LaunchMX-Gantt
Plan your phases (Work packages) and tasks on a timeline to create your Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and define dependencies. A sophisticated Gantt management workspace simplified for people not used to complex apps like MS Project™.
But this is missionX... the fun doesn't stop there! Estimate tasks and phases by hour or fixed bid, track hours and overtime right on your workboard and setup an automated task process... and that's just for starters...
Advantages of MX-Gantt
- Familier timeline and dependency based planning
- Track timelines based on dependencies and the critical path
- Organize your work in a hierarchical tree structure (WBS)
- Track work progression as percent complete and task process steps
- Estimate cost and duration at the task or phase level (bottom up estimation)
Tour the MX-Gantt workspace
Shown in both Dark and Light modes. Both are supported, you decide.
Tip: Click on an image to zoom.
- The Project plan
- Budget Pro
- Timesheets Pro
- Project Report
- Comments/Discussions
- mission DOCS
- Process Flow Maker
- Manage the project team
The Project plan
Organize your project in terms of phases and tasks, control start dates, end dates, actual hours vs estimated hours, see OT hours, bottom-up budgeting, dependencies, % complete and optionally track where tasks are in a process.
Budget Pro
One stop shop for managing your project budget and project roles. Automated reporting, fixed-bid fundable milestones, expenses, costs, revenue items, bill rates, retainers can all be defined and tracked here.
Timesheets Pro
Manage and review timesheets directly from within the project or across all projects from The PM Workspace. See overtime, missing timesheets and
Project Report
View and print a stunning, real-time report with key metrics and details spanning progress, timeline, financials and team productivity. It also happens to be client friendly.
Comments/Discussions
Create discourse, solve problems, and create topics for learning and training within your project workspace. Knowledge becoems contextual and easily access by everyone. One less app to worry about.
mission DOCS
Manage project files, document versions and approvals in missionX or add links to external drives and folders for easy access from tasks or the document's panel
Process Flow Maker
Manage your projects process flow. Add a title for each step, assign a color and optionally define who should automatically be assigned tasks when they land in their column. You can also set a column to skip forward and only capture steps going back in the process like "Re-rework" or "Changes needed"
Manage the project team
A complete view of your team where you can manage permissions, shower praise for hard work and see each person's workload
Work Breakdown Structure
Your planning board where you can create and manage phases, tasks, subtasks and more.
| Label | Feature | Description |
| A | Create a phase | Creates a root level phase under your project row. You can then move this to other phases, add tasks to it and manage it as you wish. You can also add phases and subphases from the gear icon at the end of each row. |
| B | Project summary row | The project's top-of-the-house row. This aggregates all phase and task data under it. This cannot be deleted. Fun fact, the budget here can be set manually or rolled up from estimates at the task and phase levels. |
| C | Phases | Phases are in bold with a bookmark icon next to them. They allow you to organize tasks into categories. Phases can by dragged and dropped into other phases to create parent child hierarchy. To move a subphase back to the root, simply drop it onto the project summary row at the top of the list. Click the title to edit the phase name and the gear icon (see below) to manage everything else. |
| D | Tasks | Tasks can only be part of a phase and have a task id next to the title that allows you to open the task details workspace. Tasks can be moved to other phases or dropped on other tasks to create subtasks. Click the task id to edit details name and the gear icon (see below) to manage everything else. |
| E | Subtasks | Subtasks provide a visual reprsentation of work grouped in a hierarchy but this does not mean that a sub task will alter the parent task's dates. To make a subtask a root task simply drop it on the same, or another phase. |
| F | Estimating hours | You can estimate hours for your tasks by entering hours manually or just have missionX calculate based on the number of business days multiplied by 8 as the default. |
| G | Timesheet hours | missionX automtically shows you the actual hours from your timesheets against the estimated hours. Super useful for preventing delays and cost overruns. This requires that you hav timesheets enabled. |
| H | Estimating cost | Displays aggregate or fixed cost amounts for tasks and phases. Selecting it opens the estimation panel described below |
| I | Task status and process | View and change the status of your task as it moves through the process or declare a substatus like "Blocked" or "Overdue". See Categorize work for more details |
Control menu: Phases
Expand your phase by adding tasks, subphases and milestones. You can also move the phase and delete it.
For project managers
| Label | Feature | Description |
| A | Phase menu | Hover your mouse over the gear to access the Phase menu No need to click, just mouse over the icon. |
| B | Options | Hover your mouse over the gear to access the Phase menu
|
| C | Phase colors | You can set a color for your phase here. It is helpful for differntiation or if you want to highlight a status like complete, issue, warning etc. |
Control menu: Tasks
Add subtasks, duplicate it, and view a dependency map.
