Strategy-based planning

Enable the planning menu

From the Menus and View Settings page, click the Menus tab, then enable the planning menu by checking the Display option.

From the Strategic Management Options page, enable Use Investment and Capacity Planning.

From the Menu Actions tab, select the Planning tab on the left, then select the checkbox to display all the available options. Feature controls may also be added from this page.
 

From the Configure Roles screen, enable the following features for each role that will use planning. 

Strategic management: 

• Use investment and capacity planning

Investment decisions:

• Define portfolio targets
• Make investment decisions
• Publish to shared scenario
• Publish to entities
   

To confirm the Enterprise Financial Model is configured correctly, go to the Administer Financial Planning Models screen, and confirm that Strategy is listed as a financial model Type for the Enterprise Financial Model.

It is recommended that Use Providing Organization (Cbs1) be selected on the Enterprise Financial Model. 

To confirm the Enterprise Financial Model is configured correctly, go to the Administer Financial Planning Models screen and select Edit Financial Planning Model. Confirm that the option Use Providing Organization (Cbs1) is checked. 

On the Configure Accounts for Enterprise Financial Model screen, select Use in Investment and Capacity Planning for each account that will be used for planning.

Planview recommendation: As you consider which accounts to include for investment and capacity planning, only include those accounts that you need to make investment decisions.

The accounts you select will make up the content and depth of the pivot table that compares the capacity and demand financial plans.

For the Enterprise Financial Model, go to Configure Versions and add two new financial versions. It is recommended to name one version Investment Planning Target, and the other version Investment Planning Demand.

Planview recommendation: Review the financial plan versions chart below to understand the recommended financial plan versions and naming conventions to be created and used in the investment planning process.

Planview administrator

Portfolio manager

Finance manager

Understand:

Planview recommends two approaches, depending on your organization's structure and planning style:

1. Top-down planning

In this method, financial data is manually entered into higher-level strategies. Next, potential or ongoing programs are identified, added into Portfolios if new, and funded from the strategic budgets. 

For example, a program may request a set amount of funding from the overall strategy budget. This approach is commonly used by companies that define their program needs based on broader strategic goals (for example, $500,000 to fund a program from a $5,000,000 strategy budget). Some companies stop the planning process here once the programs are identified and funded. 

Other companies continue with a secondary funding process where potential/ongoing projects are identified, added into Portfolios if they're new, and funded using either the program planning or cost center use case. 

2. Bottom-up planning:

In this approach, detailed project-level financial estimates are gathered first. These project costs are then rolled up to the program level, where the program’s financial demand is calculated based on the sum of its projects. This method provides a detailed and realistic view of program funding needs and is popular in companies that finalize their project lists early in the planning process.

Take action:

Regardless of which approach is used, Planview recommends that the planning process uses different financial versions than the Actual/Forecast version used day-to-day, making this a two-step process.

First, populate or edit the Actual/Forecast version:

Depending on which approach is used, data will be added to program (demand) financial plans in two ways: 

1. Manual entry (top-down planning and bottom-up planning) - In both use cases, data may be manually entered into potential program budgets. See Editing a Financial Plan for more information on manually entering financial data.
2. Load (bottom-up planning)- If using resource assignments such as requirements on projects early in the planning process, the work financial load can be manually performed or scheduled within job stream management. Project data can then be rolled up one level from the work/projects into the programs they are associated to. For information about scheduling a financial plan load job by using a job stream, see Configuring Financial Plan Load Job Parameters. See Understanding the Strategy Financial Load for more information. 

The Planview administrator will copy all the financial data from the Actual/Forecast version into the Investment Planning Demand version just before the planning cycle starts.

Note: It is important that all programs that will be part of the planning process have financial data. If the financial plan for a potential program is blank, or contains lines with no financial data within the horizon dates of the portfolio, the program will not pull into the investment and capacity planning portfolio.

Portfolio manager

Financial manager

Product Owner

Strategy Office

From the Strategy Portfolio, edit Financials for the capacity entities to be used in investment planning.

Data for the strategy financial plans (capacity targets) must be manually entered in the Investment Planning Target version. See Editing a Financial Plan for more information on manually entering financial data.

Data is often defined by Finance and maintained manually by a Portfolio manager, but these roles vary by company.

There is also an option to use Excel Importer to load data.

Actual/Forecast version

Data from this version may be copied into the Investment Planning version for demand planning in Investment and Capacity Planning.

This version holds the current view of spend-to-date (if any) and forecast-to-complete.

Holds the current view of spend-to-date (if any) and forecast-to-complete.

This data can be derived in two ways:

• Top-down: entered directly into the Financial Plan version when doing initial scoping/sizing of the demand associated with the product/outcome, or

• Bottom-up: from the underlying work financial plans that support the product or outcome. The project financial plans can be manually entered, or the data can be loaded from the project plan (activities, resource assignments, timesheets and expenditures.)

This version is marked as "Forecast" in the financial model configuration.

It is used in both strategy/program and work/project delivery portfolio views and reports.

It is common to run a Financial Management version load daily to summarize the delivery data into work financial plans. This may or may not roll up into the program financial plans, depending on the configuration.

The program manager or financial manager owns this data (version).

