Assembla offers rudimentary portfolio management. While it is very basic at this time, planning ahead will allow you to use advanced features as we roll them out without having to do extra work on changing workspaces around and moving files.
Here are the basic rules for workspaces:
- Permissioning is done at the space level
- If you want to apply different permissions, you should create mulitple spaces.
- Our "spaces" are containers for teams, tools for teams.
- If you have one team that should see the same thing, you should create a space for it.
- Workspaces can only belong to one portfolio at a time.
Keep the following in mind when creating workspaces to achieve the best results.
What teams are you migrating to Assembla?
If you are migrating Development (a department), create one workspace. If you have a PMO which has projects, you may want to consider breaking workspaces apart for reporting purposes. In general, only create one workspace for working on code.
How do you want to handle reporting?
Right now, you can create a Portfolio workspace for your company, have project managers subscribe their project to the portfolio, and then view a complete list of all projects from your portfolio.
Project managers provide weekly status reports to the portfolio manager, which display in the portfolio workspace. A portfolio can have members, and then be a member of a portfolio workspace.
What will you do with the workspace when the project ends?
Keep in mind that projects get finished (or shelved, canceled...). Departments have ongoing work. You may want to run the project and then keep the workspace (with all associated data in it) for the department to continue using.
For example:
- Set up a customer service department - Create a workspace to set up the department and then continue using it to run the department.
- Provide a customer with a quote - Create a workspace for working on the quote. When the customer accepts the quote, use it to manage job agreements and billable hours, separate from the actual work for the project. Let the customer continue using the project workspace when the work is finished and retire the quote workspace.
- Plan the company holiday party - Create a workspace to collaborate on the project and then retire it after the party. You can retain the workspace and make a copy of it for next year's holiday party.
Here is an example of a portfolio workspace:
