For future development, you can view our roadmap here.

New Navigation

October 2023
We've updated the navigation within the project overview page. There is now a sub-navigation which allows you to navigate to kanban, plan, meetings and more! This is to allow for exciting new features coming soon, available

New Feature - GANTT Planning

June 2023
Our product team have been busy designing, developing and testing a new planning feature in Sharktower. We have now released Gantt Charts allowing you to choose between our delivery path or Gantt view when creating a project. 

Find out how to use the Gantt chart feature in our handy guide. 

New Feature - File attachment for work items 

November 2022
You can now upload files to work items, this is great if you want to share documents with your team or suppliers and keep everything in one place. Find out more here!

New Features & Homepages Improvements

October 2022

• Homepage - This has been updated with new insights and quick navigation to your most recently accessed projects. You can also see how many work items you've been assigned - clicking this will take you to My Kanban.
  
  
• Favourite Projects - You can now favourite projects from the projects screen by clicking the star icon. These will appear at the top of the list and also appear on the homepage.
   
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Improvements to Objectives & Work Item Labels

22 August 2022

• Objective Titles -  If the Objective title is long you can hover over the title and a new pop-out will appear. 
• Work Item Labels - If you have a lot of work item labels you can now scroll through them. Labels work great for additional categories or for enhancing your filters. 

New Feature & Improvements - Focus For The Day tweak and new project metadata

13th July 2022

• Focus For The Day tiles now specify the project to which the work item belongs. We know a lot of our customers use templates and therefore often have work items with the same names across different projects - to help them prioritise, we've added the project name to the tiles to make it easier to see where to focus.
  

• Advanced project data points can be found in the Settings page of any project - you can now capture the following fields against your project, and here's why we added each one:
  • Priority: capturing this is a step towards more advanced scenario modelling in Sharktower - by capturing this against all your projects, we can help you with some basic scenario modelling for your portfolio when new projects come along out of the blue.
  • Complexity: this is a measure we believe is really important to recognise about a project as it should inform how you work, how you engage with stakeholders and how you plan.
  • Budget: we recognise that for some users, the budget feature is too low level and that sometimes, you just want to be able to capture a single figure at project level - perhaps spend is tracked in a specific financial management tool. 
  • Benefits: similarly, whilst it's possible to capture benefits at the specific outcome level in the plan, sometimes users just want one easy place to be able to track - and report on - this information.

Risks and issues now have 5 levels of impact/likelihood

13th May 2022

• Following feedback from several customers on their internal risk management framework, we've introduced two extra levels of impact and likelihood for risks and issues (Very High and Very Low) - you should see these options in your Kanban now!
  

Small updates

13th April 2022

• Hyperlinks are now clickable from the description field in any item detail view

7th April 2022

• It is now possible to delete projects in Sharktower - if you are an admin or the project manager, you will see a big red "delete project" button on the Settings page of your project
• In the Budget feature, for transparency, all references to "Forecast" have changed to "Actuals/Forecast"

New Feature & Improvements - Email Notifications & Data Extract

22nd March 2022

• In Sharktower you can now enable Email Notifications under your profile. Emails will be sent when you're tagged in a comment, assigned a task, and invited to a meeting. Simply navigate to your profile (click your initials or avatar in the top right), scroll down, and toggle notifications On. 
  
  
• When using Data Extract (under the Admin Panel) we have now included the 'Completed At' column for work items. Find out how to extract your data here.
  
  
• When you create a project from a template the activities appeared as 'Slipped'. This has now been resolved.
  
  

New Feature - Login Changes & In-app Nudges

1st February 2022

• You can now link completed Outcomes to Objectives; this is useful if you are retrospectively linking up your project milestones and deliverables to your business goals. To find out more about Objectives, check out this article. 
• When you link a work item to an activity and the work item due date is past the activity end date we'll give you a nudge to tell you. Does the activity need updating or do you need to complete that bit of work sooner? 

 7th January 2022

We made some technical improvements to our authentication mechanism, including an extra security measure when logging in - users now need to specify their organisation prior to entering their username and password. This has also unlocked the ability to provide Single Sign-On (SSO) as an authentication option. See here to learn more.

New feature - project labels!

17 December

You can now categorise your projects in more ways than one. With our portfolios feature, it's possible to group projects into different portfolios - but now with project labels, you can tag your projects with other properties too - for example, is it Strategic or Mandatory Regulatory? Is it Gold, Silver or Bronze? Which business unit is the project sponsor?

We've also renamed the "Team" page as "Settings" and moved it over to the right. There are more project settings coming here soon!

New feature - plan improvements!

24 September

• When copying activities within the Plan we will now give you the option to copy linked work items - this is great if you have a repeating process that has the same underlying work.
• When moving activity dates we will ask if you want to update linked work items with a new due date. 
• Finally, when deleting activities we'll ask if you want to delete the linked work items. You can find out more in our Plan Management article.  

