Late putting this together, but here are my thoughts on the 5 best features 15.4 has delivered:
1. Roadmaps - timeline
We now have a great new module to help your teams plan work in a simpler and more intuitive way.
The roadmaps are perfect for simple top down planning which you are likely doing already via powerpoint
The timeline view allows you to simply draw the item and position it across time, if we switch to the grid view we can easily assign virtual groupings then use these groupings in the timeline later!
This module really needs it's own write up as there are a lot of features here!
2. Roadmaps - board
Before we move on from roadmaps, one of the best features in this area is the "board".
This allows you to not only plan your work across time, but also then manage your work in the familiar kanban board.
I think this works really well.
You can use the swimlanes however you want, example above on how we could use them to facilitate a portfolio planning process
3. Risks and Issues - finally in the new UX
Finally the risks and issues are in the new UX, these are really simple to create and manage in a "Risk Log" format that every PM already does inside excel.
I think project managers will appreciate the ease of use and ability to have conversations inside the instance.
4. GDPR - Resource anonymisation
After installing the PII content, you will be able to run a new job that scrambles Personally Identifiable Information from CA PPM.
This is required to comply with the GDPR which becomes law on the 25 May 2018. Compliance is required for any international firm data processing in the European Union.
If you run the process on a resource their data is obfuscated in the following tables.
CMN_AUDITS | CMN_SEC_USERS | NBI_PROJECT_CURRENT_FACTS | NBI_RESOURCE_CURRENT_FACTS | NBI_RT_FACTS | NMC_CONVERSATIONS | NMC_INTEGRATIONS | ODF_CA_RESOURCE | PAC_MNT_PROJECTS | PAC_MNT_RESOURCES | PPA_BILLING | PPA_MATRIXVALUES | PPA_POSTINGBATCH | PPA_TRANSBILL | PPA_TRANSCONTROL | PPA_TRANSWIPADJUST | PPA_WIP | PROJSTAFF | PROJREVISION | SRM_CONTACTS | SRM_RESOURCES
You must also consider data that has been sent or extracted to other systems, i.e. your custom data warehouse will need to purged of the PII too.
read more here
https://docops.ca.com/ca-ppm/15-4/en/administration/configure-authentication-and-security/gdpr-protect-personally-identi…
I may do a write up or webinar if anyone is interested
5. Trend Reporting for Custom Attributes
15.3 introduced trend reporting for stock attributes, but many companies buy CA PPM for the ease of configuring new attributes. This new capability adds trend reporting to your custom attributes.
Customers can use this to build reporting and KPIs
Bonus - Export to CSV
We've finally got a CSV export option in ppm. Now we can export without the dreaded excel data type warning!
Hope you enjoyed my round up of new features, there's plenty more that was delivered so take a look at the official release notes
Release Information - CA PPM - 15.4 - CA Technologies Documentation