For project managers
| Label | Feature | Description |
| A | Task menu | Hover your mouse over the gear to access the Phase menu No need to click, just mouse over the icon. |
| B | Options | Hover your mouse over the gear to access the Task menu
|
Working with dates
For project managers
Dates are not so straightforward in Gantt charts, if you do not need to keep to frigid timelines or estimating bottom up you should be using an other project type like Modern Kanban.
The most important thing to remember is that the sort order of your structure is always shown in ascending chronological order by start date. You cannot move phases and tasks to create a custom order.
There are a lot of dependencies around dates. For example dependencies on other tasks, the total of all tasks for a phase, and completed items. Let's take a look.
Changing start and end dates
Selecting a date range only applies to tasks and phases with no tasks under them.
Phases which have tasks and/or sub phases can only have dates shift because their from/to dates are derived from the max min dates of all children rows. See next part "Shift dates"
| Label | Feature | Description |
| A | Navigation | Please note: Budget pro and Timesheets are only available for Unlimited organization projects |
Shifting dates
When a phase has chidren rows, phases or tasks then the phases start and end date is by default the earliest and furthest end date of all phases and tasks.
For project managers
| Label | Feature | Description |
| A | Select a date | Click on any date of a phase or subphase to access the shift menu |
| B | Select a new date | Select the new date and press "Shift Dates". Once you confirm the change, the entire phase and all rows under it will be shifted releative to the new date. Example: If you shift the phase out by a week, all rows will also shift by a week. This way your phase plan is not changed, only shifted. |
Task dependencies
Sometimes one task cannot be started until another completes. For example, you cannot add the roof until the foundation is finished.
missionX only supports end-to-start dependencies and not other more complex dependencies like start-to-start and to end. If you need this level of dependency then MS Project is your best bet. But if you need basic dependencies, more flexibility and budgeting and reporting... continue reading.
For project managers
| Label | Feature | Description |
| A | Start dependency mode | Click on the link icon on the far left of each task row to enter "Dependency mode" |
| B | Dependency mode | When in dependency mode your mouse pointer will now allow you to click on other tasks to create or remove dependencies. As you mouse over rows, the icon following your mouse will change colors depending on the eligibility of the row under it. Red means not eligible for a dependency. Examples are click on the same task, away from the rows or a phase. Green means ok to make a dependency Orange indicates a dependency already exists and can be removed if clicked You can still filter and search while in dependency mode. |
| C | Dependency indicator | If a task has dependencies the number of dependencies will be shown in the orange dot above the link icon While in dependency mode, all tasks that are dependent on the active task will flash to signal a dependency already exists. |
| D | Exit dependency mode | You can cancel dependency mode by pressing the Escape (esc) key |
Categorize work
For project managers
You can create a process flow and use it to track the status of a task. Exmaple: With client, In progress, Design, etc.
Making a linear process to follow and track task progression is easy when using the missionX flow maker. Each column represents a step in your process and has special features to help you automate tasks flowing through it.
| Label | Feature | Description |
| A | Columns (Steps) | These are the steps of the process in the order your define. If you want to change the order, simply drag and drop to reorder. |
| B | Column controls | Optionally select a color for your colum to differntiate tasks on your workboard. Delete the column. If you delete a column, any tasks in the column will be automatically taken back to the previous step. |
| C | Auto-assign | If you choose to assign people to a column, then any tasks moved to this part of the process will be automatically be assigned to the person with the most capacity. An example of this would be if you have an "Approval" step, then the person who is in charge of approving work will automatically be assigne the task and notified. |
| D | Skip steps | In some cases you may want tasks to skip steps going forward in the process but allow for items sent back in the process. A common scenario for this is "rework" or "changes needed". An example might be if your process looks like: Design, Changes and Client approves. "Changes" would then skip and tasks would go directly for approval. If for some reason it is not approved then you can send it back to "Design" This is extremly helpful if you want to spot problems or track how much volume is being sent back in the process by looking at the colum header's details. |
| E | Flow controls | Add a a new column from here and save any changes before exiting. Please remember to save your changes. This is one of the few places where missionX does not autosave for you. |
Estimate costs
For project managers
When we say costs we actually mean what it will cost the customer or client. Budgeting therefore in only available if this is a client and billable project.
Budgeting can be done at the phase or task level.
If you add a cost to a phase then task estimates will be ignored, but if you estimate at the task level then estimates are rolled up and aggregated to the phase.
