101 changes across 10 releases

An invitation, share, resend or copied link made on the dev site used to point at dev, which only the Digimasters team can open - anyone else got a Vercel login page. Links for anyone outside Digimasters now point at the live site, where the same share works. Sign-in link requests also leave a note in the logs, so a missing email can be traced.

A line's days can now be heaviest at the start and the end of a use case and lighter in the middle - the shape business analysis usually has, with requirements early and acceptance late. It is now business analysis's default; any line can use it under Admin, Programme types, Roles.

Admin, Programme types, Roles now starts with a short explanation, then gives each line of work its own section: how that line's days spread across a use case's weeks, and the roles that share those days out, each with its share shown as a % of that line and a note of whether the shares add up to 100%. Add a role inside the line it works on.

Hover over a pill or badge - or tap it on a phone, or tab to it - to see what it means and the figures behind it. A role marked Over says how many days are scheduled, how many its share needs and of which line; 1 role off lists which role and by how much; Days typed shows what the sizing table would have given; No DM rate says which part of the use case has no rate and where to set it. The same goes for agreed and starter badges, sharing and access chips, the change feed, stages, rate statuses and scenario chips on the workbook pages.

Everyone an estimate is shared with now has two buttons in the Share dialog: one emails them the invitation again and says whether it went, and one copies the estimate's link so you can send it yourself in Teams or an email. A plan made before roles existed no longer counts a line twice, and offers to switch it to roles. Error messages no longer show the database's working, and a refused Microsoft sign-in no longer puts your email address in the page address.

Each use case's plan has a Phases band and a Milestones band above its roles. Standard phases lays Discovery, Design, Build, Test and Deploy across the use case's weeks in one click; drag a phase to move it or its ends to resize it, and click it to rename or remove it. Add milestones such as MVP or Go-live and drag them to their week or set their exact date. Both work from the keyboard, and both appear in the Excel and PDF exports and the use case's side panel.

When a use case's plan no longer matches its estimate, the plan offers Use plan dates and Use scheduled days. Each shows what the estimate is now and what it would become before anything changes, and is saved and recorded like any other edit. Dragging bars never changes the estimate on its own, and an agreed use case stays locked. After using the plan's days, the estimate and the plan agree - the rows you drew keep their days and the rest follow.

A use case's plan no longer spreads every line flat across its dates. Business analysis and design are front-loaded, the build peaks in the middle, testing and training build towards the end, and deployment and handover sit at the end - and the days still add up exactly to the estimate. Admins can choose each line's shape per programme type under Admin, Programme types, Roles. Rows someone has already drawn keep their days.

The Resource plan page has an Export button. Excel gives a summary with each use case's estimated and scheduled days and cost, the plan week by week, and its cost by week and by month - real numbers with formulas for the totals, ready to work with. PDF gives a summary page and then the plan a quarter at a time, with every role named on every page, ready to print or send. Both follow what is on screen: the stream shown, the currency and days or hours.

When something fails - on the server, in the browser, or by the app crashing outright - it is now recorded with the page and a reference, and the error you see shows that reference. Sending us a screenshot of the error is enough for us to find exactly what went wrong. Sign-in links, email addresses and figures are kept out of the record.

Plan rows now say Balanced, Under or Over in a coloured pill with an icon, and rows within half a day of their share count as balanced - most rows used to read Over 0.3d. A row that is off has a Fix button that spreads exactly the days it needs over its weeks, and a part of the work whose roles do not add up to 100% has a Fix that scales their shares to 100%. Each plan shows the estimate, the plan and the difference in money and per cent. Weeks needing more than one person are shown as capacity, not a warning. Digimasters, FTE and Other keep one colour each everywhere, with a split bar under any use case shared between them. In Admin, each part of the work shows whether its roles' shares make 100%, and a role with no rate says Set rate.

The week-by-week plan no longer squeezes into a use case's side panel, where only two weeks fitted. The panel's Plan tab now lists who works on the use case, on what, across which weeks, for how many days and at what cost, with any part of the work not covered by roles. Open and edit the plan takes you to the Resource plan page with that use case open.

Data product's roles are now a full standard list - Solution Architect / Engagement Lead, Data Engineering, Dashboard Developer, Data Director and the rest - each with a starter Digimasters day rate filled in. A role's rate is the same for every client, new ones included, and is edited beside its name under Admin, Programme types, Roles: rename a role, change its rate, add one or remove one. Roles at 0% are in the list to add to a use case, not on every one. Adding a role to a part of the work that is already fully covered now gives it an equal share and says the part is over, rather than appearing to do nothing.

