Glossary

Allocation

The actual or planned workload of the individual resources or a Team. The effort expressed as the time or number of Story Points required to complete a task is evenly distributed over the task's duration.

Baseline

To assess the performance of your project over time, you can set Baselines and track deviations from your initial schedule.

You can create and delete Baselines for all the tasks in the scope of the Box or for selected tasks only. They are displayed as bold lines, showing the position of the task at the moment of creating the Baseline.

Basic task

Basic tasks are stored by the App and are NOT synchronized with monday or other connected tools like Trello. Basic tasks can be viewed only using the App's Gantt or the WBS Widget.

They can coexist with other tasks and work great as placeholders or temporary tasks and simulate higher levels in the hierarchy or serve as additional information box.

Box

The most basic element of the App. Boxes are high-level task containers arranged into a hierarchy.

A Box is a container for tasks - tasks can come from external tools, such as monday or Trello. Basic tasks are native to the App and don't exist anywhere outside of it.

Each Box has its own configuration (security settings, scope, modules). Depending on the setup, Boxes let you perform various actions and visualize data.

Box hierarchy

A tree structure consisting of a Box root (parent node) and Boxes (nodes). Each node can potentially have a different Box type.

The hierarchy is presented in the Hierarchy and Timeline modes of the Overview module as well as in the Box Switcher.

How the hierarchy can be arranged depends on Box type settings - possible parents are defined for each Box type. Additionally, scope type settings validation is performed when a Box is created or moved.

Box type

Box template which defines the most relevant characteristics of a Box (node), such as:

types of parent Boxes under which a Box of a given type can be nested
default module configuration and names
default column view of different modules
default card layout
default Period mode

Box types can be defined by BigPictures administrators. Read more here.

Box module

The following modules are available in BigPicture:

Overview
Gantt
Resources
Teams
Calendar

Most of the modules can be preconfigured using Box types.

Box switcher

The Box switcher is a mini version of the Hierarchy mode of the Overview module. It shows the Box names and the hierarchy.

Use the Box switcher to easily shift between different Boxes. Once opened, the active Box will be highlighted so you can easily switch to a sub-Box or a different Box.

You will be able to browse only the Boxes to which you have permission (you can't see a box that you can't access).

Box status

Box status is displayed next to the Box name in the Box switcher. You can change the Box status in different sections of the app. In the Overview module using the right-click or by drag and drop when in Kanban mode. You can also change the status using the Board module. You can change the status of sub-Boxes from the Scope definition page (Box configuration).

The status is indicated using colors and The following color-coded statuses are available:

Not started - gray
In progress - blue
Done - green

Capacity

The App calculates individual and team capacity.

The capacity of your resources is calculated based on Workload Plans and non-working days resulting from Holiday Plans and individual Absence Plans. It reflects the workload resources are capable of after everything has been considered.

Column views

Column Views allow you to add different fields as columns to the task list and configure their display and aggregation settings which determine how data is presented.

Connected tools

You can connect with platforms to plan and coordinate the work of your team if they prefer to use different tools such as Trello.

Context Box

A Box which you are currently viewing. The Box name and its status are displayed in the Box Switcher.

Critical path

The critical path is the longest sequence of tasks that determines the project duration. This feature highlights all the tasks on the critical path with the red color. Tasks on the Critical path will also be listed in the Gantt Infobar.

To highlight the entire sequence, you must define dependency links between tasks. Only the strong links that impact scheduling will determine the tasks on the critical path.

Dependency

Dependencies specify the relationships between tasks, milestones, and other items which can be presented on the timeline and can be displayed by the Gantt module.
By defining dependencies, you can not only automate task scheduling but also highlight relations between tasks without impacting the schedule. Keep in mind, that the items presented on the Gantt chart are system-wide, and changing their dependencies might affect tasks in other Boxes or connected tools.

Effort mode

The Resources and Gantt modules show the resource workload vs capacity in three different effort mods:

Original Estimate Mode - use this mode to show planned workload versus the resource capacity.
Remaining estimate mode - use this mode to show workload history (Spent time), and the remaining workload versus the resource capacity.
Story points mode - use this mode to show the planned workload versus resource capacity expressed in Story Points.

Holiday plans

A calendar that is used to reflect the non-working day which reduces the capacity of Teams or individual Resources (Team members).

Inheritance mode

When creating a new Box type or moving a sub-Box to a different parent Box, thanks to the Inheritance mode, the Box type configuration can be passed on from the upper-level Box type to the sub-Box type.

There are three Inheritance modes that determine whether users will be able to customize the Box settings. Inheritance modes can be set for:

Card Views,
Quick filters
Column Views
Security

Marker

There may be a number of important dates that call for special care and attention. You can highlight them using a marker whatever they may be: from an important external event to a deadline, you name it. Once highlighted, they'll become instantly visible to all users with access to the App and appropriate security roles to view the Box content.

With live synchronization and a variety of colors to choose from, you can make your timeline a complete source of information for everyone.

