Project Overview

Modified on Tue, 11 Jun at 4:30 PM

Fluid Projects is a highly customisable and user-friendly platform designed to streamline the management of various types of projects. The Project Workspace in Fluid serves as the central hub for accessing and managing all aspects of a project.

NOTE: This article outlines all features and functionality available on a Fluid project workspace. You may find some of the sections covered in this article are missing from your project workspace. What you have access to depends on what permissionining you have, or how your instance has been configured and what features are being used.

Project Details

This section displays essential project metadata such as portfolio, project type, active status, business driver, Project Manager, and Business Owner. Accurate maintenance of this information is critical as it directly influences dynamic reporting dashboards, affecting project visibility and inclusion. Additionally, this section provides a financial overview of the project, including life-to-date financials and details for the current fiscal year. Keeping this information up-to-date ensures precise reporting and aids in decision-making.

Project Managers can update the project metadata by clicking on Edit Details button.

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Status Report

The Status Report section shows the last three status reports and allows Project Managers to create new or edit existing reports.

Status reports track the overall RAG (Red, Amber, Green) status and any specific issues, along with actions, owners, and due dates. They provide a snapshot of the project's health, highlighting areas that need attention. Regular status reporting enhances transparency, keeps stakeholders informed, and helps in early identification of potential problems, allowing for timely interventions and maintaining project momentum.

The Reports dropdown provides access to the complete status report history and enables quick generation of SteerCo reports, enhancing project transparency and accountability.

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Actions and Decisions

This section consolidates all activities assigned to and from the project, including status report acknowledgements, action and decision requests, project impacts acknowledgements, and tasks from linked meetings and boards.

Managing actions and decisions in one place ensures that all tasks are tracked and accountability is maintained. The Quick Complete function allows for rapid updating of task statuses, promoting efficiency. This centralisation helps prevent tasks from falling through the cracks and ensures that all team members are aware of their responsibilities and deadlines, improving overall project coordination.

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Schedule

The Schedule section manages deliverables, milestones, phases, and workstreams, essential for detailed project planning.

Effective project scheduling is crucial for timely project delivery and resource management. The Schedule section in the Project Workspace displays key schedule tasks that have been promoted, providing a high-level overview of critical tasks and milestones. This focused view ensures that team members and stakeholders can quickly see and track the most important elements of the project schedule.

The EDIT GANTT button takes Project Managers to the comprehensive Gantt page, where they can create and manage the entire project schedule in detail. This Gantt view includes all tasks, dependencies, and timelines, allowing for thorough planning and adjustments. By promoting key schedule tasks to the Project Workspace, Project Managers can highlight essential activities while maintaining detailed control over the full project plan in the Gantt view. This dual approach supports both high-level monitoring and in-depth project management, ensuring that schedules are both visible and manageable at different levels of detail.

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Impacts

The Impacts section documents all project impacts such as risks, issues, dependencies, and changes, each with RAG status, owner, and path to green actions.

Risk management is a critical aspect of project management. This section allows project managers to identify, assess, and mitigate risks systematically.

The Network Map feature offers an interactive visualisation of project impacts and their relationships, aiding in comprehensive risk management. Addressing risks proactively helps in avoiding potential roadblocks and ensures smoother project execution.

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Financials

This section enables tracking and managing the approved budget, forecasts, and actuals across all expense types.

Effective financial management is essential for staying within budget and ensuring project viability. Fluid supports multi-currency forecasts, financial planning scenarios, capitalisation and amortisation, ensuring robust financial oversight. Accurate financial tracking helps in making informed decisions, justifying expenditures, and demonstrating financial accountability to stakeholders.

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Community

The Community section allows for the creation and management of a project team by adding members and defining their roles and allocations.

Building a strong project team and clearly defining roles and allocations ensures that everyone knows their responsibilities and can collaborate effectively. Rate cards applied to resources generate financial forecasts in the project financials, facilitating accurate resource allocation and cost management. This fosters a collaborative environment where team members are aligned with project goals.

Community

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Benefits

Fluid simplifies the tracking and management of project benefits, both quantitative and qualitative.

Managing benefits ensures that the project delivers value as intended. Tracking benefits helps in measuring the project's success and justifying its impact on the organisation. This supports overall project evaluation and continuous improvement, ensuring that the project's outcomes align with strategic objectives.

Benefits

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Ongoing Costs

This section allows for tracking and managing ongoing project costs.

Monitoring ongoing costs provides a comprehensive view of the project's financial impact over time. This long-term financial perspective is crucial for strategic planning, resource allocation, and ensuring that the project remains financially sustainable throughout its lifecycle.

Ongoing Costs

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Boards

Boards facilitate agile project management through the creation of new sprints or Kanban boards, or linking existing ones.

Agile boards support iterative and flexible project management. Tasks from these boards appear in the project's Actions and Decisions log, integrating agile methodologies with traditional project management for enhanced task tracking and completion. This allows for dynamic planning and rapid response to changes, improving project adaptability and team collaboration.

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Meetings

The Meetings section lists all project-related meetings, allowing for the creation of new meetings or linking existing ones.

Effective meeting management ensures that all decisions and actions from meetings are tracked and followed up on. This enhances communication, ensures that all team members are aligned, and maintains accountability for meeting outcomes, contributing to better project governance.

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Project Hierarchies

Fluid supports the creation and management of project hierarchies by linking or unlinking projects.

Managing project hierarchies helps in organising and overseeing related projects within a larger program. Information from linked sub-projects is displayed in additional sections on the parent project's workspace, ensuring comprehensive oversight and facilitating strategic alignment and resource allocation across multiple projects.

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Documents

The Documents section enables linking to existing document repositories or uploading documents directly to Fluid.

Centralising all project-related information ensures that documents are organised and readily available to stakeholders. This improves information accessibility, supports effective documentation management, and ensures that all project documentation is kept up-to-date and is easily retrievable, enhancing project communication and record-keeping.

Fluid Projects empowers project managers and PMOs with a comprehensive suite of tools designed to enhance project management efficiency, facilitate collaboration, and support strategic decision-making, ensuring successful project delivery and optimal resource utilisation.