Each programme type now has a list of roles in Admin - Data Architect, Data Engineer, Project Manager and so on - each doing one part of the work on one stream, with a default share of it and a day rate. A use case's plan starts with those roles; add a role, take one off or change its share, and the plan says if a part of the work is left without one. The plan is priced at the role rates and shown against the estimate, which keeps its own rates.

Resource plans now belong to each use case rather than the whole estimate. Every use case has one from the start - its lines spread evenly over its own dates - in a new Plan tab in its side panel, and on the Resource plan page, which lists every use case under its programme and epic and shows the team's load across all of them. Change a line and it is saved; Reset puts it back to the even spread, and an unchanged line follows the estimate when its dates or days change. Plans made yesterday for whole estimates were test data and have been removed.

Starting a resource plan failed on a large estimate because a row could not hold more than 7 days a week. A row is a line of the estimate, not one person, so it can now hold up to 100 days a week; any week above one person's five days is flagged. Costs with no rate now read "not set" rather than £0.

Each estimate now has a Resource plan tab beside it. Start one and every line of the estimate - core work, project management, BA and the rest, on each stream - becomes a bar across the weeks of its use cases. Drag a bar to move it, drag its ends to change its weeks, set any week's days, rename and reorder rows. The days and costs come from the estimate itself, so the plan says at once when it schedules more or less than the estimate, and it follows the currency, day or hour, and Digimasters / FTE switches.

A client's workbook model pages now open only for people who are signed in and have been given that client. Before, anyone with the link could see them, and the names and pay figures behind them were built into the app itself. Someone with only a single estimate shared with them sees that estimate, not the workbook.

Admin, People has a Remove button in each person's panel. It says first what will happen, then removes their account and access; any estimates they own pass to you, and the change history keeps their name but not their email address.

The app now has its own privacy notice, cookie notice and terms of use, written for what the DBOT Estimator holds rather than the website, and a footer on every page linking to them, to support and to what has changed. The sign-in page says how your name and email are used. Fonts are now served by the app itself instead of Google, and old sign-in link records are deleted daily.

A link to an estimate, the estimates list or Admin now shows the DBOT Estimator picture when pasted into Teams or Slack, as the home page link already did. Opening one while signed out still takes you to sign in, and signing in now brings you back to exactly what you opened - including the Admin tab.

The app is now called the DBOT Estimator - Design Build Operate Transfer - in the header, on the home page, in browser tabs, in the picture shown when a link is shared, and in the emails it sends. Nothing else has changed: the same address, the same estimates and the same sign-in.

A link to the app pasted into Teams, Slack, an email or LinkedIn now shows a Digimasters picture instead of a blank grey box. An admin can replace it under Admin, Settings, Link preview picture, which shows how it will look in Teams and elsewhere before anyone shares a link.

Estimate links now carry the estimate's name - /estimate/lpa/12-lpa-2027-budget rather than /estimate/lpa/12 - so you can tell from a link or a browser tab which one it opens. Renaming an estimate updates its address, and links sent before, with the old name or with only the number, still open it.

Admin, People no longer has a column of checkboxes for every client. Each person's row says in words what they can open - Admin, the clients they have been given, and any estimate shared with them on its own - and Edit opens a panel with their name, the admin switch and a line per client. You can search people by name or email, and adding a client adds a line in the panel rather than a column across the page.

Error messages stay on screen until you have read them, but had no way to close them. Each now has a Dismiss button, and every message has a × in its corner.

Epics fold like programmes, an estimate opens with everything folded, and Expand all / Collapse all opens or shuts the lot - what you unfold is remembered until you close the tab. Each epic shows its year total as clearly as its programme does. The PDF export works for large estimates again (the detailed one could fail with "[object Event]"), always opens every programme and epic, and no longer leaves out use case names or the timeline's bars.

Each programme, epic and use case on an estimate has a grip to drag it up or down its list, and its … menu has Move up and Move down. The order is saved for everyone who opens the estimate, new rows go to the end, and Make a copy keeps it.

Some companies' email security opens every link in an email to check it before it arrives, which used up the one-time sign-in link - so it always said it had already been used. Opening the link now shows who it signs in and a Continue button, and only pressing Continue uses it.

