Parent/Child Projects

[#1]

I apologize if this is duplicate but I did not see it anywhere. We have a need to create parent projects that would live between the Program level and the current project level. While I understand that the work could be completed in one project using parent/child tasks we have many departments that would prefer to have their projects tracked separately. There would be many child projects which would roll up to many parent projects and into ONE program.

I saw some talk about this on the Global forum but that was it. Please help me vote up this feature request!

Thanks!!

Michael

[#2]

The Home Depot has this exact same scenario that we are trying to solve for. (credit to Chris Canada - I borrowed your scenario and tweaked it)

We would also like to be part of the team to talk through different scenarios with the product team if there are spots available!

Our Scenario:

Project A = Campaign with many supporting tasks; (Lead by Jane)

Project B = Studio task that support completion of project A (Lead by Bob)

Jane creates a project in WF to track and manage an upcoming marketing campaigns. (Project A) She creates a task in this project to have a webpage developed and assigns it to Bob, who leads the digital team.

Bob gets notified of the task assigned by Jane in Project A and he creates his own project to manage the studio tasks that complete the creative (Project B). As studio tasks progresses on project B, the % completed changes to 50%.

For Jane to be aware of this progress, relative to her campaign (Project A), Bob needs to manually update the task in Project A to match his progress of Project B. Jane could always go to Bob's project, but this seem like added effort.

If Bob were able to RELATE his Project B to the task Jane created in Project A - and the system updated the Project A Task item to match that of the progress % Project B - well Jane could simply review her Project A and know exactly where Bob is in the development of the webpage. And to aid Jane in her efforts to manage a complex campaign, she clicks on the Task from Project A and is immediately directed over to Project B where she can review and contribute.

[#3]

Thought I’d add this, in case anyone else finds it helpful. Hopefully it makes sense.

We had an immediate need for establishing a parent/child relationship, so we developed sudo relationship using calculated fields and Fusion.

Currently we are using a process where we assign a parent project to each child, using a type ahead field on a custom form on each child project.

Fusion will append the parent project number (We have Fusion generating custom sequential project numbers. For test project it does TESTXXXXXX) and project name to the Child project name. Using a view and grouping then shows us that relationship at the project level.

It’s pretty basic, but gives us an extra level to capture data.

The next phase is getting child info to populate to the parent. In this case we have a custom form on each task of the parent project, and we again use a type ahead, this time assigning the child project to tasks on the parent.

This custom form then pulls basic info from the child project to the associated task on the parent project (Calculated fields populate with Child Project ID, Child Project Status, Child Project Percent and child start and end dates).

From here we have Fusion update the Parent task percentage and dates with whatever the child task percentage is and dates are, giving the following results:

We’re still testing the child rollup to the parent, and the biggest issue so far is that the calculated fields need to be “kicked” to recalculate.

[#4]

Thanks for bringing this idea as in roadmap. But, in addition to that. I would also propose to discuss with different project managers from different customers to get more insight and make this field development most usable via Workfront. For e.g. connecting of any task from a project to another project task via cross project predecessors and update of planned start date and planned completion date is a very important key factor to calculate the timeline in mother project.

[#5]

Thanks for bringing this idea as in roadmap. But, in addition to that. I would also propose to discuss with different project managers from different customers to get more insight and make this field development most usable via Workfront. For e.g. connecting of any task from a project to another project task via cross project predecessors and update of planned start date and planned completion date is a very important key factor to calculate the timeline in mother project.

[#6]

Thanks for bringing this idea as in roadmap. But, in addition to that. I would also propose to discuss with different project managers from different customers to get more insight and make this field development most usable via Workfront. For e.g. connecting of any task from a project to another project task via cross project predecessors and update of planned start date and planned completion date is a very important key factor to calculate the timeline in mother project.

[#7]

Thanks for bringing this idea as in roadmap. But, in addition to that. I would also propose to discuss with different project managers from different customers to get more insight and make this field development most usable via Workfront. For e.g. connecting of any task from a project to another project task via cross project predecessors and update of planned start date and planned completion date is a very important key factor to calculate the timeline in mother project.

[#8]

Thanks for bringing this idea as in roadmap. But, in addition to that. I would also propose to discuss with different project managers from different customers to get more insight and make this field development most usable via Workfront. For e.g. connecting of any task from a project to another project task via cross project predecessors and update of planned start date and planned completion date is a very important key factor to calculate the timeline in mother project.

[#9]

Hi everyone,

As we continue our work on this idea, we have identified certain opportunities to expand the parent/child use case to a more generic solution that can also affect other use cases than the ones mentioned in the comments to this idea. We are currently having research calls to further explore that idea. If you're interested, please feel free to schedule time via the following link, we would love to hear your feedback! Link

Thanks,
Vazgen

[#10]

Hi @Chris Perrin

You can force a recalculation within your fusion scenario using the Miscellaneous Actions options.

Love to see the workaround. It is similar to other customers solutions as well as something we've used internally at Adobe Workfront. Also...note Vazgen's note earlier.

[#11]

Hi everyone,

To provide an update here, we are working on the first iteration of the new object that will unlock this use scenario. We plan to gradually add functionality to the object, bringing it to parity with existing Workfront objects. One key note, the object will not be bound by the limitation of projects needing to be in one portfolio/program. Using that, the users will be able to group projects from multiple programs and portfolios and manage cross-portfolio initiatives with ease. We will be providing updates on the enhancements as they become available with our Preview releases.