Baseline version

Used for variance reporting for project/work delivery.

Not typically used as part of Investment and Capacity Planning.

Holds a snapshot of financial data that represents the approved baseline budget.

This version is marked "Baseline" in the financial model configuration.

Used in program/outcome delivery portfolio views and reports.
 

Investment Planning Demand version

Holds the data taken into Investment and Capacity Planning for planning and publishing.

Often used as the Demand version in Investment and Capacity Planning.

Used to hold the financial plan data that is pulled into a planning portfolio for investment analysis, scenario modeling, and approval.

When investment management decisions are published, this version is used to communicate the approved investment budget to the appropriate managers.

Investment Planning Target version

Holds the budget/capacity for the products, outcomes, applications, capabilities, services, and more, which will be used as planning portfolio target/budget.

Often used as the Capacity version in Investment and Capacity Planning.

Holds the budget/capacity for the higher-level strategic entities, which will be used as planning portfolio target/budget.

Planview administrator 

PMO

Columns included in the investment and capacity planning column set will drive how you rank potential and in-flight investments.

Create a New column set for investments that includes all criteria that should be considered for ranking and prioritization such as category, regulatory, scoring attributes, and risk scoring. This will require financial subtotals (benefits, IRR, ROI) and other attribute columns.

Key actions:

• Include In: Check the box for Investment and Capacity Planning.
• Set to Working Version so that data from the active scenario (the shared scenario or user-defined scenario) is shown.
• Roles: Select either Corporate Wide or specific roles that will be involved in the portfolio planning process.

Planview recommendation: If your company approves the budget for a time horizon shorter than your 3-5 year strategic planning portfolio (such as the current year or next year), you can add time limits to some columns in your column set.

Create column sets to share published decisions

Planview administrator

To communicate the published plan to program managers, product and value stream leadership, or executive management, configure Portfolios to support viewing the approved investment ranking values.

The investment ranking values that exist within the scenario at the time it was last published are often used by program and finance managers to know which programs (and eventually projects) to staff and help them understand the final prioritization decisions. 

You can add this important column to column sets relevant to the Investment and Capacity Planning screen, or the Strategy Portfolio View, Product/Outcome Portfolio View, Work Portfolio View, and Resource Portfolio screens.

The investment ranking details a user will be able to view after selecting one of the column sets you configure are dependent on which investment ranking columns you add to that column set.

Enable required features for roles

Planview administrator

From the Configure Roles screen, enable the following features for each role that will use planning: 

Strategic management: 

• Use investment and capacity planning

Investment decisions:

• Define portfolio targets
• Make investment decisions
• Publish to shared scenario
• Publish to entities

Pending

Indicates the investment opportunity has been identified, however, the business case has not been completed and the opportunity is not ready to be considered. Investments with this status are not displayed on the Investment and Capacity Planning screen.

Analyze

Indicates the investment opportunity has been identified and the business case prepared. The opportunity can be considered; however, no final investment decision has been made.

Accept

Indicates the investment opportunity has gone through the investment and capacity planning process and that your organization has chosen to proceed with the investment. Anything approved in the previous planning cycle will already appear above the line (in-flight).

Conditional

Indicates the investment has gone through the investment and capacity planning process and has been accepted under certain conditions.

Refuse

Indicates the investment opportunity has gone through the investment and capacity planning process and your organization has chosen not to accept it.

Resubmit

Indicates the investment opportunity has gone through the investment and capacity planning process via a lifecycle and your organization initially refused to accept it. The opportunity has been revised and should be reconsidered.

This status is used in investment and capacity planning if your system is configured for lifecycles.

Potential investments (programs) must have an investment status (OpCapAppr alternate structure) of Analyze, Accept, Conditional, or Refuse to be included in a planning portfolio.

As an administrator, you must edit the investment demand structure, then the status must be added to all potential and in-flight programs.

Things to consider: 

• By default, this is set to Pending, but you can change the default to Analyze before any programs are added. If programs already exists in the database, a script may be run to change the status to Analyze for existing programs. 
  • If no data exists, manually make this change by selecting the definition link next to the Investment Approval alternate structure, then select Analyze in the default drop down.
• Pending can be used to enable a lifecycle checkpoint before moving to planning.
• Conditional is used during investment and capacity planning if an investment opportunity has been accepted under certain conditions.
• Resubmit and Repropose can be used in sub-lifecycles in advanced configurations and are not required. 
• If used, the status chosen in the lifecycle can trigger successive workflows for the relevant entities. 

Create a new planning portfolio

Planview administrator

Strategy Office

EPMO

Create a new planning portfolio. For detailed information about how to create the portfolio see Capability Usage. 

Planview administrator

Strategy Office

EPMO

Enterprise Architecture team

Portfolio Manager

Finance Manager

From the planning menu, navigate to the Investment and Capacity Planning tab. Use the View dropdown to select each view option, and make sure the portfolio displays rows for each option.

If no data displays, review this criteria:

• Demand data for the selected financial version must be available for the selected capacity entities.
• The demand must exist within the selected planning horizon.
• The investment approval status must not be Pending.
• If an additional demand portfolio was applied to the planning portfolio, the investments must also be included in the definition of the selected demand portfolio.