On Admin's People tab, a person who has been shared an estimate but not given the whole client now shows "1 shared" under that client, with the estimate's name on hover - so an unticked box no longer looks like access that did not save. Tick the box to give them the whole client.

Links emailed from the dev site go to dev, which only the Digimasters Vercel team can open, so a client got a Vercel login page. On dev, the Share dialog and Admin's People tab now say so and link to the same page on production.

What's changed on the home page is folded until you open it. Its header still says how many changes are new and which release is the latest, and All updates opens the full history.

New estimate, Add programme, Add epic, Add use case, Share, Make a copy, Email me a link and Admin's add forms used to sit greyed out until something was typed, with nothing saying why. They can always be pressed now; with the field empty, or an email that is not an email yet, a message in red says what is missing and puts the cursor in the box. New estimate opens a small dialog for the name.

On Admin, each component has a … menu to rename it everywhere it is used, or remove it from the library once no programme type uses it - the menu names the types that still do. A starter programme type now says what "starter values" means and has a Mark as reviewed button, which clears the label without changing any figure.

The home page, the estimates list, Admin, sign-in and every workbook page now follow the estimate page's layout: where you are and the title at the top, then one bar of switches that stays in reach as you scroll - the year, currency and horizon on the workbook pages, the section tabs on Admin - then anything missing, with the explanations folded away. The header holds just the client, the pages and your account, so it fits on one line. The home page's list of changes is one line each, opening to the detail.

The estimate page follows a new design. Your name in the header opens a menu with Admin, the theme and Sign out, and a client switcher sits beside the logo. The year, whose figures, currency and day or hour are in one bar that stays in reach as you scroll. Programmes fold, and their actions are in a … menu. Clicking a use case opens its details in a panel from the right, with Cost, Schedule, Resourcing, Support and Notes tabs. "Where the budget lands" splits the year by programme, by who does the work or by category, beside a quarterly table, and clicking a bar on the timeline opens that use case.

A small book icon next to Size opens what each size means for that category: the definition, the days and weeks for XS to XL, and a worked example of a piece of work that size. Clicking a size uses it. Every starter category now has examples and a definition, and admins can edit the examples with the sizing table.

Adding someone now emails them an invitation to sign in, and each person has an Invite button to send it again. Admins can upload a client's logo. Someone who can only view an estimate can ask its owner for edit rights; the owner is emailed, gives or declines them in one click, and the person is told.

Admins can add a client under Admin, Clients, with the currency its rates are held in. The home page now shows the clients you can open, and the header shows who is signed in - the old picker that only chose whose name was on screen is gone. Admin appears only for admins.

Sign in with your work Microsoft account, or have a one-time link emailed to you. When someone shares an estimate with you, you get an email from support@digimasters.co.uk with a link to it. Signing in does not by itself give access: an admin adds people, or an estimate's owner shares it.

Each client now holds several estimates, each owned by one person and private until shared. Share one with someone to view or to edit - you choose which every time - or make it visible to everyone with access to the client. Anyone can make a copy to try changes without touching the original. Admins choose who can open which client under Admin, People. Existing estimating work was kept as an estimate of its own, owned by the person who made it.

Changing a programme's or an epic's type no longer refuses when it has use cases. It asks which of the new type's categories each one should move to - Foundational to Simple and so on, changeable - then moves them and reprices them on the new type. Size, dates, typed days and notes stay; counts the new type does not use are named and dropped. Every box, dropdown and button on the estimator and Admin is now the same height, and rows, headings and fields line up.

System integration, Change management, Remediation, Discovery & strategy and Data migration are ready to pick on a programme, each with its own categories, sizing, components and quantities. Their figures are starter values, marked as such, for you to replace. Admin is now in tabs - Programme types, Clients, Settings, History - showing one type and one client at a time, with each type's sizing as a single grid.

Every programme now has a programme type - Data product, System integration, Discovery and the rest set up on Admin - and an epic can use a different one. Its use cases are priced on that type's categories, components and support, and the page names the work in the type's own words ("Add integration"). Work can also be counted, not only sized: four endpoints or twelve data sources each add their days, shown line by line in the breakdown.

Admin now has Programme types: each with its own categories and sizing, the components added on top of its core work with a default % each, the quantities its work can be counted by, and whether support applies. Defaults are filled in once for every client; each client's rates panel has a tab per type where it can set its own figures, and a blank box follows the default.