Bug Fixes and Improvements

03 September

• Completed outcomes now display on the Overview page - as well as looking ahead to the upcoming outcomes on your project, stakeholders can now also see what's been accomplished so far!
  
• Meeting email summaries for recurring meetings now separate items raised in that instance from items which are still open from previous instances
  

Bug Fixes and Improvements

03 August

• On the Projects page, we have improved Portfolio Selection to indicate better the hierarchy and relationship between Portfolios.

• When linking an Outcome to an Objective you will now be able to see the Project name, making it easier to distinguish between outcomes with the same name (e.g. Go Live, Stage Gate X) on multiple projects.

• Users can now select Opex as a category within Budget to help capture expenses correctly and ensure alignment with reporting needs.

• We have also made some improvements behind the scenes to our infrastructure and our deployment pipeline that will help us continue to provide quick and robust releases in the future.

New feature!

08 July

We are excited to announce we have just released a data extract feature and improved on how Outcomes are delivered in Sharktower:

• Data Extract provides you with an XLSX file containing all of the relevant Project and Portfolio data from across a specific account. This can be used for powering reports, keeping an audit trail, and integrating with existing platforms and tools. Find out more here. 

• With more and more organisations focusing on benefits realisation, we've added new fields that allow you to mark an outcome as a ‘Project Milestone’ or a ‘Business Outcome’. Even better, you can add the expected value – monetary or otherwise – associated with the outcome. Check out the knowledge base for more information. 

19 May

Summary of our recent releases over the last week;

• You can now complete a project! Head to the Project Overview page and through the RAG status modal you can set the project status to “Completed”. This is also reflected on the Project Dashboard, where completed projects can be filtered out.
  
  
  
  
• The today line on Plan is now much more visible at all zoom levels.
• The group selector tool on Plan is now also much more visible and easier to use.
• On the Project Dashboard, Outcomes will now always show the title rather than the description.
• New loading spinner, for when switching between certain areas of Sharktower. 
  
  

Bug Fixes and Improvements

05 May

Summary of our recent releases over the last month;

• An improved authentication mechanism for when our users are logging in, changing password,s and adding users
• Fixed an issue where users could not link work items created during a meeting
• We now remember your project filters! Set your project filters on the project dashboard and if you navigate away, Sharktower will remember your filters for when you come back
• Small improvement to the colour coding of the budget delta figure on the Project Overview - Budget tile.
• Rewording of "Costs" to "Budget" in the RAG modal
• You can now check the performance of workstreams on the Project Overview page!  Head to the Activity Overview tile and click the expand icon to view

Bug Fixes and Improvements

26 Mar

Summary of our recent releases over the last week;

• Improved the RAG status modal so if you cancel your changes, they are actually cleared the next time you open the modal
• Added a scroll bar to work items that have long descriptions, so it's now easier to read them!!
• Improved the labels experience when editing or deleting through the menu
• You can now filter by Project Manager on the Project Dashboard

Bug Fixes and Improvements

12 Mar

We've fixed a pesky bug and made some improvements this week;

• Creating a project with a template was sometimes creating an empty project
• Project Budget is now only visible to Project Managers and Delegates
• The Project Budget widget on the Project Overview page now displays the budget, forecast, and delta figures
  
  

Project Budget Updates and Improvements

5 Mar

Our releases this week see yet more updates and improvements to our Budget feature.

We've added a new tile to show the start and end date of the project alongside the chart.
 

The start date is taken from the date the project was created on Sharktower, or if you've entered the start and end date in Allocation settings, it will be taken from there.

The Budget vs. Forecast chat is also now displayed on the Project Overview page! 

Additionally, we've made some small improvements based on customer feedback as follows;

• When updating the RAG Status Summary or a specific Project Status dropdown, the last updated date will now reflect these updates.
• The user experience when adding an Objective has been improved, the "Location" dropdown has been removed as this not relevant information.
  
  

Over the next few weeks, we'll be looking to deliver more enhancements to Project Budget including permissions changes based on recent user feedback.

Project Budget & Portfolio Reporting Improvements

8 Feb

This release sees further improvements to our Budget and Reporting features.  

We've added tiles to display the total project budget, the current forecast and the delta.  Additionally, a graph is now displayed to show the cumulative budget and forecast over time.

For Portfolio Reporting we've added the following;

• Export reports as a CSV
• Filter out closed/completed Risks & Issues
• Avatars can now be interacted with to view user cards
• Each column can now be sorted

Project Budget (BETA)

28 Jan

Good news!  We've released our shiny new Budget feature so you can manage your project budgets, better.

Managing the project budget in line is one of the most difficult things in project management, yet it's a huge factor in determining the success of your project.

