System Status
System Status – Up and Running
Definitive Pro Release Notes
| Date | Type | Title | Description of Change | Applicability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-05-26 | Enhancement | Gen AI Backend Change: Prompts are Now Using Our Assistant Oliver via the OpenAI API vs. Regular ChatGPT | Changed the method that Definitive Pro uses to send data and prompts to Open AI. Definitive Pro now uses the OpenAI API, so that data shared in prompts is not used to train the underlying model. This ensures that customer data remains secure and confidential. Definitive also creates a new assistant for each customer to further protect data privacy. | All customers |
| 2024-05-26 | Enhancement | AI-Generated Project Charters | Provided the capability for project managers to automatically create project charters in Microsoft Word. This capability ensures consistency and precision, reducing the time and effort required from team members, enabling them to focus on strategic decisions and improving overall project delivery. | All customers |
| 2024-05-26 | Enhancement | My Charts: Stacked Bar Charts and Line Charts for Financial Analysis | Provided the capability for users to create charts of cost and benefit by year in either a line chart or bar chart format. | All customers |
| 2024-05-26 | Enhancement | T-Shirt Sizing | Provided the capability for resource managers to create preliminary cost estimates for projects in the early stages of the lifecycle when detailed data is not yet available. Each resource team defines their own T-shirt size categories—extra small, small, medium, large, and extra-large—based on specific criteria and guidelines they establish. For new projects, resource managers assess which T-shirt size best matches the project's description and scope. They can then allocate the estimated hours using percentages across cost pools and a fiscal year timeline according to the high-level planning dates of the project. This approach provides a quick and flexible method for initial project sizing and resource planning and improves standardization within a resource team. | All customers |
| 2024-05-09 | Enhancement | AI Personas for Participation in Project Scoring | Added the capability for AI personas to participate in project scoring. Users can add pre-defined personas (CTO, CFO, CIO, and CSO) and create their own. The AI personas, like all other participants, provide expertise and judgment during the alternative scoring process. AI personas also provide their supporting rationale for each judgment. | All customers |
| 2024-05-09 | Enhancement | Live Links to Documents in the Business Case Report | Enhanced the business case report to make each document listed on the “Documents” page a live link so that the reader of the PDF report can access the reference documents, if desired. | All customers |
| 2024-05-09 | Enhancement | Investment Ordering in Roadmaps | Enhanced the user’s ability to order investments on a roadmap. Previously, the control was limited to the ordering of the categories that the investments are associated with, but now the roadmap owner can order the investments within a category. | All customers |
| 2024-05-09 | Enhancement | New Custom Charts | Enhanced the custom charts (“My Charts”) feature to be able to group cost and benefit data by year. We also added two new chart types, line charts and horizontal bar charts. | All customers |
| 2024-04-16 | Enhancement | New “Planning Comments” Field on the Governance Tab | Provided the capability for project managers to provide planning information in the "Key Milestones" section that may be beneficial to the reviewer, such as the planned use of iterative development and deployment, the plan for multiple procurements, etc. | All customers |
| 2024-04-16 | Enhancement | AI Personas Participation in Pairwise Comparisons: | Added the capability for AI personas to participate in pairwise comparisons. Users can add pre-defined AI-based personas (CTO, CFO, CIO, and CSO) and create their own. The AI personas, like all other participants, provide expertise and judgment during the alternative scoring process. AI personas also provide their supporting rationale for each judgment. | All customers |
| 2024-04-16 | Enhancement | AI Business Case Summaries | Added an AI-generated business case summary capability in three locations: 1) On the list of business cases via a clickable icon; 2) Inside every business case using an action “Show AI Summary”; and 3) On the cover of the business case report. | All customers |
| 2024-04-16 | Enhancement | Cone of Uncertainty” View for an Investment | Added phase 2 of our “Cone of Uncertainty” feature. When inside a business case, a user can go to “Actions” --> “Cone of Uncertainty” to see what stage the investment is in (based on enterprise settings), the current project cost estimate, the upper and lower uncertainty thresholds, and what the recommended cost reserve is based on the current stage. | All customers |
