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Initiative Planning

Initiative Planning

The Initiative Planning capability supports the definition and management of the organization’s strategic missions and initiatives, the assignment of ownership to strategic initiatives, and the estimation of the cost and benefit for each initiative. Each capability within the Planview Capability Framework has a distinct set of features and functionality, business processes, best practices, and analytics and reports that deliver value to customers in the form of specific business outcomes.

Processes and Reports

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The initiative planning capability allows organizations to support their key strategic missions by aligning projects and programs to their strategic plan. Organizations are enabled to perform accurate cost and benefit analysis of initiatives, then transform their business outcomes by delivering on strategy. After the strategic structure is created and initiatives are added, initiatives can be assigned, categorized, and funded by the strategic investment budget, then tracked against financial targets.

           

Initiative Planning Process Steps

           

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Initiative planning process flow

           

Process Step Description

Define strategic goals or funding structure

The Strategy structure is used to manage the initiatives and programs that will deliver the strategic plan of the organization. Customers typically define the strategic structure in one of two ways:

  • Based on the strategic objectives and goals of the organization
  • Based on the organizations funding hierarchy

See Strategies for more information

To access the Strategy Portfolio View go to Strategy Portfolio View Screen Basics.

Strategy structure levels are determined by the core implementation team and our core consulting team, based on your business needs. Once the levels are determined, users and Planview administrators can add strategic entities to the respective levels.

To add a new investment/strategic entity, click the +New option on the action menu at its parent level.

Action menus are used to either perform an action or to navigate to a different view. The action menu lets you easily build out the structure using +New. If the child only has one label option, that option is dynamically displayed (+New Objective for example). If not, Strategy Type will have an option list for the header type on the next screen.

Tip! The +New menu at the top of the screen will allow users to add to the Strategy structure, but the user will also have to define the strategic parent for the new entity.

See Creating a Strategic Entity for more information

Describe and categorize strategies

The purpose of this step is to describe and categorize the strategies in the portfolio, by populating the relevant data entry screens.

This information can be used to filter or slice analytics downstream in the reporting output process or divide strategic information in to relevant portfolios based on these data points.

See Modifying a Strategy Portfolio's Definition for more information

Create strategic initiatives

Following the creation of the Organizational Strategic Goals or Funding Structure, the next step is to create the initiatives that will contain the programs to deliver the work.

Adding initiatives to the strategic structure provides a method of categorization, description and budgeting at a further level of strategic granularity prior to the creation of programs to deliver the work.

The first step in adding a new investment is to complete the Basic Information screen.

If a workflow (lifecycle) is configured, users assigned to the steps will receive a notification when their step is activated.

If a workflow (lifecycle) is not configured, the creator of this new entity will also need to complete an additional screen – Strategic Detail Attributes.
 

Example of Adding a New Initiative:

When adding a strategic entity, users will be presented with a Basic screen. Let’s review what some of these fields are for.

1. The strategic parent will be automatically populated based on the level you selected to add the entity to.

2. The new entity will be added at a level below the selected entity. Up to 50 characters are allowed for each description.

3. The strategic and investment approval statuses will be defaulted to the value set for your solution. Depending on your solution for strategic lifecycles, these values may be updated from the Strategy View or they may be updatable only via the lifecycle or from the Investment and Capacity Manager screen.

4. The target date entered here will be displayed on the Strategy View.

5. The Lifecycle options may be available to selected, if lifecycles are enabled for the level.

6. The user adding the entity will be automatically listed as the lifecycle administrator if the user has the appropriate permission. If not, users can select someone from the list.

See Lifecycles for more information.

Describe and categorize initiatives

Creating a new initiative will likely include the population of a small amount of (configuration-specific) description and categorization attributes as determined by the data and information needs of the organization.

Create/manage relevant financial targets and budget

Build out the elements of the financial plans so that these budgets can be used to fund programs or the allocated work. Define an organization-wide strategic investment budget that will eventually be divided out between the relevant initiatives and programs, acting as the baseline for comparison against the actual cost of delivery.

Organization-wide investment budgets can be defined in the financial plan at any level of the investment/strategy structure. The budget can be assigned to different business units or strategic programs, based on the investment/strategy structure.

Financial data summarization, roll-up and spread-down features can be used to support gated, top-down and bottom-up planning.

