Manage project portfolios
better, together

Backlog’s project portfolio management software helps companies manage complex projects that span multiple teams and departments. By using Backlog to unify their approach to project management, companies can streamline access to information and accelerate progress toward their strategic initiatives.

Popular project portfolio management features in Backlog include Gantt charts, burndown charts, and Kanban boards. These well-known frameworks make it easy for project stakeholders to quickly determine progress and identify bottlenecks that could prevent them from achieving strategic objectives.

Backlog’s intuitive design and advanced collaboration features bring team members together, simplifying the process of managing work and allowing everyone to focus their full attention on activities that help the company progress toward its goals.

Cacoo provides a wide selection of visualization and project planning tools that empower project managers to create powerful yet eye-catching project portfolio plans that align teams.

With a simple drag-and-drop interface, it’s easy for new users to get to grips with Cacoo and start creating and sharing project plans. The platform offers a selection of project management templates, with pre-configured visual templates for popular project management frameworks, including Gantt charts, kanban boards, fishbone diagrams, and more.

But where Cacoo shines brightest is its collaboration features. These tools unite teams to exchange ideas, share feedback, and co-create project plans and timelines, regardless of where team members are based. Popular collaboration features include multi-user editing, live chat and video calling, version history, and more.

Backlog’s project portfolio management processes facilitate better decision-making for development teams by streamlining access to important project information. Visual project management frameworks, including Kanban boards and Gantt charts, help decision-makers quickly understand progress and diagnose potential issues.

Backlog also has several tools explicitly built for development teams, including in-line code review, version control, and built-in Git and SVN repositories. These tools allow development teams to manage their project work right alongside their code, improving access to information and boosting productivity. This approach enhances accountability and transparency, helping teams work together more closely to achieve their goals.

Several other Backlog features enhance decision-making processes further, including project wikis, which serve as a centralized repository of project information, plus integrations with a variety of leading communication and development tools.

Yes – Cacoo is the perfect tool for creating diagrams and charts that support the project portfolio management process. With Cacoo, it’s easy for project managers and team leaders to create striking visual project plans that can be used to convey timelines, share data, and pinpoint key milestones.

Cacoo's Template Library comes with dozens of pre-built templates for diagrams and charts that are perfectly suited to project portfolio management, including:

• Gantt chart template: Manage task timelines and better understand the time requirements and owners of each stage of every project in your portfolio.
• Kanban board template: Identify the status of key projects at a glance with this simple yet powerful Kanban board template.
• PERT chart template: These charts visualize project dependencies to ensure that critical projects continue to progress according to your schedule.
• Weekly calendar template: Map the activities that need to happen each week to drive progress across every project in your portfolio.

You’ll find dozens of Backlog provides project managers and team members with a centralized dashboard to understand the status of each of their projects. This ensures everyone remains aligned on the status of their projects and understands how they contribute to organizational goals. workflow management templates. Choices include popular agile frameworks with wide-ranging applications like kanban boards as well as more specialized diagrams such as fishbone diagrams, which help teams diagnose the root cause of issues in their workflows.

Using Backlog also allows project portfolio managers to assess the current workload of different team members. This information can help team members prioritize their work and ensure everyone has the bandwidth to accomplish their assigned tasks.

Project portfolio managers can also use Backlog to assign priority levels to each project, milestone, and task. This promotes improved alignment when it comes to the importance of specific projects and prompts team members to focus on the projects that are most important to the organization’s goals.

Absolutely. Cacoo is a fantastic tool for designers to both work in and quantify their progress on the various projects in their portfolios. Cacoo offers a variety of project management templates that designers can use to better track the progress of each of their projects, from kanban boards to project calendars.

Beyond its project management capabilities, Cacoo is also a great platform for designers to share progress on their portfolios. With a built-in presentation mode, the ability to export files in various formats, and the capability to embed Cacoo diagrams in other web properties, using Cacoo ensures that everyone remains up-to-date regarding portfolio progress.

Many design teams work closely together, and with Cacoo’s collaboration tools, it’s easy for everyone to understand the current status of different projects in the team’s portfolio. Multiple users can work on the same diagram in real time, updating their teammates on progress and exchanging ideas using comments, live chat, and even built-in video calling.

Integrating Cacoo and Backlog brings both beauty and organization to the project portfolio management process. Teams can map out their processes, track project status in Cacoo, and then add their Cacoo diagram to Backlog to share their work with other team members.

In Backlog, Cacoo diagrams update in real-time as users make changes. Teams can discuss the contents of their Cacoo diagram from Backlog, streamlining project communications. Users can add Cacoo diagrams to Backlog wikis and control who can edit each diagram.

Cacoo diagrams offer endless project portfolio management use cases, from creating technical infrastructure diagrams that guide development decisions to tracking project progress in widely used project management frameworks.

Yes: Backlog comes with several built-in reports, analytics, and visual displays that managers can use to assess the health of their project portfolio. These include:

• Personal dashboard: Each user has a personal Backlog dashboard. This page displays a summary of the projects the user is enrolled in, the tasks assigned to them, and all recent updates in that project. This provides users with a quick overview of the status of each of their projects.
• Daily project reports: Users can opt to receive a daily email report on each project they’re subscribed to. This report shows the tasks that are due on that day as well as any overdue tasks. The email also displays the status of each issue and the person assigned to it, allowing project managers to identify and resolve potential bottlenecks quickly.
• Weekly project reports: Weekly reports are sent each Monday and summarize the progress of all projects within a Backlog space. These reports highlight the tasks and milestones due in the coming week, the team member awarded the most stars by their colleagues last week, and a personalized summary of the tasks each user completed over the previous three weeks.
• Visual project reports: Backlog also offers a variety of built-in visualization tools that help users assess the health of their project portfolio. These include burndown charts, which help identify bottlenecks and understand progress vs. the planned project timeline, and Gantt charts, which display whether a project is progressing according to schedule.

Backlog is renowned for its ease of use – in fact, in 2023, Backlog was awarded the Best Ease of Use Badge by top independent review site Capterra. The platform is easy for new users to get started with, offering a range of pre-built project management tools and frameworks that bring structure to complex workflows.

We’ve also curated a series of resources designed to help you get the most out of Backlog. That includes our Help Center, the Nulab Community, and a series of in-depth guides in our Learning Center.

There certainly are! Head over to the Cacoo Template Library and navigate to the Planning & Management section, where you’ll find 66 templates to help you better illustrate your organization's project portfolio management process. Alongside some of the templates already discussed here, you’ll find others, including:

• Project management diagram
• Project management presentation
• Responsibility assignment matrix
• Project timeline template

The best part? All of these templates are completely customizable, meaning they’re perfectly suited to be used as the starting point for your own unique project portfolio management processes.