An Initiative is a project or a recommendation you're making to a client. Taken together they give you a quarter by quarter view of the major projects coming up for that client, over the next few quarters or the next few years.
That's usually about the right level for the client conversation. An owner isn't going to sit through an asset list, but they will happily work through what's coming, when, and roughly what it costs.
Note: Plans are still fully supported and are best used now when you need more detailed planning. If you've been using Plans for IT roadmaps, we'd encourage you to use Initiatives. If you'd like a hand moving across, let us know.
Working quarter by quarter
Initiatives group by quarter, and you move work around by dragging it from one quarter to the next. Dragging changes the underlying dates rather than just reordering the list, so what you end up looking at is the real picture.
You can work in list, card or board view, whichever suits what you're doing.
What goes in an Initiative
Every Initiative carries a name and a client. Beyond that, add as much or as little as the conversation needs.
Summary: two or three sentences on what the Initiative is meant to accomplish and what the next steps are. This is the short version your client reads.
Content: a longer rich text write-up, for when a recommendation needs a proper explanation before anyone will agree to it.
Status: where the Initiative has reached as it moves through your process, so you can tell at a glance what's still a suggestion and what's been approved.
Priority: High, Medium or Low, or left blank.
Tags: we've included a few to get you started, and you can add and manage your own in Settings. Tags are shared across every client, so they're worth setting up for the categories you'll want to report on later.
Budgets and where the quarters come from
There are two budget fields and they do different jobs.
Budget Estimate is useful for giving a client a ballpark before you've scoped something properly. It's there for the conversation and it doesn't stream anywhere.
Budget is the finalized number, and it's what streams through to the client's budget.
Important: the quarter an Initiative appears in comes from its Budget Month and Budget Year, and those two fields also decide where it lands on the Roadmap and Budget Parts of the Report.
Creating an Initiative
Creating one takes a few seconds once you know which fields matter.
Open Initiatives from the left navigation.
Create a new Initiative and give it a name.
Choose the client it belongs to.
Set Status and Priority.
Enter the cost in Budget when you're ready for it to stream to the budget.
Set Budget Month and Budget Year to place it in a quarter.
Save.
Where Initiatives show up
The Global module gives you every Initiative across every client in one list, which is the view to use when you're looking at your whole pipeline of recommended work rather than one account.
Inside a client's Report, the Initiatives Part shows only that client's items.
Note: when you complete a Report, its Initiatives are snapshotted the same way Technology Items are, and the snapshot can't be edited afterwards.