Product

Portfolio Gantt Charts & Scheduling

Portfolio Gantt stylised cover image

Introducing our new portfolio Gantt charts for scheduling, monitoring and managing your entire project portfolio.

You can now manage multiple project grids in one holistic portfolio Gantt, giving you full 360-degree visibility of all your projects across your portfolio.

**We will be running a portfolio Gantt webinar with a full Q&A session on Thursday 12th December 2024 at 1pm. You can register for this webinar here.**

If you would like to schedule a training session with our customer success team, please contact us.

TLDR – Quick Overview

Too long didn’t read? Here’s a quick overview for you:

  • You can now view a portfolio level Gantt chart from any folder in your account
  • Use the folders to organise your account and your portfolio Gantt
  • Grid Gantt start dates have been replaced with grid constraint dates: the constraint type is ‘start no earlier than’
  • All grids in your account will now have a ‘start no earlier than’ date set and items with durations will schedule themselves based on this
  • The top item in all your Gantt charts is now the grid
  • In portfolio Gantts you can create cross project (grid) dependencies between any Gantt items in any project (grid)

Important Changes in Grid Gantts

To support portfolio Gantt views and cross project (grid) dependencies, some changes to the grid Gantt were necessary:

  1. Previously, the top items in a grid Gantt were your stages (stages > elements/gates > tasks), the top items in all Gantt charts are now grids (grids > stages > elements/gates > tasks). This enables grid to grid and cross grid dependencies.
  2. Previously, grid Gantts used a grid start date. The start date was used to schedule items in the grid Gantt that had durations and no constraints i.e. items would be set to start on this grid (project) start date. The grid start dates are now set as the ‘start no earlier than’ constraint date on grid items e.g. if your grid Gantt previously had a start date of 1st Jan 2024, that grid item will now have a constraint date of 1st Jan 2024 and the constraint type of ‘start no earlier than’. This will retain the project start date for your scheduling and you can now edit a grid’s constraint date/type in the same way as other items in the Gantt. New grids and cloned grids will have this constraint date set to the date they were created or cloned. As all grids in your account will now have a ‘start no earlier than’ date set, any items with durations in your grids will automatically be scheduled to start on that date.
  3. The grid start date at the top of your grid Gantt charts has been replaced with an account start date. This is the global start date for your account. Your grid and portfolio Gantt charts will use this as their default starting date when scheduling items that have durations and no constraints (only if there is no grid constraint date overriding this, see item 2 above) . Architect members (admins) can set/edit your account start date in your account settings.

Viewing the Portfolio Gantt

Portfolio Gantts can be opened from any folder in Method Grid. Folders enable the simple categorisation of your grids and this categorisation is now used by your portfolio Gantt charts. For example, if you have a folder called “Clients” that contains sub-folders for each of your clients, you can view that portfolio of grids by opening that folder and clicking on the Gantt button:

Portfolio Gantts will display the grids in the folder your are viewing as well as its sub-folders:

Portfolio Gantts can be opened and viewed by any internal member with at least view access to that folder. External members do not have access to portfolio Gantts, they can only access project (grid) Gantts in the grids to which they have access. Internal members will only see the grids in the selected folder and its sub-folders to which they have at least view access. Grids to which members do not have access will not be available in their portfolio Gantt, unless they have a cross grid (project) dependency to a grid they do have access to, in which case both these grids will then be shown in order to visualise and understand the holistic schedule view.

Note: In some cases, there may be too many items in the folder to effectively open a portfolio Gantt view. If this is the case, you will see a message explaining that a portfolio Gantt cannot be opened for this folder, you can then move down the folder tree and open the portfolio Gantt for a folder with fewer items.

Note: If you do want to view the portfolio Gantt for your entire account, you can open the main grid library folder and click the Gantt button. The portfolio Gantt will try to load every grid in your account. If there are too many items to reasonably show this Gantt chart, you will see a message explaining this.

The portfolio Gantt has all the tools you’re used to working with in grid level (project) Gantts, you can:

New Data Columns in the Portfolio Gantt

There are four new data columns that are unique to the portfolio Gantt i.e. they are not shown in the grid Gantt, these are:

  1. Folder – The folder the grid is in.
  2. Grid Label – The grid labels assigned to the grid.
  3. Grid Type – Whether the grid is a master or non-master grid.
  4. Grid State – Whether the grid is active or archived.

The Method Grid portfolio Gantt with the new data columns highlighted

Each of these new columns can be filtered and sorted in the usual way.

Note: The portfolio Gantt will load all the grids in the folder and its sub-folders, including master grids and archived grids. Once loaded, the Gantt chart will then automatically apply a filter to hide master grids and archived grids. To show these grids, you can either clear all filters or adjust the grid type and grid state column filters.

Note: Grid (project) Gantts also have unique data columns e.g. the element label data is only shown on the grid Gantt.

Scheduling in the Portfolio Gantt

You can schedule items in the portfolio Gantt in exactly the same way that you schedule items in the grid Gantt. This means you can schedule multiple projects (grids) in one Gantt chart. You can learn more about the various scheduling tools available in our Gantt charts here.

Cross Project (Grid) Dependencies

You can now create dependencies between projects (grids) in your account. You can create dependencies between any items in the Gantt e.g. grid (project) to grid (project), stage to stage, stage to element, gate to element, task to stage, task to task etc. etc. To do this:

  1. Open the portfolio Gantt at the appropriate folder level to see the grids you wish to create dependencies between
  2. Click and drag the dependency connector between the items, or
  3. Enter the item order number in the relevant predecessor or successor cell
  4. You can also configure the dependency in the same way as grid Gantts i.e. change the dependency type, lead or lag.

Note: To create dependencies between grids or to configure any scheduling in a grid, you must have at least edit access to the grids.

Method Grid portfolio Gantt showing how to create a cross project (grid) dependency

You can learn more about Gantt dependencies, lead time, lag time and more here.

When cross project (grid) dependencies are present, your Gantt charts will always load these grids in order to visualise and understand the holistic schedule view. In a grid with cross grid dependencies, you will only be able to edit the schedule of the grid you are currently viewing, the items from the dependent grid will be view only. To work with cross project (grid) dependencies you must be viewing the portfolio Gantt containing those grids. Also, in a grid with cross grid dependencies, you will only see the element labels for the grid you are viewing, the labels from any dependent grids are not shown.

Cloning and Cross Project (Grid) Dependencies

When you clone a grid that has cross grid dependencies, those dependencies will be removed when you clone the grid.  You can learn more about cloning grids here.

When you clone a folder that has cross grid dependencies, then the dependencies between the grids in the folder being cloned will be kept and dependencies to grids outside of the folder being cloned, will be removed. You can learn more about cloning folders here.

Account Start Date

Members with architect (admin) access can set/edit the account start date in your account settings. To do this:

  1. Click your profile image in the main navigation (bottom left)
  2. Select account settings
  3. Select date and time
  4. Set the required start date

Note: Setting or changing your account’s start date will schedule all items in your account that have a duration to start on this date unless the item has an existing constraint.

Gantt Chart Help

You can find help and learn more about Gantt charts here.

Feedback

If you have any feedback or questions relating to this feature, please get in touch.

What’s next?

We will be adding the ability to configure the hours in a day in your work calendars. You can see all of our upcoming releases in our product roadmap.

 

About the Author

Jody is the head of product at Method Grid. Jody has a career in development and technology stretching back to 2000 when he started his career at NEC running service operations. Since then he has worked on web projects in numerous industries from legal IT to academic services that have all harnessed his development and technical marketing expertise. 

Connect with Jody on LinkedIn

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