| 2024-04-16 | Enhancement | New “Planning Comments” Field on the Governance Tab | Provided the capability for project managers to provide planning information in the "Key Milestones" section that may be beneficial to the reviewer, such as the planned use of iterative development and deployment, the plan for multiple procurements, etc. | All customers |
| 2024-04-16 | Enhancement | View Dashboards as Cards | Provided the capability for users to see all of the dashboards that they have access to, with each dashboard displayed as a card. Each card provides summary information about that dashboard, to include the owner, description, and type of charts that are included. See the “Dashboards” menu item in the left panel. | All customers |
| 2024-04-16 | Enhancement | Custom Roadmap Project Entries Now Clickable | On custom roadmap charts, and on dashboards that contain a custom roadmap, provided the capability for users to click on the Gantt bar for that project to go to the business case. From the business case, users can “Return to Dashboard” with one click. | All customers |
| 2024-04-16 | Enhancement | Baseline and Revision Filtering | Improved the filtering of baseline and revision copies of business cases and pushed the new standard approach across the service. (Note: B = Baseline copy; “B*” = Baseline with revision in progress; R = Revision copy.) | All customers |
| 2024-02-25 | Enhancement | Cone of Uncertainty | Added a capability to establish a cone of uncertainty for a decision portfolio. The feature includes the capability to create planning stages and assign a range of uncertainty for project cost estimates for each planning stage. The range of uncertainty is created by entering upper and lower percentages for the phase, along with a “Contingency %”. Based on the stage of each project, the "Contingency %" is applied to the project cost to establish a “Recommended Cost Reserve” (which appears at the bottom of the forecast tab). As the investment progresses, and uncertainty decreases, the contingency % and “Recommended Cost Reserve” decrease. | All customers |
| 2024-02-25 | Enhancement | View Log for Select Users | Expanded access to the “View Log” action that provides a filterable view of all changes made to a business case. This was previously an administrator only feature. Now, the following assigned roles for a given alternative can use the “View Log” action: Business Relationship Manager, Lead Business Representative, and Lead Delivery Organization POC, and Project Manager. | All customers |
| 2024-02-25 | Enhancement | Save Links as Documents | Added an action to be able to save links as documents for an alternative by using the “Documents” action. | All customers |
| 2024-02-18 | Enhancement | Benefit Realization Tab | Added an optional "Benefit Realization" tab to the business case for completed projects that provides the capability to: > Form an independent cross-functional evaluation team > Determine if planned deliverables have been made and accepted > Determine if planned business outcomes have been realized > Determine if planned financial benefit has been realized > Identify lessons learned (successes and pain points) > Formulate and categorize recommendations by focus area; and > Notify focus area owners via a feedback loop to support continuous improvement. | All customers |
| 2024-02-18 | Enhancement | Expanded Track Changes and Comparison of Business Case Versions | Expanded the ability to track changes made to business cases to include key roles, key milestones, locations, contracts, and documents. Also expanded the ability to compare versions of the business to enable comparing any baseline version of the business case with any other baseline version or to the current revision copy. Previously, comparisons were limited to the revision copy and the current baseline. | All customers |
| 2024-02-18 | Enhancement | Created a New Right for Project Managers and Business Relationship Managers | Created a new right to allow the assigned project manager (PMs) and business relationship managers (BRM) to clear resource estimate completion checkboxes and enter notes on the "Resource Estimates" tab without having to also provide them the right to enter resource estimates on the behalf of a resource manager. This enables all PMs and BRMs to clear the completion checkboxes prior to requesting a new estimate, even if they can’t add resource estimates on the behalf of a resource manager. | All customers |
| 2024-01-04 | Enhancement | Additional Optimization Options | Added the capability to perform budget optimization using various phase combinations of pre-project, project, and post-project cost. Previously, optimizations were limited to the total investment cost (i.e., all phases). | All customers |
