TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the Portfolio++ Pro features Video Series.

Today we will show how to use the Cross-Project queries feature. Let’s see what it does.

For this demo, our scenario involves a Dynamics 365 team that is responsible for a multi-team effort. Additionally, the program is dependent on the work of two other project teams, each with their own work items in their own backlog. However, all work items roll up to an epic in the Dynamics project.

Before we jump into the roadmap, let’s look at the backlog for Dynamics 365. Here we see the epic to rollout Dynamics to the Sales and Finance parts of the organization. In this view, we have added the iteration path and area path columns. This allows us to see where the work is located.

Let’s expand the epic. One feature is part of the Dynamics 365 project, but other features are part of the Sales and Finance projects.

Now let’s go to our roadmap to demonstrate how the cross-project queries feature works.

First, we need to add the Dynamics project to our roadmap. Open the Roadmap settings, select Projects and Epics, and add the Dynamics project.

The project has been added to the bottom of the roadmap. However, notice that it shows only two stories.

Now let’s enable cross-project queries from the metric options.

The epic now shows 15 total stories, with 3 of them being complete. If we click on the progress indicator, we will see why.

Clicking on this indicator opens a custom query in a new browser tab. This is another new feature in this release. By adding Area Path to the list of columns, we see that user stories from multiple projects are being included. This is what the cross-project queries feature makes possible.

The 15 user stories consist of 10 stories from sales, 3 stories from finance, and 2 stories from the Dynamics 365 area.

Please note this tip. Cross-project queries will only be able to query projects that you have access to. Let’s demonstrate this.

In this browser window, the user does not have access to the sales or finance projects. Cross-project queries is enabled, but without access to those projects, only the stories from the Dynamics project are counted.

Let’s switch to the epic status tab. Because the cross-project queries feature is turned on, the quality control metrics shown on this page, will also count issues across projects that are children of each epic.

By clicking on the metric for tasks missing estimates, we can see all the tasks in our program which are missing hourly estimates. Adding area path gives program managers supporting multiple project teams insight into where help may be needed.

The Epic-Feature timeline page shows all the features for the epics selected in the roadmap. The features are plotted over time based on the iterations.