The same applies to your project's top-of-the-house phase. If you add an overall project budget then that is what you will see. If you do not then the project budget will be calculated from all phase and task estimates.
| Label | Feature | Description |
| A | Estimation panel | Estimate your task and phase costs or overall budget at the project level. Please note that costs are what you plan on charging a customer for and not an internal cost. If you need to estimate internal costs please use Line-items in Budget pro |
| B | Cost amount | Enter a number amount to be used in the calculation |
| C | Cost calculation | How is this being estimated? Per hour or as a fixed cost item. If per hour than missionX will always multiply number of estimated hours by your amount. Fixed, will never change unless you do so manually. |
| C | Estimated hours | By default missionX uses the estimated ours from your project plan but you can choose to override these and set them manually. |
Project report
All reporting in missionX is automated so there is no need to create any reports, just focus on your team and customer. But if you ever need to provide a print-friendly report you can do that with one click from your project's tabs at the top of the workspace.
| Label | Feature | Description |
| A | Project details | Information about your project including project managers. |
| B | Project timeline | Your phases are shown as a timeline. |
| C | Earned Value (EVM) | missionX automatically calculates and displayes your Earned Value metrics automatically as long as you keep your plan's planned revenue and precent complete of all activities up to date. |
| D | Key metrics | Compare approved/estimated hours and budget to actuals so you can predict delays or cost overruns. |
| E | Milestones | A summary of all project milestones along with dates and description. |
| F | People and roles | A view of all the roles that are active on the project and compare estimated/approved hours vs actual. Roles are added to the project to calculate cost and bill rates Example: Designer, Engineer, Senior Manager etc. Unfilled roles will also be shown here |
| G | Budget breakdown | A summary of how project budget is allocated. including your task and phase estimates and items from Budget pro like line-items, fundable milestones, role costs etc. In most cases, if you are estimating at the phase/task level it will show most of the budget allocated as phases. |
| H | Activity status | A list of current and upcoming items being worked on. |
Earned Value Management
Automated EVM reporting using MX-Gantt. Manage your project's WBS and budget from MX-Gantt and missionX automatically generates real-time EVM reports.
Intoduction to EVM
Earned Value Management (EVM) is a project management technique used to assess project performance and progress in a comprehensive manner.
It combines measurements related to the project management triangle:
scope, time, and costs.
How it works
If this starts to get too technical, don't worry you just track budget and % complete and missionX will do the rest.
- Planned Value (PV) or Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS) This represents the valuation of planned work. It's essentially the budgeted cost for the work scheduled to be completed at a specific point in time.
- Earned Value (EV) or Budgeted Cost of Work Performed (BCWP): These metrics quantify the actual accomplishment of work. EV reflects the value of work completed up to a given date.
- Actual Cost (AC) or Actual Cost of Work Performed (ACWP) This represents the actual cost incurred for the work performed.
- Cumulative Costs vs. Time Plot: EVM often involves plotting cumulative costs against time. This helps visualize both early and late curves, providing insights into project performance.
Benefits of EVM
EVM allows project managers to make accurate forecasts of potential performance issues. It's particularly useful for large or complex projects, where quantitative forecasts associated with earned value management play a crucial role.
By analyzing PV, EV, and AC, project managers can proactively address deviations from the planned project trajectory. In simpler terms, EVM helps answer questions like:
- Are we on track with our budget and schedule?
- How much work have we actually completed compared to what we planned?
- What are the cost and schedule variances?
Drawbacks of EVM
The biggest issue most people will say, is the complexity and intricacy that comes with using and maintaing specialized software and the overal approach.
missionX actually makes this a mute point by abstracting ALL the complexity involved... but one big drawback in our humble opionion remains.
EVM requires a lot of oversight and constant, meticulous updates to the project plan and budget. Progress and dates must always be up-to-date and as we very well know, to nail down a perfect timeline is like trying to swim in quicksand.
If you are commited to a very well defined plan and are willing to maintain it on a daily basis then missionX will make the rest effortless.
Viewing EVM reports
There are three ways to access your EVM reports.
1. From the Project manager's workspace Mission.Vision.Board > PM Power View
Through the project workspace or the organization Financials tab by opening Budget pro and selecting "Client friendly report."
From the project workspace select the reports tab where you can see and print to PDF.
Summary
MX-Gantt is a powerful and sophisticated tool in your management arsenal. It helps project stakeholder undrstand the timeline and cost of the project by organizing your plan into work packages.
This requires a lot of disciplin from the project manager to maintain the plan and stick to schedules, but it does free the project manager from reporting, and aligning budget, timesheets and progress.