With this new feature, you can keep track of the budget and forecast, month by month.  By breaking the project budget down into different categories & types, you can quickly spot cost overruns, where the wrong resource are being used, or inaccurate estimates.

Why BETA?  There's more to come.  Our talented engineers are still furiously working in the background on feature additions and improvements.

Where is Budget?  You can find Budget in any project, just look out for the link to the right of "Allocation" on the top navigation bar.

Portfolio Reporting (Part 1!)

15 December

Sharktower is pleased to announce that the first part of our new Portfolio Reporting feature is now live!

We've listened to customer feedback and we realise that an overview of Risks & Issues across multiple projects and portfolios is essential for monitoring and tracking risks your project teams foresee as well as issues that arise.

From the Reporting option on the left hand-navigation bar, you can view your entire organisation's risks and issues then filter down to your portfolio or sort by Project, Title, Value or Due Date.

You can also interact with the Project and the Title of the Risk/Issue to view more information.

Coming Soon we will be adding more reporting and additional sorting/exporting

Project Allocation

16 November

Allocation is the process of planning, scheduling, and allocating resources in the best possible way. The ultimate aim is to maximise your resources’ efficiency. This, in turn, will help the success of your project, task, or monthly objectives.

You will now be able to build project teams based on team member’s skills, working patterns and capacity to maximise resource efficiency.

We’ll provide a bird’s eye view of your allocated work, enabling you to manage and plan resources to give an ideal timeline of the project to foresee and avoid problems.

Key Features

• Allocate work to project team members and manage capacity
• Add “unassigned” resource and assign a job role to complete initial planning
• View your project’s utilisation summary per day or over time
• Comment & tag users on specific work allocation items to discuss, plan and collaborate resource demand

Find out how to use the feature here

Risks and Issues Improvements

29 October

We’re delighted to announce some small improvements to our Risk and Issue work items.

So, what's changed?

Risks

• New fields that allow you to add more detailed description around consequence & mitigation
• Ability to assign a risk impact date, risk likelihood and an impact rating
• Option to add in a risk value
• Link relevant activities and other work items associated with that Risk
  
  
  Issues
  
  
  • Ability to assign issue impact
  • Option to add in an issue value
  • Link relevant activities and other work items associated with that Issue
    
    

Project plan views have had a makeover 

22 June

You'll see that zoom levels are focused more on timeframes and, with improved styling, all elements of the plan can be viewed and interacted with at every zoom level.

What's changed?

1. New toolbar zoom options to focus on periods of time rather than %
2. Visual styling of plan elements (activity lines, nodes and icon sizes) are clearer at all zoom levels
3. Cluster names and activity names are readable in all views and if too long, accessible via tool-tip
4. We've removed the gradient between workstream and activity status: activity status is now visible as a glowing node (if 'At Risk' or 'Slipped')
5. You can now select any colour you like for your workstreams and clusters.

Project overview re-design

7 May

Visit a project overview page and you'll see some big changes:

• A major User Experience overhaul, with extra visual polish and more of the information you need.
• Our Project Health, Slippage and Team Sentiment charts have moved to this page and we’ve added in-app explainability for each model. So you will now be able to understand your scores more clearly, and know what to focus on to make your project even better.
• Activity updates will now be presented across 4, 8 and 12 weeks where you can see what’s overdue, completed and due to be completed as a feed.

Richer descriptions

04 May

Great news! We've re-introduced markdown for descriptions, so you can now add bold text, italic text, bullet points and line breaks.

Working patterns

27 Apr

We've introduced working patterns, which you can set for your business as an Admin. Users will see these on their profiles, and can make adjustments if their hours differ from the business defaults.

Add skills to your profile

15 Apr

Now you can let your team mates know about any relevant skills you have by adding them to your profile. 

Try it now, showcase your talents and help others select you for pieces of work.

Learn more about your profile here.

Mobile notifications

8 Apr

We're delighted to announce that you'll now receive Sharktower notifications on your mobile device. This is a fantastic extension to our suite of tools for staying in the loop and keeping in touch with your teams. Now you'll always have the information you need at your fingertips and be alerted with updates wherever you are.

Don't have our mobile app yet? Download it for iOS and Android today!

Depicting dependencies between projects

27 Mar

Today we’re launching the ‘cross-project dependencies’ feature; enabling project managers to flag-up and view where projects have dependencies on others (and see blockers clearly before things overrun).

It’s quick and easy to use, too. Just hit the ‘Add dependency’ button and select the inter-dependent activity from the dropdown menu. Then all co-dependent projects are visible in your plan.

There’s a step-by-step guide in our knowledge base, here.

Newsfeed refresh

16 Mar

Our ST genius Data Scientists have been making our recommender engine even smarter! You'll now find that your newsfeed feels more tailored to you, with more of the updates you want to see.

Tag and review work items