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Meta Roadmap Planning (MRP) – the new feature in VNCproject

VNC developed a new feature within the project management software VNCproject that enables every developer, lead developer or product and project manager to always stay in control, even in complex projects, when detailed planning within tickets and roadmaps covers long periods and numerous tasks. VNCproject MRP – our Meta Roadmap Planning tool.
Losing track of priorities, budgets and deadlines can cause a software development project to lose ground. Worst case scenario: You can’t deliver a release on time and thus lose an important customer or have to complete the project with loss.

But there are ways to prevent that.

If you have ever worked on software development teams you know that numerous factors can affect the success of a project – tickets with poorly estimated time, recurring bugs, changing requirements or other unexpected challenges.

The META ROADMAP PLANNING (MRP) feature within VNCproject allows team members and management to have a “meta” (birds eye) view on selected meta tasks, versions and tickets from an unique perspective (such as: product finishing, new features, innovation drivers, etc.).

The goal: Get the big picture to get organized, structured and thus efficient! And make sure that you focus on the really important stuff to deliver results on time.

To understand the full impact of the new powerful Meta Roadmap Planning Tool (VNCproject MRP), we’ll add some additional info about roadmap planning here:

As you certainly know, a roadmap is a planning methodology used in software development and generally in areas of technological innovation.
In a roadmap, the users (e.g. software developers, team leaders, CTOs, CEOs) create a framework to help plan and coordinate technology developments under consideration of short-term and long-term goals. 

Within VNCproject, a roadmap includes a clear definition of the goal to be achieved (e.g. a new product version), the steps required to achieve that goal (i.e. tickets), the priority, due date, team members involved with responsibilities and lots of additional details. Of course, the process is monitored in real-time and the exact status is visible at any time.

So now what exactly is a meta roadmap?

A meta roadmap consists of a number of so called “meta tasks”. A meta task is a high level description of what you want to achieve, but not the detailed planning itself which is done in
a) a given target version
b) one or more tickets

So, in the example shown, it is quite logical that you will find a number of related tickets in the first meta task.

As you can see in the picture above, we offer you a lot of useful information in the meta roadmap view such as:

  • Name and description of Meta Roadmaps
  • Meta Tasks with scope
  • Ticket ID & subject
  • Progress bar
  • Time planned (ETA) and time left to finish (OTA) the given ticket, task and target version
  • Assigned team members

This information is stored and managed in the ticket (or target version).

The next set of information will be manually added by the product manager, lead developer or the person who created the Meta Roadmap..

Why is this step so important?
Because the person in charge of this Meta Roadmap needs to be able to re-assess the information within a Meta Roadmap, especially regarding estimated hours, due dates, etc. Therefore he might want to add some buffer to the detailed planning (done in AGILE BOARD PLANNING – ABP) to be on the safe side. Imagine a product manager or lead developer preparing a report to the managing board and / or to a customer in customer projects – he might want to be on the safe side.

One of the most useful features of the meta roadmap planning tool is the possibility to view the total of hours left to finish a “meta task”, thus the sum of all related tickets, as you can see here:

So the person who created (and planned) a meta roadmap is now able to check at a glance how much working time is left – in this case 187 hours – to finish a set of tasks, product version or any other project planned with this gorgeous MRP tool.

A drill down on “meta task” shows all the related tickets and the status and allows to open and check each ticket individually.

If you want to share your roadmap with your teammates you are able choose one of these three possibilities of access rights:

  • can view
  • can comment
  • can edit

So depending on the role within a project, each and every involved team member can use VNCproject META ROADMAP PLANNING to make sure the project or product development is successful. Thus helping everyone to not only see a single task but the whole project.

VNC is offering one of the most powerful tools for project and product management in the market. And this is just the beginning! We have plenty of features and functions still to come. So stay tuned!

About VNCproject: The browser-based, open and fully customizable solution leaves nothing to be desired: VNCproject combines task and ticket management, scheduling, progress monitoring, Gantt charts as well as time tracking, wikis and powerful project planning features. Having all these different features in one single project management tool enables you to work as fast and efficiently as never before.
With VNCproject you keep your projects in focus and your customers happier than they have ever been.

Please find more info about VNCproject HERE.

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