The estimator's settings are now organised by programme type, ready for system integration, change management, remediation, discovery and data migration to be costed their own way. Everything existing is a data product, and no figure changed.

A use case with its own support days now says "typed", shows what the rule would give, and has "Use default" to go back to it in one click. The timeline no longer draws a support line where there is no support.

A switch in the estimate's header - All, Digimasters or FTE - shows every figure for one stream: its share of each use case's build at its own rate, and support by its own team (MSP for Digimasters). Digimasters and FTE add up to All, so the Digimasters budget and the FTE on top of it can be shown separately.

A table at the foot of the estimate totals effort and cost by component across every use case - core build, project management, BA, testing and the rest, and contingency - with a bar for each showing its share of the build. It follows the selected year, or shows all years.

Picking a year now shows only the use cases with money in it - build or support - with the others counted and one click away. Rows say when work carries into the next year or is support only, and each breakdown shows its cost by year. The estimate exports to PDF as one long page, summary or detailed, looking exactly as it does on screen in light or dark.

On Admin, each client has "Copy settings from" with a list of the other clients. It fills the boxes with that client's rates, split, support team, % added to build and contingency - converted into the currency on screen - ready to check and save.

When a use case has its core build days typed, the row now says so: Days reads "typed" and Type and Size read "dates only" (or "not used" with a fixed end date), because the typed figure replaces the sizing table. The breakdown has "Use sizing" to go back to it in one click.

A Day / Hour switch in the header of the estimator and Admin. Rates can be typed and read per hour; they are still stored per day, converted at the hours in a working day set once on Admin (8 to start), which is also the length of a support day.

Each use case's breakdown now shows how its support is priced - support days a year × the team's day rate - with the hours that works out to. On Admin, every run rate shows its hourly equivalent, and a rate that looks like an hourly figure typed into a day box is flagged.

The budget bars use colours that are easy to tell apart, with a gap between segments and each one's share in the legend. Hovering or tabbing to a segment says what it is, its value and its share. The charts grow when you scroll to them rather than while they are still off screen.

Data governance, security & privacy, architecture assurance, data quality & migration and hypercare can now each be set as a % of the core build for a client, alongside project management, BA, testing and the rest.

A programme, an epic or a single use case can be agreed with the padlock. Once agreed it is read-only and keeps the rates, percentages and sizing it was priced on, so a later change on the Admin screen does not move it.

Use case rows are simpler and fit the screen without scrolling. Click a row to see its effort and cost split by component - core build, project management, BA, UI/UX, testing and the rest - with contingency, who builds it and support.

Each client can now set how much is added on top of the core build for project management, business analysis, UI/UX, testing, deployment, change management, training, documentation and handover - each a percentage of the build - and it adds to every use case’s effort and cost.

The £ / $ switch now sits at the top of every page and applies everywhere at once - the workbook screens, the estimator and Admin - instead of each having its own.

Changing a use case’s type, size or dates now updates its figures and end date immediately, with a “Saving…” marker until the save and the page totals have caught up.

The calendar beside a start or end date now opens on that date rather than today, and closes on a click anywhere else or on Escape.

Every change ever made can now be read on the Admin screen: 40 at a time with a button for older ones, filtered by what changed, and each opening to show exactly which figures moved, from what to what.

The budget for a year now counts support for what is live as well as build, with the two named underneath. The timeline draws each use case's support running on after its build ends.

Each use case now carries its annual support: by default half its build effort a year, never below an hour a week or above two hours a day, priced at the MSP, FTE or Offshore run rate.

Each client has a blended day rate for Digimasters, its own staff and anyone else, and each use case says what share of the work falls to each. Figures can be shown in pounds or dollars at an exchange rate set on the Admin screen.

Use cases start on any day, typed as DD-MM-YYYY or picked from a calendar, and can have a fixed end date that replaces the duration from sizing.

The Admin and estimate pages now ask before you leave with changes that have not been saved, and list what they are. Long programme, epic and use case names show in full.

Low and high days now default to a percentage of base — 75% and 125% to start, changeable on the Admin screen — so each sizing row needs only its base figure.

Each client card now has a Top-down estimate button beside Workbook model, and an Admin card sits below them saying which passcode you are signed in with.

Programmes, epics and use cases can be typed into a spreadsheet — with dropdowns for type and size — and loaded into the estimator in one step, so the estimate is ready the day the database is.

Each use case now has a note for the basis of its size — scope, exclusions, who checked it — and a duplicate button for sizing a similar one quickly.