| 2024-01-04 | Enhancement | Added "Advanced Planning” and “CPIC Phase” Fields | Added “Advanced Planning” and “CPIC Phase” fields to the Governance tab, to be centrally managed. These fields are also available when displaying the list of alternatives (business needs, capital requests, project requests) via the "Configure View" action, and when developing custom charts, dashboards, and views. The selection options in the "Advanced Planning" field are configurable, while the selection options in the "CPIC Phase" field are standard and preset. | All customers |
| 2024-01-04 | Enhancement | Roadmap Planning Dates | Added the capability to set "Roadmap Dates" for the key planning milestones associated with existing alternatives (i.e., business needs, capital requests, projects). When "Roadmap Dates" are used, they are used in lieu of the key planning dates that are on the Governance tab for that alternative. This feature provides the roadmap creator the ability to perform "what if" planning on the roadmap without altering the official planning dates. (Note: The "Roadmap Dates" are only used on roadmaps.) | All customers |
| 2024-01-04 | Enhancement | Risk and Issue Management | Added the capability to identify, assess, and control risks and issues at the alternative (i.e., business need, capital request, project) level and at the decision (i.e., portfolio) level. | All customers |
| 2024-01-04 | Enhancement | Action Item and Task Management | Added the capability to create and track actions and tasks at the alternative (i.e., business need, capital request, project) level and at the decision (i.e., portfolio) level. | All customers |
| 2024-01-04 | Enhancement | Filtered Lists | Added the capability to create lists of alternatives (i.e., business needs, capital requests, projects) that will be automatically updated based on the set value of one or more selected fields (e.g., "Planning Category", "Lead Delivery Organization"). This feature makes the management of lists more efficient and accurate as alternatives that belong to a list based on field value(s) no longer need to be manually maintained. | All customers |
| 2023-11-12 | Enhancement | Instructional Videos | Added the capability to provide instructional videos. The first video, “How to Build a Roadmap” has been added. It can be accessed under the user’s account in the upper right corner. (Note: We have other videos coming soon. Most will be less than a minute, but this one is ~6 minutes.) | All customers |
| 2023-11-12 | Enhancement | Resource Estimate Log for Tracking Changes | Added the capability to track all resource estimates in a log for each resource. The log captures who made the estimate, when it was made, and the "from" and "to" values. The log is accessble by clicking in the "Last Update" field for a specific resource and cost pool. Previously, only the last update was tracked. | All customers |
| 2023-11-05 | Enhancement | Limiting Access - Protecting the Need to Know | Added the capability for a decision manager to more tightly control who can see what in the system. Decsion managers can now limit user access to just those investments that are assigned to the user. When used in conjunction with the “No Financials” role, a decision manager can now limit a user's access to a single business case with or without financials. | All customers |
| 2023-10-22 | Enhancement | More Flexibility When a Project Manager Requests Resource Estimates | Added the capability for project managers (PMs) to select which resource managers should receive a request for a resource estimate, rather than the system automatically including all resource managers who have not already provided their resource estimate. | All customers |
| 2023-10-22 | Enhancement | Automatic Replies and Notifications to Comments | Added the capability for the assigned project manager (PM), business relationship manager (BRM), and lead delivery organization representative for a business case to be automatically notified when a comment is submitted. In addition, the submitter of a comment is also notified when a reply to a comment is made. | All customers |
| 2023-10-11 | Enhancement | Business Case Versioning | Added the capability to create a “revision copy” of a business case to support updates during the change request (CR) process. When a “revision copy” is created, it is labeled “revision copy”; and the existing version is labeled “baseline copy” and locked as read-only. Once a CR is approved, the “revision copy” is set as the new baseline, and the old baseline copy is removed. If a CR is not approved, the “revision copy” is deleted, and the existing baseline remains available. This feature is managed by the portfolio manager. | All customers |
| 2023-10-11 | Enhancement | Variable Planning Horizon (Up to 10 years) | Added the capability to set the planning horizon up to 10 years. Previously, all forecasts were fixed at 5 years. This feature also extends the ability to estimate resources and plan contract actions for the extended planning horizon, when it’s in effect. This feature is managed by the portfolio manager. | All customers |
| 2023-10-11 | Enhancement | Portfolio and Cross-Portfolio Roadmaps | Added the capability for any user to create roadmaps. Previously, the roadmap capability was limited to displaying the key milestones for a given project. The enhanced road mapping capability includes the ability to: 1) Add business capabilities as key milestones and depict them at the top of the roadmap; 2) Create categories with custom colors to group projects in any meaningful way; 3) Add existing projects from any portfolio that contribute to delivering the business capabilities.; 4) Add ideas to a portfolio and to a roadmap. (Note: Ideas are only visible to their creator; 5) Depict the roadmap in a Gantt style format, with variable timescale options. | All customers |
| 2023-10-11 | Enhancement | Custom Roadmaps | Added the capability for any user to create and share custom portfolio and cross-portfolio roadmaps. The custom road mapping capability includes the ability to: 1) Add business capabilities as key milestones and depict them at the top of the roadmap; 2) Create categories with custom colors to group projects in any meaningful way; 3) Add existing projects from any portfolio that contribute to delivering the business capabilities.; 4) Add ideas to a portfolio and to a roadmap. (Note: Ideas are only visible to their creator; 5) Depict the roadmap in a Gantt style format, with variable timescale options; and 6) Add a custom roadmap to a custom dashboard so that it can be shared with other uses. | All customers |
| 2023-06-04 | Enhancement | New Limited Access Role | Added a limited access role (e.g., for Federal contractors) that can assigned to a user so that they have access to the business need and business need assessment data, but do not access to the contract, resource. and financial data. | All customers |
| 2023-03-14 | Enhancement | New ChatGPT Open AI Features | Added the capability to "Ask AI" to assist with completing the narrative fields on the Business Need and Solution Approach tabs of the business case. Draft prompts are provided. The response from ChatGPT can then be added or appended to the existing content in the field, or manually copy aand pasted. | All customers |
| 2023-09-10 | Enhancement | Expanded Roadmapping Capabilities | Expanded the roadmap development capability by allowing the user to add alteratives from across portfolios and add milestones (e.g., business capabilities) that appear at the top of the roadmap. All alternatives and ideas can be categorized and color-coded, and ideas can later be promoted to a new business need. Finally, roadmaps can be added to dashboards and shared with others. | All customers |
| 2023-06-04 | Enhancement | New Cross Portfolio Reporting | Added a new "Program" page that enables users to list and report on cross portfolio projects for which a user is a team member. | All customers |
| 2023-06-04 | Enhancement | New Enterprise Administrator Role | Added a new "Enterprise Administrator" role to manage the enterprise (i.e., account) such as color scheme, logo, naming conventions, and system notification wording. | All customers |
| 2023-06-04 | Enhancement | New Program Entity | Added a new enterprise level “Program” entity to the taxonomy that enables a workspace manager to assign projects to programs and report on programs via views, custom charts and dashboards. (Note: each project can only belong to only one program.) | All customers |
| 2023-06-04 | Enhancement | New Account Workspace | Added a "Workspace" capability to enable workspace managers (previously portfolio managers) to administer their decisions by categorizing them by "Decision Type" (e.g., alternatives analysis, pairwise comparison, and portfolio)., which can be changed at any time and is used for categorizing and visually displaying all of the decisions in the workspace. 2) The purpose of an alternatives analysis and pairwise comparison decision is to attain a result after a single (i.e., one-time) use, however, these decisions can be reused. | All customers |
| 2023-05-22 | Enhancement | New User Interface | Redesigned the system to provide a completely new user interface to improve the user experience. Amongst other benefits such as performance and ease of use, this enhancement enables users to have multiple instances open at once. | All customers |
