Project Portfolio and Milestones
A portfolio view that runs from every project, to the ones in flight, to the milestones they are judged by — plus a form to start the next.
These images are illustrations of the concept, not screenshots of the actual product.
Overview
This concept covers the project layer of PlanMagnet: the container a body of work lives in, the filtered slices a team actually looks at day to day, the milestones a delivery conversation turns on, and the form that brings a new project into being. The four illustrated screens move from the widest view of the portfolio down to a single setup form.
The problem is one of altitude. A project list that shows everything is useless for a standup, and a single project view is useless for a portfolio review. Teams end up maintaining a second list somewhere — a pinned message, a spreadsheet of what is live this quarter — because the tool only offered one lens. Milestones suffer the same fate: once a date slips, it quietly disappears from the view that was supposed to track it, and the slip is rediscovered later in a meeting.
The illustrated experience answers that by making each slice a real page. The projects section in the rail expands into four peers: the full list, the active filter, milestones across all projects, and planning. The active view names its own count in a subtitle and states plainly when nothing is in progress. The milestones view sits at portfolio level rather than inside one project, and its filter chips include pending, in progress, completed, missed and cancelled — treating a missed milestone as a visible state rather than something that falls off the board.
Creation is deliberately short. The create-project form asks for a name, a key that will prefix work item identifiers, a description, a methodology chosen from the processes the product supports, and a start and end date. That is enough to give the project an identity, a process and a shape in time, with everything else layered on later rather than demanded up front.
In the wider product these projects are what the task board, sprint planning and the delivery analytics all hang from, and the milestones illustrated here are the same ones the analytics view counts when it flags work at risk.
What this concept shows
- A projects section that expands into peer views for the full list, active work, milestones and planning
- An active-projects page that counts what is in progress in its subtitle and states clearly when nothing is
- Portfolio-level milestones spanning all projects rather than being buried inside a single one
- Milestone filter chips for all, pending, in progress, completed, missed and cancelled states
- Explicit empty states with short, plain messages instead of blank content areas
- A create-project form covering name, project key, description, methodology, and start and end dates
- Helper text explaining that the project key becomes the prefix for work item identifiers
- A create action shown muted while the form is still empty, with a cancel action beside it
How it works
- Open the projects section from the module rail and expand it to reveal the list, active, milestones and planning views.
- Start on the full project list to see the portfolio, then switch to the active view to narrow it to work in progress.
- Read the active count in the subtitle, or the plain empty-state line when nothing is currently running.
- Move to milestones to look across every project at once, filtering by pending, in progress, completed, missed or cancelled.
- Open the create-project form to start something new, giving it a name, a key, a description and a methodology.
- Set the start and end dates to place the project in time, then confirm to create it.
Who it's for
- Project managers running a portfolio of concurrent projects
- Delivery and program leads tracking milestones across teams
- Engineering managers setting up a new project and its process
- Product managers who need to see what is actually in flight
- Agency and consulting teams coordinating multiple client engagements
Illustrations
4 illustrations of this concept. Select one to view it full size.
Projects Section and Its Sub-Views
The projects section is shown while its list is still loading, with a spinner alone in the content area, which makes the surrounding navigation the subject of the illustration. In the left rail the projects entry is expanded to reveal four sub-views — all projects, active, milestones and planning — with the all-projects entry highlighted as current. The breadcrumb above the content repeats that path from home through the product and the projects section to the page itself, and a small control sits at the right end of the breadcrumb bar. The top bar keeps the organization, workspace and project switcher, a product switcher, a language selector, and controls for search, help, notifications, settings and theme. A footer spans the lower half with the wordmark and tagline, social links, and columns of product, resource and legal links covering terms, privacy, security, compliance, cookie, acceptable use, service level and refund policies.
Active Projects Filter
The active-projects view is drawn in its empty state. A heading names the view and a subtitle counts the projects currently in progress, which is zero in this illustration, while the content area carries a single short line reporting that there are no active projects. The left rail shows the projects group expanded with the active entry highlighted, so the relationship between this filtered slice and the wider portfolio stays visible. The breadcrumb names the page at the end of its trail, and the top bar keeps the organization, workspace and project switcher, the product switcher, the language selector and the search, help, notification and theme controls in place. The design point is that a filtered slice of the portfolio is a first-class page rather than a toggle buried in a list, and that the empty case is written deliberately rather than left as a blank area.
Milestones Across All Projects
This illustration shows the milestones view at portfolio level. A heading and a subtitle count milestones across all projects, and a row of filter chips sits directly beneath it covering all, pending, in progress, completed, missed and cancelled, with the all chip selected. The content area reports that no milestones were found, which is how the concept renders the empty case. The chip row carries the idea: missed and cancelled are ordinary, visible states rather than outcomes that quietly drop off the board, so a delivery conversation can start from what slipped. The left rail shows the projects group expanded with the milestones entry highlighted, placing milestones alongside the project list, the active filter and planning rather than inside a single project, and the breadcrumb traces the same path to the page.
Create Project Form
The create-project view is a single form card headed for project details, introduced by a subtitle describing setup of a new project with a timeline and a budget. Cancel and create actions sit in the page header, with the create action drawn in a muted, inactive state while the form is still empty. The card asks for a project name, a project key with helper text explaining that the key becomes the prefix for work item identifiers, and a description. A methodology dropdown is shown set to Scrum, reflecting the idea that a project should be configured for the process a team actually runs rather than forced into one. Start and end date pickers close the card as a pair, placing the project in time. Placeholder text in the name, key and description fields offers examples rather than real values.
Topics
- project portfolio management
- active projects view
- project milestones tracking
- missed milestone status
- create a project
- project methodology setup
- scrum kanban project
- project key prefix
- project timeline dates
- milestone filters
- multi-project overview
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