Industry focus
Project management for
development and internal projects
In short
Development projects and internal projects have one thing in common: there is no external client enforcing the deadline. A new product, a production ramp-up, a plant of your own, a certification – the client sits inside the company. The departments involved are ones for which the project is not the main job, and that is exactly why tracking it costs more time than planning it. Linetrack addresses that point: everyone involved gets their task with an automatic reminder, reports their status there, and the schedule recalculates from it. InVENTer GmbH and LANG Technik plan their development projects this way.
4000 +
completed
industrial projects
270 +
parallel projects
at a single customer
1512 +
projects steered
in parallel
10
working days to your
first own project
*Full survey of all productive Linetrack implementations across every industry, as of August 2026. No separate figures exist for development and internal projects alone – these numbers back the platform, not this segment.
Planning requirements
Why internal projects
are harder to steer
A customer order disciplines the plan from outside. When that pressure is absent, the structure has to replace it. Four patterns repeat in development and internal projects.
No customer is chasing the deadline
A late customer order has a sender who gets in touch. A late development project does not. It slips the moment day-to-day business calls, and nobody outside the project notices.
The departments involved treat the project as a side job
Design, purchasing, production, quality and sales all contribute without being assigned to the project. Their feedback has to come out of their own working day, not as an extra task somebody reminds them about every week.
Tracking costs more time than planning
The plan is done in two days. Then the work that really eats time begins: asking, reminding, collecting, updating. In the customer survey, 59 % of companies name manual status enquiries as a starting problem.
Internal projects tie up capacity that is missing elsewhere
Whoever is booked on the development project is unavailable to the customer project. Because the internal project appears on no order list, that load only surfaces once the customer deadline tips over.
The mechanism
The status comes to you,
not you to the status
A single milestone depends on input from half a dozen departments. Collecting that input is the real work on a development project. That is exactly the part Linetrack takes over.
The plan hands out the tasks. Every phase in the schedule is tied to named people. Anyone with something to contribute gets the task in the system, with its deadline and context, without the project manager assigning it one by one.
The reminder runs by itself. As a deadline approaches or passes, the reminder goes out by email. Nobody has to work through a list and follow up. That effort is exactly what Annette Wettig of InVENTer describes as the thing that used to cost the most time.
The reply updates the schedule. When a department reports progress or a delay on its task, that goes into the plan. Downstream dates move with it, the critical path recalculates, and the project status is settled without the project manager doing anything.
Ahead of an approval date, the status is therefore a view and not a collection exercise. How the tracking works in detail is on the project control page.
Work packages with dates, the gate at the end
- Mechanical design
- Electrical
- Software
- Purchasing
- Production
- Quality
Each sees only their own work packages
A delay moves into the follow-on dates, the status is settled
A development project from concept to production ramp-up
Across the whole cycle – every phase with its own dates, approvals and status replies in one system.
At the end there is a product that goes into series production. The path there is a project following the classic phase-gate pattern: each phase ends in a decision point where the project is continued, reworked or stopped. Every one of those decisions needs a reliable status from all the departments involved.
This is precisely where separate lists fail. They hold one department's tasks, but not the handover to the next. In Linetrack the whole cycle sits in one plan, with each department's replies attached to the task itself. If testing runs late, the production ramp-up visibly moves with it – rather than surfacing once sales has already announced the launch date.
The way out of Excel chaos
One data base for
every phase, department and open point
The solution is not another task list alongside the PLM system. PLM holds the product data – it does not tell you whether testing is on schedule and who still owes something. A development project needs its own forward-looking view for that.
Automatic status collection: reminders run out of the plan instead of the project manager following up
Each department maintains its own element: design, purchasing, production and quality work in the same plan without overwriting one another
Open points, comments and files sit on the project rather than in email threads – this is how InVENTer works today
Cross-project capacity view: see what the internal project ties up in engineers before the customer deadline tips over
One view of every development project in flight, instead of laying six schedules side by side
For the first time management, project managers and departments all see where things stand – without maintaining lists or starting a round of enquiries. What such a switch looks like in practice is shown by the InVENTer case study – the ventilation manufacturer from Löberschütz near Jena used to track large development projects through reminders and follow-ups, and today has the plan, the status and the open points in the same place. At LANG Technik project plans are created collaboratively across departments and tracked automatically, with development keeping the overview across every project.
In practice
What development departments achieve with Linetrack
The benefit shows up where reminders and follow-ups used to set the pace. In practice, status meetings halve: the current state is in the system at any time instead of being pulled together weekly from scattered lists.
Because delays become visible earlier, responsiveness rises noticeably. On a development project that counts most before the gates: knowing two weeks before series release that testing is running late means the ramp-up can still be steered rather than merely postponed.
The most important effect cannot be put in a single number: management, project managers and departments see for the first time where things stand – and can decide, at the gates as well as when something goes wrong mid-project.
Customer voices
What our customers in development departments say
The full story behind the first quote is in the InVENTer case study.
„At InVENTer GmbH, we develop ventilation systems for residential buildings and manage many cross-departmental projects.
Before Linetrack, the biggest challenge was that constant reminders and follow-ups were needed to keep track of tasks. With Linetrack, we were able to significantly reduce this effort: reminders now run automatically, and the team works noticeably more productively.
Rolling out the system was easy, the support from Linetrack was excellent - and it's so intuitive to use that everyone got up to speed quickly. We especially appreciate that the training module is available at any time.“
„Linetrack has helped us keep track of complex development and automation projects. Project plans are now created collaboratively across departments and tracked automatically.
What convinces us most is the ease of use, combined with close contact with the Linetrack team. The flexible rollout and hands-on training meant our team adopted the solution quickly - a clear added value for our work.“
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Still have questions?
Book a slot with our team.
What makes an internal project different from a customer project?
What makes an internal project different from a customer project?
How does Linetrack get status out of departments that are not part of the project team?
How does Linetrack get status out of departments that are not part of the project team?
Do the dates really update by themselves?
Do the dates really update by themselves?
Are there reference customers from development departments?
Are there reference customers from development departments?
Can the production ramp-up be planned as well?
Can the production ramp-up be planned as well?
Does Linetrack replace our PLM system?
Does Linetrack replace our PLM system?
Does Linetrack support a phase-gate process?
Does Linetrack support a phase-gate process?
What about specialists split between a development project and day-to-day business?
What about specialists split between a development project and day-to-day business?
Learn more
Linetrack in detail
The features behind steering development and internal projects: