Project Management Overview

Project Management is a process where a specific objective concerning requirements and demands gets achieved.

Fusion Agility Suite comes up with Agile and Phased (or Waterfall) project management to support your teams to work efficiently and flexibly on projects. Create your backlog from Portfolio Management fully automated. Manage your tasks with Drag and Drop via Gantt and Kanban.

The project is broken down into stages which helps to keep a track on:

Budgets
Risk of Projects.
Sprints or Phases, Tasks to look at in detail in progress.
Has a dedicated Manager.

Project Management allows seeing/creating sprints or phases, and tasks with allocated resources. A detailed Gantt diagram can be seen from Project which allows seeing the schedule and helps assess how long the project should take, determine the resources needed, and plan to complete your tasks on time.

An agile project helps in managing a project by breaking it into several sprints and involving constant collaboration with stakeholders and constant improvement and iteration at every sprint.

The phased project's main purpose has always been to help internal teams more efficiently through the sequential phases of a project.

Project Management Roles

The following end-user roles are for the Project Management module of the Fusion Agility application.

Project Manager

The project manager has the responsibility for the planning, procurement, and execution of those projects which is assigned as project manager, creating and scheduling sprints, phases, and tasks for the projects. The project manager has access to creating Ideas from BMC Helix Digital Workplace and Fusion Agility Suite. The project manager can create ideas from both consoles. The project manager can view, vote, and add activity notes in ideas created by him/her and other contributors as well. The project manager can access those demands which have created projects and are assigned as project manager.

Project Task User

Project task user implements or deploys the tasks assigned in different projects. Also implements the tasks assigned to the teams to which the task user belongs. A task user can be assigned to tasks in different projects and belongs to different teams.

Project Master

Project Master has all access to all the Projects and can create and schedule sprints, phases, and tasks for the projects. The project master has access to creating Ideas from BMC Helix Digital Workplace and Fusion Agility Suite. Project masters can create ideas from both consoles. The project master can view, vote, and add activity notes in ideas created by him/her and other contributors as well. Project masters can access those demands which have created projects.

Portfolio Manager

The portfolio manager can create and edit projects and demands into the portfolios which are assigned to the portfolio manager. The portfolio manager can also create new ideas from BMC Helix Digital Workplace and Fusion Agility Suite. The portfolio manager can view, vote, and add activity notes in ideas created by him/her and other contributors as well.

End-to-end process

The following figure provide an overview of the project lifecycle.

The following figures provide an overview of the sprint and phase.

The following figures provide an overview of the task lifecycle.

The project management process consists of the following procedures for handling new projects.

The portfolio manager logins into Fusion Agility Suite and creates a new project by following the steps of Creating-projects.
The project is created in 'Draft' status. The portfolio manager performs a feasibility study online with the final solution. In addition, justification is also performed. Once the portfolio manager considers it feasible and necessary then he/she assigns a project manager and changes the status to 'Plan/Prepare' by following the steps Changing-project-statuses. Projects, created by Demands, are in 'Plan/Prepare' status where initially the project manager is assigned to the portfolio manager. The project is officially started.
The project manager introduces project details, see Viewing-and-updating-project-details, and identifies the work:
1. creates sprints by following steps Creating-sprints in status 'New' or phases in status 'Staged' by following steps Creating-phases.
2. creates tasks in the backlog of the project, see Creating-tasks-in-backlog.
3. relate tasks in the backlog with sprints or phases, see Relating-tasks-to-a-sprint-or-a-phase-and-unrelating. When a task is related to a Sprint or Phase the status task is updated to 'Selected for Sprint' or 'Selected for Phase' automatically. Once the Sprint has tasks added the status changes to 'Plan/Prepare'.
4. defines teams to work on the project by following the steps Defining-teams.
5. assigns tasks to the teams or specific project task users in the teams, see Viewing-and-updating-task-details.
6. schedules the project using the Gantt Diagram tool, see Gantt-Chart.
The project manager decides to start the project implementation and changes the status of the project to 'In Progress' status by following the steps Changing-project-statuses.
- If the project type is Agile, the project manager moves the sprints to the 'In Progress' status by following the steps Changing sprint status, then all task-related to the sprints are updated to the 'To Do' status automatically, and the project task users assigned can start with the implementation.
- If the project type is Phased, the first phase in the project moves to 'Active' status automatically, then all tasks related to the phase are updated to 'To Do' status automatically and project task users assigned can start with the implementation.
Project task users implement the assigned tasks and update the status of the tasks to 'Done' by following the steps Changing-task-statuses. Project task users can create subtasks into the assigned tasks to split the work, see Creating-subtasks, and assigns the tasks to other task users or teams in the project.
The project manager can complete Sprints or Phases where all the tasks are 'Done' or 'Cancelled' by following the steps Changing-sprint-statusess or Changing-phase-statuses. If the Automatic Done field of the Sprint or Phase is 'Yes', the Sprint or Phase changes to 'Done' status automatically once all tasks are 'Done'.
If the project manager decides to cancel the project and updates the status to 'Cancelled', see Changing-project-statuses, all opened sprints or phases and tasks related to the project are cancelled automatically. When a project manager cancels a sprint or phase by following steps Changing-sprint-statuses or Changing-phase-statuses, all opened tasks related are cancelled automatically.
Only when all sprints or phases of the project are 'Done', the project manager can change the status project to 'Completed', see Changing-project-statuses. During this stage, the main emphasis is on:
- Result
- Delivery of requirement
- Quality, Bugs, Documentation
- Release of project resources
- Communication to all stakeholders on completion

Project Management Data Access Model

The Project Management application uses row-level security (RLS) to control access to the record and fields. RLS is applied by using Security Labels in BMC Helix Innovation Studio.

The following table describes the Security Labels required for Project Management:

Security Label name	Description
Project Owner	Access to the project, sprints or phases and tasks. Grants write access to modify the project, sprints or phases and tasks. The permission is assigned to the submitter when the project is created, generally the portfolio manager.
Project Assignee	Access to the project, sprints or phases tasks. Grants write access to modify the project, sprints or phases and tasks. The permission is assigned to the Project Manager who can change the assignments.
Project Teams	Access to the project and sprints or phases but without write access. Grant write access to modify tasks. The permission is assigned to the members of the teams of the project.
Demand Assignee	Access to the project but without write access, and without any access to sprints or phases and tasks. When the project has been created by a demand, the permission is assigned to the Demand Manager from the demand. The assignments are updated automatically when demand changes the demand manager.
Portfolio Assignee	Access to the project, sprints or phases and tasks. Grants write access to modify the project, sprints or phases and tasks. The permission is assigned to the Portfolio Manager of the portfolio. The assignments are updated automatically when the portfolio changes the portfolio manager.
Additional Read Access	Access to the project, sprints or phases tasks but without write access. The permission is assigned to the users added to the 'Additional Read Access' list in the project, see Setting-additional-access-for-a-project.
Additional Write Access	Access to the project, sprints or phases tasks. Grants write access to modify the project, sprints or phases and tasks. The permission is assigned to the project managers added to the 'Additional Write Access' list in the project, see Setting-additional-access-for-a-project.