| 2022-12-23 | Enhancement | New "Portfolio Category" Field | Added the “Portfolio Category” field on the "Governance" tab to enable the categorization of investments using a configurable selection menu. | All customers |
| 2022-12-23 | Enhancement | Enhanced Access to Business Cases, Charts, and Dashboards via Links | Eliminated unnecessary login steps when a user clicks a business case link, list link, or dashboard link by going directly to the item and bypassing the system notification screen. | All customers |
| 2022-12-23 | Enhancement | New Feature to "Create a List" of Business Needs | Added a feature to create and share a list of business needs, and to control who has access to the list. | All customers |
| 2022-11-19 | Enhancement | Enhanced Persistent Filtering of Business Needs | Added the capability to persistently filter the list of business needs based on the contents in the "Decision" field, using the "Configure List" screen. | All customers |
| 2022-11-19 | Enhancement | New "Resource Budgeting" Tab | Added the "Resource Budgeting” tab to expand the list of resources; enable the collection of resource estimates for multiple fiscal years; establish resource managers; and improve tracking of resource estimates. Also added the capability to automatically calculate and total the resource cost estimates, and push them to the “Forecast” tab, in the proper phase (pre-project, project, and post-project) and TBM cost pool. | All customers |
| 2022-11-19 | Enhancement | New "Copy Link" Icon for Business Cases | Added a "Copy Link" icon to the top of each tab within the business case. | All customers |
| 2022-11-19 | Enhancement | New "Reply" to Reviewer Notes | Added the capability to reply to the reviewer note within a business case. | All customers |
| 2022-10-22 | Enhancement | Expansion of Custom Charts | Expanded the custom chart capability by adding the "Planning Category“ and “Portfolio Category” fields to the list of options for grouping data. | All customers |
| 2022-10-22 | Enhancement | New Feature to Share Custom Dashboards | Added a feature to share a custom dashboard and to control who has access to the dashboard. | All customers |
| 2022-09-24 | Enhancement | New Document Management Feature for Portfolios | Added a new menu item under "Manage Portfolio" to store documents associated with the portfolio (or model). | All customers |
| 2022-09-24 | Enhancement | New Change Management Feature | Added a change management capability to submit, review, and disposition investment list change requests (CRs). The list of approved CRs has been added to the cover of the business case report, and a complete list of the CRs is included as an additional page in the report. | All customers |
| 2022-10-22 | Enhancement | Enhanced Business Case Report | Changed the business case report to default to the tabs that have data. Provided the user with the capability to select which tabs to include in the report. Added the reviewer notes and associated replies to the business case report as an additional page. The "Notes" page is optional. The default is set to include the page. | All customers |
| 2022-07-23 | Enhancement | New User Homepage Option | Added the capability to set the user's homepage to "The last business case I was working on". | All customers |
| 2022-06-06 | Enhancement | New Scenario Management Capability | Added several new features to enable portfolio managers to set and test scenarios in situations where decisions are sensitive to uncertainty and changing conditions. Scenarios can be created for: 1) Criteria weighting factors; 2) Discount factors (by year); 3) Cost forecast (set % increases/decreases by year; and 4) Optimization constraints and dependencies. | All customers |
| 2022-03-28 | Enhancement | New Feature to Set a Home Page | Added a new feature within the "Manage Account" screen to select and set a different home page. The options include charts, dashboards, and lists associated with portfolios and decision models. | All customers |
| 2022-03-21 | Enhancement | New Feature to Create Custom Charts and Dashboards | Added a new feature for users to be able to create a wide range of custom charts and graphs, and to configure custom dashboards. | All customers |
| 2022-03-14 | Enhancement | User Notifications | Added a new feature within the "Manage Account" screen to set up a wide range of notifications. The notifications can be received immediately or nightly. | All customers |
| 2021-12-23 | Enhancement | New Alternative Scoring Option within a Single Browser Tab | Added a new feature to enable team members to score alternatives while reviewing the business case. This feature eliminates the need for team members to use two browsers or two devices to simultaneously review and score an alternative. | All customers |
