Roadmap needs ability to add rows for proposed projects
Roadmap needs ability to add rows for proposed projects. Currently way to do this, requires me to create a dummy project and published.

Hi all!
Thanks for the suggestion. We’d love to understand more around this scenario.
Would you be adding tasks and milestones? Do you ever expect to connect this row to a project, or create a project? What happens after the proposal state to the row? Why else would you be creating blank rows and tasks? Would you have a roadmap with both types of rows?…
The comments below are very helpful already, so please keep them coming! We want to better understand why customers need this scenario fulfilled.
~J
14 comments
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David C commented
Agree, when I think of a roadmap, it is showing the current and future forecasted projects for a few quarters. That necessitates being able to visualize forecasted projects that have not launched yet. So yes, it would be great if we could create a forecasted project (I would be ok with just a start and end date, being able to designate stages and milestones would be great too, but at the very least, start and end date). This could then act as a launching board for a new project that could inherit the information forecasted as a starting point for the project.
It could also lead to future functionality of being able to take those forecasted projects and have them in a backlog of project that gets priority applied against them so that it can become a tool to determine which forecasted projects from the roadmap get approved to become an active project (not everything from the backlog would be represented on the roadmap, but all forecast items on the roadmap would be in the backlog, and you would priortize backlogged items to determine what gets approved to become an active project).
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Iain commented
Similar to the previous comments, this would be really useful for scenario planning between the change pipeline and in-flight projects (currently held in PWA).
A way of creating a high level plan template with the ability to bring in the Generic Enterprise resource groups for PWA to assign to the project phases would be good. We can then connect the two datasets in Power Bi to give the holistic view - with the ability to change start/finish dates and duration to fit prospective change into the in-flight capacity.
A button to create a new project in PWA using the high level plan in Roadmap would be great. As would being able to assign costs as a flat profile across the task duration.
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James Ward commented
Echoing what's been said, need to add tasks and milestones to draft and lightweight projects that can then novate to full programmes if accepted/grow big enough to warrant it. Also need to filter to specific tasks and categories of project to allow portfolio and contextual views during review sessions.
You should be able to add key dates from this view for specific projects
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James Ward commented
We would use this. We have currently 3 departments with 46 projects as follows:
- 15no full Gantt driven
- 7no draft proposals
- 24no light (top level milestone driven)Roadmaps are great, but only for the 15 Gantt chart driven ones, the remainder need to also be included but we also need a departmental resource assigned to each to allow us to highlight where there is a clash of resource demand.
We also need to zoom out further - when you've a project map of 3 years you need to be able to see all, not just circa 10 months.
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JG commented
This functionality would bring about HUGE adoption in our organization.
Our Executives want to figure out when they can squeeze in projects and play with timelines quickly and easily. Being able to manually add in projects will help us visually figure out scheduling and timeline impacts.
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Anonymous commented
We are currently not using the ideas/requests (demand management) but would like to in future, and it would be great to have the ability to select the proposed projects within the Roadmap.
In the request form, we would have date fields such as the following:
-Approval Requested Date
-Target Kick Off Date
-Target Go Live DateIf we could bring in the dates fields from the form into the Roadmap as milestones, that would be nice.
When it is no longer a request(proposal), it could be removed from the Roadmap, or the associated project could be displayed. This is not a big concern as we can always manually add/remove rows.
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Torben commented
We keep all proposed projects as projects and flag by name if they are tentative (still discussed at roadmap level). I prefer that milestones and schedules are generated and maintained only one place = in projects.
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Tim Runcie (MVP) commented
End users may want to tell the story about work that may not be available in the connect to drop down. This will allow the end users to not only add key dates, connect to other schedules or apps, but also tell the story with generic tasks that are not connected to any tool.
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Kris commented
I agree, it would be very helpful to be able to use projects that are not-linked. These would be proposed projects, or even actual project-ish activities that don't actually have a project plan.
To answer your questions:
Adding tasks and milestones could be helpful, certainly the ability to add a start and end date so that a bar will appear on the roadmap to indicate when in the future the project might happen.
I would expect that we would want to be able to connect to the row to a project at a later point. Creating a project based on the row would also be very helpful.
I don't think anything would happen to the row, it should just be able to be filtered out. Perhaps a status that indicates the row was either canceled or completed, then filtering can be done on that status.
I'm not sure why else you would create blank rows. The only reason I could think of is a placeholder for a proposed future project, or to represent a project that doesn't have a plan, or has a plan but isn't able to be integrated. (For example, it is a project being managed by a vendor, but uses your resources so you want it as part of your roadmap with a start and end date)
We would absolutely want both types of rows on the same roadmap. Both types being rows that get their milestones from a linked project and rows that are placeholders where we enter a start and end.
My basic need, for us to really be able to use this, would to at least be able to enter a start and end date for an "un-linked" row and have it display the bar on the roadmap.
Thanks!
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Trutz-Sebastian Stephani commented
As others already suggested I see the proposal scenario, where a roadmap row and its items are linked later(maybe even pushed down to the respective tool) and the not-yet-supported tool scenario, where I can add items manually or using a flow( and just store a link and an id to the other tool item).
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S.Bots commented
Very useful suggestion. You can already create an empty row, but you cannot create details for it.
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Nate Auchter commented
Another way to say this is that "Roadmap should allow you to create rows and items that are NOT LINKED to a project".
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B SAI PRASAD (MVP) commented
I am thining of scenarios where full project plans might not exist, or do exist but are in a different (non-project/Azure) tool which doesn't yet integrate.
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Oleksiy Prosnitskyy commented
yes. good scenario - ppm creates structure of projects with milestone in roadmap - pm creates detailed structure of project with no possibility to move phases and ms from roadmap