the conversation and posting in the Comments section.
For readers interested in more detail, check out DocOps. You can also reach out to CA Services for information about CA PPM Release 15.4 upgrades/implementations and individualized business outcome references and analysis.
About the author: Mike Pokorny is a CA Services architect who has helped businesses in industries such as oil and gas, banking, healthcare and aerospace visualize and implement solutions to improve business processes and get better outcomes by leveraging CA PPM.