Creating initiatives within a plan

In this video, you will learn how to create initiatives as part of a plan in the Scenario Planner.

Transcript
In this video, we will learn how to add initiatives to a plan. By creating initiatives, you are illustrating how smaller organizational units contribute to the completion of the plan. For example, if your organization has a plan for the next three years to expand into a new market, you can create or add initiatives for each department to estimate the need for people and budget to accomplish this plan. Initiatives will do the following. Estimate the type and number of job roles that might be required to complete the initiative, estimate the fixed costs associated with the work needed to complete the initiative, and estimate the planned benefit that your company might gain when the initiative is completed.
Initiatives can be added two different ways within a plan. You can create initiatives from scratch or you can import projects into a plan. The projects added then become an initiative. To create an initiative, go to the plan for which you want to create or add an initiative, click the name of the plan to open it, click the new initiative dropdown menu, and select either New Initiative or Import Project. If you clicked New Initiative, type a name for your initiative in the untitled initiative field. Then press enter or click anywhere else on the page. The initiative displays on the timeline of the plan as a blue bar. By default, the duration of an initiative is one month, and it always starts on the first month of the plan. drag the end of the initiative bar to extend its duration to more than one month, and release it where you want the end month of the initiative to be. Next, click the bar of the initiative. The initiative details box opens on the right. Specify or review the following information. Initiative duration, the duration of the initiative in months. Remember, you can edit the duration by dragging the end of the initiative bar and releasing it in a different spot on the timeline of the plan where you want the initiative to end. Start and end dates. The start and end dates of the initiative. You can edit the start and end dates of an initiative by dragging and dropping the initiative bar on a plan or by modifying its duration. Required job roles. In the start typing job role field, select from the list of job roles. Add the number of job roles needed for this initiative. All job roles in the system are listed in this field. Update the number of FTEs required for each job role to complete the initiative. You can enter a number lower than one FTE. Next is the costs section. In the Fixed Costs field, manually enter a rough estimate amount of what you believe it will cost to complete this initiative. This should not include costs associated with job role estimates for the initiative. In the People Costs field you can view the costs associated with your job roles. This field is not editable. Workfront calculates this field automatically based on the job roles and the number of each selected in the required job role section. In the Net Value field, manually enter a rough estimate amount in the planned benefit field of what you believe the benefit of achieving this initiative will be. Hover over the name of a job role. Then click the trashcan icon to remove it from the initiative. If you made changes to the initiative, click apply. If you made no changes, click the X icon in the upper right of the editing box to close it. Click the handle to the left of the initiative name to drag it up or down in the list to change the initiative’s priority. Initiatives listed first in the list have a higher priority and get resources before the initiatives listed lower in the list. In the next video, we will show you how to copy a plan and compare the scenarios within the scenario planner. -
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