Planview Portfolios supports both the top-down and bottom-up strategic budget planning. For top-down planning, budgets can be assigned to a level of the strategy structure on the Financial Planning Detail screen, then spread down to lower levels. For bottom-up planning, budgets are captured at the lower levels and can be summarized or rolled up to the higher levels.

Click here for bottom-up approach. Click here for top-down approach.

It is important that the budget is available at the appropriate planning level so that further analysis of the investments can be performed.

For more information:

           

           

Initiative Planning Reports

How are we able to understand the strategic direction of the organization?

FastTrack Power BI Showcase Dashboards – Strategy – Strategy Portfolio Balance
 

Power BI Dashboard

This dashboard counts the strategic initiatives and programs in select portfolios by the line of business, sponsorship, and initiative drivers. You can slice data by portfolio and view an overall status assessment for each project.

Strategy Portfolio – Portfolio Manager – Customizable Column Set

Tile

This allows you to see strategy data in a customizable column set, including roadmaps, financials, effort, and more.

STR01 – Strategy/Program Portfolio Details

Analytic

This report summarizes key data points relating to the investment programs of the organization. The report can be configured to show specific attributes, fields, dates, and financial plan measures associated with each strategic entity.

STR02 – Strategic Portfolio Balance

Analytic

This report provides you with a count of the strategic initiatives or programs in a portfolio, allowing analysis by a primary and secondary attribute.

STR03 – Strategic Portfolio Prioritization

Analytic

This bubble chart plots prioritization, cost, benefit, revenue, and effort measures against strategic initiative or program status dimensions. For example, it can provide a value vs. cost visualization of the portfolio pipeline to show lifecycle stage and strategic alignment.

STR43 – Strategy Process Analysis – Investment Approval

Analytic

This report shows data on program approval to help you analyze throughput, volume, and cycle time. You can adjust the report parameters to change the grouping and time horizon.

How are we able to understand who is responsible for the strategic plan?

Strategy Portfolio – Portfolio Manager – Customizable Column Set

Tile

This allows you to see strategy data in a customizable column set, including roadmaps, financials, effort, and more.

STR01 – Strategy/Program Portfolio Details

Analytic

This report summarizes key data points relating to the investment programs of the organization. The report can be configured to show specific attributes, fields, dates, and financial plan measures associated with each strategic entity.

STR16 – Program Highlight Report

Analytic

This one-page report provides an executive summary of key program information for program stakeholders followed by detailed reports, including:

  • program responsibility information

  • program condition/RAG/RYG status

  • program dates and milestones

  • program financial summary

  • program commentary and change request/risk/issue lists

  • key information on associated projects delivering the program

This report can be run for a single program or a portfolio.

           

 

           

Initiative Planning Process Steps

           

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Initiative planning process flow

           

Process Step Description

Configure strategic initiatives

An Initiative is a plan that encompasses an organization’s strategy. In AdaptiveWork, initiatives are created as a portfolio. Initiatives must be defined as a portfolio type with related attributes. This step must be completed by the organization’s administrators.

For more information on how to add a portfolio, see Portfolios.

Create, describe, and categorize initiatives

Once initiatives have been defined and made available to users, they can be created by the appropriate personnel. Certain fields may be required to ensure initiatives are well defined, categorized, and assigned to the right area(s). This can be accomplished on the initiative’s respective Item Details view.

Create initiative roadmap

Building an initiative roadmap will ensure there is a clear path and make it easy to track actual work against estimated work, allowing for easy adjustments.

To build out an initiative roadmap, you will start by adding in key milestones and dates within projects, which creates a project roadmap. These project roadmaps can then be related to the initiative (portfolio), where they can then be viewed under the portfolio roadmap umbrella.

The initiative roadmap can be created organically from the naturally related projects, or it can be created as a project with the specific purpose of being an initiative roadmap. These two methods can also be combined or separated using the views function within the initiative’s Roadmap view.

For more information, see the following articles:

Manage lifecycle steps

As the roadmap is updated over time, lifecycle steps may need to be completed. Lifecycle steps will be defined for the portfolio by the organization’s administrators, which may include the Lifecycle app. Associated users may be notified of lifecycle steps via Discussions and/or email.

For more information, see Lifecycle states.