This article will show you how to create a two lean product development plans in OnePager Express: one detailed and the other high-level. Don't have OnePager Express yet? Download a 15-day trial and follow along with either our simple or our more detailed instructions:
Simple Instructions
These instructions are designed for people don't already have a product development plan in Excel. You can use our example Excel plan as a starting point and follow these abbreviated steps to create your chart in a matter of minutes.
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Start by downloading these two sample files to your downloads folder or to your desktop. The Excel file contains the product development plan data, and the *.tat file is the OnePager template that will drive the formatting of the chart you're about to create.
Product Development Plan.xlsx (Excel File)
Product Development Plan.tat (OnePager Template)
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Open the Excel file that you just downloaded. From Excel's Add-Ins tab, click the OnePager Express button:
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On the Start screen, click NEW to begin building a new chart:
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On the next screen, locate the Starting Template section, and go to Change > BROWSE FILES. Browse to your desktop or downloads folder and select the Product Development Plan - Excel.tat that you downloaded in step #1:
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With your Excel file loaded and your OnePager template selected, click Next, and then on the following screen, click Create new chart. OnePager will import the data from your Excel file and create a product development plan in just a few seconds:
Now that you've done this, you can go back to Excel and adjust the spreadsheet to match the dates and deliverables of your real-world product development plan. Once you've done this, follow the same steps again with your updated Excel sheet, and you'll be well on your way!
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Detailed Instructions
These instructions are designed for people who have already built a product development plan in Excel and need to import what they already have into OnePager. These instructions also provide more details about customization along the way.
Open your Excel file. In the example below, you will notice that the project is broken into the standard product development phases. There is also an "Add to OnePager" column, which allows you to select which tasks and milestones you want to import into OnePager Express. The plan we will create will show lots of detail, so we'll flag most of the key aspects of the plan, but you can change your own filtering to suit your needs:
Double-click the OnePager Express icon on your desktop. When the Start screen comes up, click New. Choose the Excel file containing your product development plan, and the following wizard will appear:
Click Next to make sure that OnePager is selecting the correct fields from Excel to use in your chart. Once that looks good, click Create new Chart to build your first report:
In this detailed example, each major phase of the product development plan gets its own color.
Now, let's say that we want group the roadmap into swimlanes based on the phase, and then assign colors by resource instead of by phase. To do this, go to Home > Chart Properties > Rows/Swimlanes. Check the Group By box, and set your swimlanes to group based on the phase of the roadmap:
Now, go to the Task Bars tab of the same settings form and change your color assignment to look at "Resource Names" instead of "Phase":
Finally, click OK and your chart will be refreshed so that it has swimlanes grouped by phase and colors assigned by resource:
OnePager Express is the easiest way to create a product development plan from an Excel spreadsheet. OnePager is flexible, easy to use, and creates charts that are easy for anyone to understand.
Get started today by downloading a free trial.
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