| 2021-12-23 | Enhancement | New "Notes" Capability | Provided the capability for reviewers to record their notes in the business case. The facilitator can also set up an agenda for a team review, review team comments, and record new comments live. | All customers |
| 2021-12-23 | Enhancement | New "Governance" Tab | Added a new "Governance" tab to the business case. This tab provides the capability to assign key roles, set key milestones to reduce data calls, and improve reporting. Moved the "Project Manager" field and project health and status tracking to this tab. Added three new fields: Business Requirements Maturity (selection menu); Business Relationship Manager; and Planned Business Requirements Completion, and Planned Procurement Package Completion. | All customers |
| 2021-12-23 | Enhancement | New “Reports” Main Menu Item | Added a new “Reports” main menu item with the following new reports: Submission Status; Priority Scoring; Resource Dependency Hours Analysis (for select customers); Portfolio Recommendations; and Contract Actions. | All customers |
| 2021-12-23 | Enhancement | Enhancement to the “Resource Dependencies” and “Forecast” Tabs | Added the capability to use blended rates for “Internal Staff Labor $”, "Internal Contract Labor $”, ”External Staff Labor $”, and ”External Contract Labor $” to automatically calculate the dollars associated with staff and contract labor, to include resource dependencies. Added icons to the “Internal Staff Labor $” and “Internal Contract Labor $” cost pools in the “Project Phase” with hover over information regarding the resource dependency dollar amounts that should be included in the forecast: For Internal Staff Labor $ - “Include $XX to cover YY staff resource dependency hours.” For Internal Contract Labor $ - “Include $XX to cover YY contractor resource dependency hours.” For External Staff Labor $ - “Include $XX to cover YY staff resource dependency hours.” For External Contract Labor $ - “Include $XX to cover YY contractor resource dependency hours.” Added an “External Staff and Contractor” section and added the Acquisition Management (AQM) organization as a resource dependency. | Select customers |
| 2021-12-23 | Enhancement | Additional Filtering Options on the "Manage Alternatives" Screen | Added “FY Planned”, “FY Submitted” and “Completed” as configuration options. | All customers |
| 2021-12-23 | Enhancement | Screen Redesign | Redesigned all screens to use more icons and less buttons. | All customers |
| 2021-10-18 | Enhancement | New "Contracts" Tab | Added a new optional “Contracts” tab to the business case. This tab provides three tables to assist the user in assigning contract $ from the “Forecast” tab to one or more contracts. The first table at the top is read-only, and provides a summary of the contract $ on the “Forecast” tab. The middle table tracks the assignment of the contract $ and is decremented as contract $ are assigned. The third table is where the assignment of contract $ to one or more contracts is made. | All customers |
| 2021-10-18 | Enhancement | New "Location" Tab | Added a new optional “Location” tab to the business case. This tab provides the capability to enter an address or the latitude and longitude coordinates for a project. There is also a capability to select a location and look-up the address. Once the location has been set, it can be plotted on the map. | All customers |
| 2021-10-18 | Enhancement | New "Order of Execution" Report | Added a new “Order of Execution” report that produces a list of investments sorted by the “Submitted Fiscal Year (FY)”, the “Planned Fiscal Year (FY)”, and the priority score. | Select customers |
| 2021-10-18 | Enhancement | Filtering via Column Headers | Added a filtering capability to the “Manage Alternatives” screen, which lists all the investments and business cases. The filters in the column headers can be used in conjunction with each other to filter the list as desired. | All customers |
| 2021-10-04 | Enhancement | Two New Fields on the "Forecast" Tab | Added two new selection fields , “Project Manager” and “Acquisition Approach”, to the “Forecast” tab of the business case. | All customers |
| 2021-10-04 | Enhancement | Time-Phased Resource Management | Added a new optional capability to perform time-based resource management at the portfolio and enterprise-level. With this new capability, enterprises can now: 1) Enter the capacity of defined resources over time; 2) Allocate resources to each investment over time; 3) Analyze the resource bottlenecks using the resource heatmap; 4) Perform deeper analysis using customizable area charts and bar charts; and 5) Make resource adjustments and take corrective action to the timing of investments. | All customers |
| 2021-10-04 | Enhancement | Application Programming Interface | Made an API available to facilitate data sharing with project management and data analytic tools. | All customers |