Programmes, epics and use cases can be set up in the app and estimated in minutes: give each use case a type — Foundational, Challenger or North Star — and a T-shirt size, and it gets a range of effort, a cost, an end date and a place on a Gantt chart, with the budget for any year beside it.

A separate admin passcode opens the table that turns a type and size into days and weeks — low, base and high — with the assumptions and notes behind each row, and the blended day rate for each client.

Two summaries counted actual DAYS under an “actual hours” heading, so consumption showed 8% where the underlying row said 60%. The completion column also reported every role estimated when one line had been filled in.

Entering the first real effort turns the illustrative overlay off for the whole portfolio. Use cases nobody has estimated now say so, instead of reporting £0 and being added into the total as though the work were free.

Each use case can carry a proof-of-concept date and an MVP date, shown as markers on the spend timeline and listed when you hover a period.

A new panel splits the estimate into Build, Run and New opportunities for the selected year — as a stacked bar against that year’s budget and as a table — beside the existing split by cost stream. One answers whose budget pays, the other what it buys.

The build cost explanation always said 10% contingency, even on a use case where you had changed it. It now reads the rate that use case actually uses, and shows what it comes to in pounds.

Opening a use case gave four headline figures and two tables with nothing to say what was in them. Every one now carries an information marker, as the portfolio page already did.

With one year selected, the remaining-to-spend tile still showed every invoice ever raised, not that year’s, with nothing to say so. The tiles that cover the whole programme are now marked "all years".

It opened on All years, which put a multi-year budget beside an estimate that has no year dimension. It now opens on the current year — that year’s budget against what has been invoiced in it so far — with the other years still a click away.

Changing the use case dropdown redrew the chart without animating it, so it was hard to tell the figures had updated at all. The bars now rise from the axis on every change — use cases, monthly or yearly, currency, horizon.

The timeline gains a cumulative view showing planned spend against what has actually been invoiced, a dashed budget line on each year, a marker for the current period, and a click-through from any bar to the use cases that make it up.

The columns grow up from the axis when the page loads and whenever the chart is redrawn, and hovering or tabbing to one shows a readout naming each series — build, run, invoiced and the estimate total — for that month or year.

The spend curve now carries what suppliers actually billed beside the estimate, filters by a use case dropdown rather than a row of code buttons, and reports the run the TCO actually charges.

The lead figure was every use case from Spark to Live added together. It is now committed build, with the indicative figure named beside it rather than folded in, and a new figure for what remains to spend.

Invoices are now read from the accounting export rather than typed in, so the model shows what was actually billed, net of VAT.

The budget is now set per year, and a Year selector at the top of the portfolio page compares that year’s budget with that year’s invoices rather than with the whole programme’s.

The landing page now lists what has changed, grouped by release and tagged as a screen change, a model change, or both. Every headline figure and the less obvious table columns carry an information marker explaining what the number is and how it is worked out.

Each use case is now typed as a Product, a Platform or a Capability. Platforms and firm-wide capabilities are a large share of portfolio labour, so they are no longer compared with things like dashboards and portals.

The workbook now records what suppliers have actually billed, and the portfolio shows invoiced spend beside the estimate for each cost stream.

The budget was a single figure - a one-year Digimasters resource estimate - compared against a portfolio priced across all four rate cards. It is now three budgets, one per cost stream, each compared against spend on the matching rate cards.

Status and Gate were two fields answering the same question, and they often disagreed. They are now a single Stage: Spark, Double Diamond, In BA, Solution Design, In Build, In Test, In Deployment, In Hypercare, Live, Retired.

A sortable table replaces the card grid, so a whole portfolio fits one screen and can be ordered by cost, stage or name. ⌘K or / from anywhere jumps straight to a use case by name, code or portfolio ref.

Use cases, roles, job titles and portfolio refs are read from the spreadsheet rather than held in code, so editing them in Excel reaches the app on the next refresh.

A new use case and all its supporting rows are created in one step, rather than editing four sheets by hand and keeping them consistent.

A generated map of which sheet feeds which figure on which screen, plus a short hand-written note of the things a script cannot infer.

The placeholder mark is replaced by the Digimasters logo, the client picker carries each client's wordmark, and the browser tab has a proper favicon. Light and dark versions switch with the theme.

The highlight sat above the menu text rather than behind it, and disappeared entirely when you opened a use case. Both fixed.