Actual vs Planned

Roadmaps change constantly. That is the nature of a roadmap, not a sign that something went wrong. Dates shift, scope grows, items are added and dropped, and each of those changes is sound on its own. But keeping a roadmap current means overwriting it, so the plan you agreed to is not kept anywhere. What you committed to no longer exists, and there is nothing left to compare against.

With this update, the version you agreed to can be preserved. You take a set of roadmap items, give it a start and an end date, and Craft.io keeps it as a fixed record while the work carries on. That record is a plan.

You create a plan from any roadmap view. The items showing in that view become the plan's items. A filtered Q3 roadmap running July 1st to September 30th becomes the Q3 plan. From that point it is locked: you carry on working as normal, and the plan keeps the original version.

Craft.io records the plan's state when you create it, and again on its end date. Those two records are what every comparison below runs on.

To create a plan, filter a supported view down to the items it should cover, then select Save as a locked plan from the Actions menu. Give the plan a name, set its start and end dates, and add a description if you want one. After that, Craft.io also creates a plan view for that plan, as a personal view.

Spotting what had changed between the plan and reality meant opening two views side by side and comparing them by eye.

With this update, a plan loads into a table, kanban, swimlanes or timeline view and marks the differences on the items themselves. Items that were not in the original plan are labelled Added, and items that have left it are labelled Descoped. Fields whose values have changed are highlighted in place, so a date that slipped shows up on the card rather than in a report. An item with changes also carries a small yellow badge showing how many of its fields changed, and clicking that badge opens the full list.

A plan view is still a view. It can be duplicated, and saved as a personal view or a workspace view, in the same way as any other.

To turn a view into a plan view, load a plan into it: open the Actions menu on a supported view, select Load existing plan, and choose the plan. To make that plan view available to the team, open Actions again and select Save as workspace view. Saving a workspace view is an admin action.

A comparison has a perspective. Looking from today's data and looking from the original plan surface different things, and a single fixed view can only ever give you one of them.

With this update, a plan view shows the same data from three perspectives. Actual vs planned builds the view from today's data and marks where it has drifted, for when the question is what is happening now. Planned vs actual shows the same comparison from the other side: the view is the original plan, with what happened to it laid over the top, for when the question is what became of what was agreed.

Accomplished vs planned works on different data. It compares the plan's opening snapshot against the one taken on its end date, so nothing live enters the picture at all. This is the mode for retrospective analysis: what the plan set out to do, what the period actually delivered, and what that tells you about how to plan better. It pays off especially on short plans such as a sprint, where what you learn can go straight into the next one.

A team mid-quarter lives in Actual vs planned. The same team in a December review opens Accomplished vs planned, and the numbers no longer move under them.

To switch mode, open the Actual vs Planned dropdown on any plan view.

A plan holding two hundred items across thirty fields produces far more changes than anyone will read. Which of those changes matter depends entirely on who is asking. A field one person needs to see is noise to the person sitting next to them.

With this update, two settings control what a plan view surfaces. Tracked fields lets you choose which field changes count as a change worth seeing. Sprint is the clearest case: an item moving from one sprint to the next is exactly what a delivery team needs to catch, and it is nothing an executive watching the quarter needs to know about. Each of them can track the fields their own question depends on. Show only modified items then filters the view down to the items that actually changed, rather than showing the whole plan.

Both settings live under Plan view settings in the Actual vs Planned dropdown.

When a field changed more than once during a plan, the plan view showed only where it ended up. The values in between, and the pattern they formed, were not visible anywhere.

With this update, hovering over any highlighted field reveals a stats icon that opens the full history of that field for the plan's duration. The Activity log tab lists every change in date order. The Chart view tab plots the same data as a line, running from the snapshot date to today.

Status is where this pays off most. An item's Status history is its passage through development: when it entered each stage, and how long it stayed there. The second half is the part nothing else answers. An item that sat in one stage for three weeks is a fact about the process rather than about the item, and it stays invisible until the changes are laid out in order.

To open it, hover over a highlighted field in any plan view and click the stats icon. You can also reach it from an item's list of changed fields, by clicking the field you want to follow.

A workspace accumulates plans over time. Some eventually need renaming, and some need removing altogether.

With this update, every plan in the workspace is listed in one place. The Saved Plans page shows each plan's name, its start and end dates, and who created it and when. Plans are ordered by end date and grouped by year, so the current period sits at the top and closed years below it.

Workspace admins can rename a plan from that page, or delete it. Deleting is permanent: it removes both of the plan's snapshots along with the plan itself, and any plan view built on it stops working. Everyone else can see the list without being able to change it.

To open it, go to workspace settings and select Saved Plans.