by Christoph Gallas
Published on October 10, 2024
If you work in product development – whether you develop products for companies or end consumers – your work is probably heavily influenced by a planned market launch date. What sets the pace is always different. It could depend on:
However, requests almost always come from departments like product management, sales, or marketing – or in other words, from other areas of the organization. There usually isn’t clear prioritization for these orders, which leads to more resource capacity being requested than is actually available.
These are not sustainable solutions.
Most R&D managers we speak to are familiar with this challenge. But attempts to tackle the problem with complicated Excel spreadsheets have failed for most of them. This is where Meisterplan comes in.
Meisterplan is a prioritization and resource planning tool that helps you quickly establish a lean standard for project delivery. Plus, it has something for all stakeholders.
Meisterplan’s Portfolio Designer can do what Excel never could. Visualize your product portfolio timeline with everything sorted by priority, and including important deadlines and relevant employee capacities.
But that’s just the beginning! The Portfolio Designer also shows you the impact of changes to the plan in real time and allows you to compare scenarios.
Here, you can see what’s realistic and what isn’t, right from the outset. You’ll have proof in black and white (or actually in red and green) showing when a plan won’t work out. At the same time, the dynamic view enables you to find alternatives like determining which roles or individuals have free capacity. This means you can meet deadlines even when things change.
This is ideal for every round of project coordination, or when getting management approval on plans.
In Meisterplan, you and your management can use standardized evaluation criteria that apply equally to all departments. This can help product management with their planning. It also makes it easier to make reliable decisions when setting priorities. In the end, it is always clear which requests from which departments have priority and where you should distribute your resources.
The Team Planner is the easiest way to look at your product portfolio from a capacity perspective. It’s the ideal place for project managers, department or team leads, and product managers to discuss project staffing and resolve bottlenecks before they happen.
Using the straightforward histogram, you can:
Additionally, the Team Planner is the best way to communicate with teams about planning. It allows you better transparency, and a chance to do reality checks with employees, for example, if the capacity planned is actually feasible.
Each department probably has its own roadmap with its own priorities. With the Roadmap view in Meisterplan, you can finally get an overview and see all departments on an even playing field. See everything at the level of detail that you need at a particular moment, without capacity details, and easily share what you see.
You’ll be able to answer questions like:
One thing is the same at companies across all industries, including product development: management wants to be informed about important developments and decisions. With the Portfolio Dashboard and integrated reports in Meisterplan, you can put together individual dashboards for different managers that show all the important KPIs at a glance.
You can get insights into questions such as:
Meisterplan has proven to be a valuable tool for product development at Peri. It has helped them to communicate across departments within their organization to ensure that they are optimally using their available capacity and prioritizing the right projects. As a result, Peri can now carry out its projects more efficiently and effectively.
Meisterplan is lean and, thanks to multiple integrations, it fits into your company’s tool landscape without disrupting any workflows. Plus, our experts with over 20 years of experience in project portfolio and resource management will support you from the get-go until everything is running smoothly.
Feel free to contact our Meisterplan experts directly.
Christoph loves stories. For him, there is nothing greater than following movie characters on their journeys. Or to get lost in a good book. ...
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