From portfolios to project experts: September’s campfire catch-up!

Hi folks!

Beach days may be over for another year, but our campfire is still burning well into the night. 

So let’s crack open the marshmallows and catch up on the latest updates, demos and links.

Warm up with product walk-throughs!

We’ve got two new demos for you, both delivered by our Chief Customer Officer, Lynsey Taylor.

Prioritising tasks with ‘Focus for the Day’

Sharktower’s ‘Focus for the day’ features helps you organise and prioritise the tasks that need your attention most. Here, Lynsey gives a 90-second walk-through of how the feature works, including how to flag ‘blocked’ tasks and postpone others.

Managing a business change portfolio

In this 3.5-minute demo, Lynsey shows how Sharktower makes managing a large change portfolio simple – with groupings, filters and at-a-glance alerts.

A feedback-fuelled new feature

Users asked us for these time-saving task-management features, so we got on the case.

Auto-shifting task dates

At some point in the life of a project, you might need to reschedule parts of the plan because of date shifts or project changes. Now in Sharktower, when you bulk-move activities in the Plan, you can also choose to move the dates of the underlying tasks at the same time. But importantly, Sharktower doesn’t automatically change the dates of linked tasks. We let you decide.

Here’s how it looks in action:

Now you can move multiple tasks at the same time in Sharktower

Why is this important? Most Gantt-based tools use a feature called auto-schedule, which automatically changes the dates on dependencies when you move part of the plan. But Gantt charts don’t take into account what the owner of the task knows. Sharktower gives you the choice to automatically reschedule the dates or empower your project teams and doers to decide what can be changed and when. 

Copy & Paste 

A bit like the date shifting (sort of), Sharktower will now let you copy and paste the entire scope of an activity (i.e. the tasks underneath as well as the activity itself). So if you have a repeated pattern like a set of sign-off tasks, regular reporting tasks or tasks you do every single sprint, then you can now copy these along with the activities!

Check out how easy it is in this 13-second demo (yes, it really is that quick to do):

Sharktower’s new copy and paste feature saves heaps of time

(If you use a similar naming convention for your activities but completely different underlying scope, you probably wouldn’t want to copy the associated work items, but the option is there).

Experts and events news

Check out our favourite non-product-related news and views

Project experts and transformation leaders to follow today

Looking for some new project-related inspiration? These 5 experts have boat-loads of experience and aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo. Read why we love their content – and get links to their accounts – in our recent article

In-person events are back! Check out this year’s Startup Summit.

Those of you who work in the start-up community may have already heard of Startup Summit. This year, it’s back as an online AND in-person event, and we can’t wait to get back out there and be part of it. Find out more about the line-up and ticket prices on the event website

And finally…

We’re in a book!

Peter Taylor was named the PMO Global Alliance’s ‘PMO Influencer of the Year 2020′ and is about to launch a new book – including a chapter written by Sharktower’s co-founder Craig Mackay.

The book ‘AI and the Project Manager’ aims to help project managers adapt to AI technologies, discussing how AI will reinvent the project world and allow project managers to focus on people.

You can read more about the book (and pre-order if you’d like one!) on Amazon

That’s all from us for this catch-up. Until next time!

Team Sharktower