Milestone

Any task can be converted into a milestone. On the timeline, milestones are represented as diamonds. The milestone duration is always one day.

Used to mark specific points along a project timeline and they do not impact the project duration.

Multi-select

You can select multiple tasks and perform bulk operations (deleting tasks, moving them to a different place in the hierarchy, outdent, indent, change task color).

Multi-select is supported by the following modules:

Overview
Gantt

Non-working days

The App can recognize non-working days and adjust the task period. This means that if you plan a task or part of your task's period on a non-working day it will be moved, extended or shortened.

Each non-working day reduces the capacity of your Resource. The App calculates the capacity and does not sync with the Host platform (you will not be able to see the capacity of your Resource directly in monday or Trello).

Period warning

Period warnings occur when a parent task can't be recalculated due to a constrain, such as a blocking task (for example a task in Locked mode), non-working day, or when you use the manual period mode.

The warning is displayed as a yellow box with a dashed-line frame and shows the position of the parent tasks calculated based on its children.

Task Progress

The “Progress” is a BigPicture built-in field that helps you calculate the task progress. The progress can be displayed as a column, on the taskbar, and on the task details dialog once you click on the taskbar.

Resources panel

The Resources panel lets you see how much work has been assigned.

With the Resource panel enabled, the workload of each resource (assignee) will be counted in hours and color-coded depending on the resource capacity.

Scenario mode

With the Scenarios feature you can easily try out different variants of your plan, compare the results, and find the best one.

All changes made to tasks are stored in the Scenario history, and you can easily undo them.

Scope

A defined collection of tasks makes up the Box Scope. In general, tasks can be added to the scope manually or get automatically synchronized with monday or connected tools such as Trello.

Scope type

The Scope type determines how the scope of the Box functions and how is related to and impacted by other Boxes.

There are three different options:

Own-scope - the Box scope has a separate task structure and serves as a scope base for sub-scopes. Automatic rules can sync it. Use it when you want to be able to define and extend the scope of a Box by selecting tasks from monday and connected tools.
Sub-scope - the Box scope is always a subset of the scope already defined at an upper-level of the Box hierarchy.
None - the Box scope cannot be defined. Currently, you can use such a Box for calculating respective aggregates in the Box hierarchy only (visible in the Overview module). Use this setting to organize Boxes into portfolios, programs, etc. The scope is always a sum of the scopes of the sub-Boxes in the Box hierarchy.

The Search box functionality will help you quickly find the things you're interested in, and filter out unwanted tasks or Boxes.

Security

Information on Security settings can be found on the following pages:

Skills

The skills are defined at:

the task level - skill required to complete a task. The related effort is used to calculate the skill demand and it is evenly distributed over the task's duration. The skill demand will be display in the Resources module's Skill panel.
the resource level - skill acquired by the resource. The resource’s time is allocated across different skills. Skills weigh most in the "Perfect match algorithm" which is approximately 80%.

Each skill has a start and end date so you can plan the skill development over time.

Skills Panel

Skills Panel is a part of the Resources module. It displays a comprehensive list of skills required to complete tasks displayed on a timeline above. The time/story points are aggregated, so you can see exactly how much skill-related effort is needed to complete all the tasks planned for a particular period of time.

You can change the view options to display additional information:

The unspecified - total effort of tasks for which the skill is not specified.
Skill allocation - the total effort of tasks for which a given skill is set to 'required'. Only the tasks displayed on the Resource Grid (within the visualized period) are taken into account. For any task that is at least partly displayed, the skill effort is included in the calculation.
Skill capacity - total skill capacity of the currently displayed resources.
Skill remaining capacity - remaining availability in a given time period when a resource is assigned to a task.

Task

Any monday item, Trello card, or Basic task (native to the App).

Team

Teams module lets you group individual users into teams, which enables effort-based planning.

You can create global BigPicture teams and assign them to multiple Boxes. Once created, you can easily assign them to individual Boxes (a team is inherited and can't be edited on a Box level) or duplicate them in an individual Box (a team configuration is duplicated and can be further edited).

Team Capacity

The capability to achieve a set amount of productivity within a single day calculated as the sum of Team members' capacities. Team capacity factors in the existing manpower known to readily possess the necessary skill set as well as the number of hours in a workday.

Calculation of individual capacity takes into account team member's availability across all teams they're a part of.

Team code

Team code is used for identifying teams by the App's modules.

Team Member

A resource assigned to a team.

Team Member Availability

You can set availability for each team member (what percentage of their working hours is assigned to the team). Availability impacts the capacity - if a team has 4 members, and each is assigned 50% of their 8h day to the team, the team capacity for a day is 16h (if no other non-working days detract from capacity).

Timeline

The Timeline is a common element of the following modules:

Workload contouring

Workload distribution for a given task. Workload contouring allows you to specify how the effort of an assignee is distributed across a task period.

Workload plan

A calendar that is used to reflect specific working hours of an individual resource and is the basis for capacity calculation of Teams or individual Resources (Team members). Workload plans are used for defining exact working hours. You can create as many as you like and assign them to your resources separately.