Pen Project Image credit Image by ds_30 from PixabayKeyedIn has released details of KeyedIn Projects 7.2. This is the latest version of its PPM solution and strengthens the management of product portfolios by businesses. It also includes dynamic demand modelling, which improves forecasting functionality and improves resource management capabilities. There are several other changes, as well.

Matt Muldoon, Chief Product Officer for KeyedIn or KeyedIn (Image credit Linkedin)
Matt Muldoon, Chief Product Officer for KeyedIn

Matt Muldoon, Chief Product Officer for KeyedIn, commented: “Our new version of KeyedIn Projects delivers on true product portfolio management. With superior product management capabilities, professionals can now manage and support the ongoing products – with their release cycles, roadmaps and maintenance requests – that continue after the change projects are completed. That product portfolio flexibility is a key capability very few PPM solutions have been able to deliver until now.”

Product Portfolio Management

KeyedIn has extended support for portfolio management to include not just projects but also products, strategies or value streams. It has achieved this with improved reporting capability. The solution now allows an organisation-wide view of product, project, strategy or value stream performance.

It is also possible to visualise information about relationships between links and dependencies between products and projects. This includes the ability to report on financial cross charging. For example, a product may have several projects associated with it, including software purchases and installations, a marketing project and a development project. The report enables a business leader to track the costs associated with a product as a whole.

Dynamic Demand resource modelling

The new Dynamic Demand Modelling capability enables organisations to understand resource requirements better as factors change. This helps to ensure that business leaders can quickly adjust schedules to address the potential shortfall in the delivery of projects. Utilisation is maintained at a higher level, as adjustments are made. This improves the resource management functionality of KeyedIn Projects. Several new features help to deliver this capability, including:

  • The ability to easily add supply by auto-filling Role requests, based on availability.
  • It is now possible to view and edit existing Resource Supply directly from the Resource Requests view. This will help balance over and undersupply quickly.
  • Filter allocations based on one or more resource names with the ability to drag and drop to new assignments.
  • Users can remove future supply or assignments from completed or inactive projects. In doing so, it delivers a more accurate resource availability.
  • An auditing feature that record which creates and edits any changes to supply.

Other features

The release also includes several bug fixes and several new features. A new user-controlled Gantt widget allows any date-bounded items to be visualized. This widget will have multiple applications, including product roadmaps and combining milestones and task plans across multiple projects and products.

There are further enhancements to the Report Writer launched in v7.0. The Report Writer now allows the creation of standard chart and data reports using the point and click interface. The widget writer has been extended with new customization options. The Excel export now supports custom and conditional formatting. There is also a conversion option for existing reports. The report writer will continue to have enhancements. In the next release due out in Spring 2021 it should support report scheduling, combination reports and output to PDF.

KeyedIn Projects PPM 7.2
KeyedIn Projects 7.2: The new “point and click” reporting Interface, extending the on-screen widgets work release in V7.0

Work on the new UI continues with several administration screens updated with the new look and feel. Once the migration is complete, this will also fully enable two additional features:

  • A full audit log of everything done within the administrator function,
  • and improved API access for all entities.

The audit log already exists for any changes done through the new interface.

Enterprise Times: What does this mean

The update is generally available in November. This is an interesting if iterative update that will help organisations better manage product, portfolios and projects. Information about the release was light, although Dynamic Demand resource modelling has some fascinating features. It will be interesting to see what it is capable of when driven in earnest.

The introduction of the product portfolio management seems to imply that products only relate to projects, and it will be interesting to see how companies adapt the solution to fit their requirements.

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