Locking a project to prevent any changes or updates?
Is there a way to lock a project down from any further updates by team members? For example, some platforms allow admins or certain people to lock the project to prevent changes to project details (or at least the schedule) after a project details are finalized.
Here is my current need/use case as a Product PM:
We'd like to add Feature A to our desktop product so we open Project A and begin vetting solutions. In that process, we learn another product manager is vetting a similar feature, Feature B, for Mobile under Project B. Since both solutions serve similar needs, we decide to adjust course and pursue a broader scope solution that encompasses the needs of both PdMs. There is no way to combine the history and details of both projects into a single project so I have two options: open a new project for both and lose all history in the project or choose one of the existing and only risk losing some history. Either way I'm going to lose something. I decide to close out the project with the least work completed to date (Project A), add a [cancelled] prefix to Project A, rename Project B to encompass both solutions, and send an email instructing everyone:
"Please only use Project B going forward. Do NOT post or update Project A!"
Well, no matter what both projects continue to show up in search, people have notifications in their emails they can respond to, etc. No matter how hard I try updates and posts and files continue to be added in both projects even though one is very clearly cancelled.
This is very frustrating and is easily solved by either a combine project history feature or lock project for all updates feature. This is also a project management best practice as, without it, there's nothing to stop someone from (either accidentally or intentionally) changing historical data after the fact. Yes, it would show in the log that it was changed but why allow changes at all?
In this instance, I would probably unassign everyone from project A and move it to an "Archive" folder that only a limited number of users have access to. That way, the data it contains is still accessible on request, but not generally available.
Thank you for the idea. I'll play around with this see and see if it could work for us. The problem is people still need to be able to view/access the project history. I recognize this is an issue that could be solved at the process/culture level but it'd be nice for the platform to support that functionality.
I agree with Ali you should unassign everyone from Project A and move it to an archive folder. Does your project workflow also contain a Cancelled or Retired option?
Also understand people need to be able to view/access the project history, so I would give everyone access to the archive folder. Unassigning users will prevent them from receiving emails on tasks.
I don't think I'm able to control permissions at the folder level - only the space level as far as I know. I believe they reserve project/folder level permissions to the Enterprise tier. I created an Archive space but I'm afraid that's still a little too far removed from the project. We do have a very clear Cancelled status in our workflow. My understanding of the issue is my team primarily uses the search function rather than navigating to the project so they don't always pay attention to the overall project status and likewise for their dashboards.
What if you just put a giant header in the description section saying "This is archived, active project is here: <insert link to active project>" as another layer of notification to anyone going into that archived job?
Following for updates, a locking feature on projects would be great for project managers to control the changes and updates made within the project only.
Create an Archive space and only give people Read permissions to that space. Then everyone should be able to see the project but not change anything.