Proposal Overview Page

This page provides a comprehensive overview of the proposal capturing, in one place, all aspects of a business case. This includes forecasting of effort, costs and benefits as well as scoring for strategic fit. It also serves to ensure that the governance process is correctly followed including submission of the correct documents and obtaining approvals from the correct sponsors and stakeholders.

• The ‘ROI’ content area shows the total planned cost and total planned benefits along with the nominal Return On Investment (ROI) which is calculated as the benefits less the costs. The value is not adjusted for inflation.

• Click anywhere on the content area to open the financials for the proposal which allows for the costs and benefits to be forecasted over time.

• The strategic fit shows a scoring for the business case based on risk vs reward/value. It provides an additional metric (to financial ROI) by which to judge and compare proposals.

• Strategic fit, along with financial metrics such as ROI and Net Present Value (NPV) become relevant when performing portfolio scenario comparisons.

• Click anywhere on the content area to open the form for editing of the risk and value ratings

• The ‘Effort content area shows start and end date for the proposed project and how much resource effort is forecast.

• Click anywhere on the content area to open the resource forecast for editing.

• Typically, the process of building a business case involves the submission of one or more governance documents.

• The ‘Governance Documents content area shows which documents must be completed at each stage, depending on how the proposal process is configured.

• If the document is greyed out and has a ‘+’ sign next to it, the document is awaiting creation. Click on the ‘+’ sign to create the document. A pop-up window will be displayed with a link to the document template. Use the link to download the template.

• Once the document is ready to be attached, click on the ‘+’ sign again and add it to the ‘Document’ text area and then click on the ‘Create’ button.

• Once created the document icon will no longer be greyed out and there will be an ‘i’ in a circle next to the icon. Click on the ‘I’ to open the document properties or click on the document icon to download the document.

• To submit the document for approval, click on the ‘i’ to open the document properties and then click on the ‘Send For Approval’ button. If the document requires approval it will move to the ‘Awaiting Approval’ state. Some documents may not require approval in which case they will automatically be marked as ‘Approved’.

• If there is a need to change a document that has not yet been approved, simply download the existing document by clicking on the document icon. Once the document has been changed, upload it again to the ‘Document’ area and then delete the old version by clicking on the ‘x’ next to the document.

• If the document has already been approved, click on the ‘New Version’ button to create a new version. The ‘Current Version’ field will be incremented and the document can be downloaded and updated.

• To comment on a document, open the document properties by clicking on the ‘I’ next to the document and then select the ‘Comments’ tab in the pop-up window.

• To view the history of a document, open the document properties by clicking on the ‘I’ next to the document and then select the ‘History’ tab in the pop-up window.

• If you are a Proposal Manager or Stakeholder with responsibility for acting on stages in a proposal lifecycle, for example submitting a proposal for review or approving a proposal to move to the next stage then click on the ‘Governance’ icon in the ‘Actions’ content area to access the proposal form.

• Any available actions for the user will be displayed as buttons at the top right of the form.

• Click on the ‘Workbook’ icon in the ‘Actions’ content area to access the proposal workbook. The workbook provides a single location for managing many aspects of the proposal including:

  • • Viewing milestones

    • Updating the risk log

    • Updating the issue log

    • Updating the change log

    • Updating the resource plan

    • Updating costs

    • Updating the decisions log

    • Updating the actions log

    • Updating the dependencies log

    • Updating the assumptions log

    • Updating the lessons learned log

    • Updating financial benefits

• Refer to the Project Workbook End User Guide for further help with the Proposal Workbook.

• The ‘Proposal Team’ content area defines who the participants are in terms of accessing the proposal in the tool. Such an example might be person’s who are managing the proposal, are stakeholders responsible for approving it or just team members working on it.

• Use the ‘+’ icons in the content area to add ‘Proposal Managers, Sponsors, Approvers and other Members of the proposal.

• Select the ‘x’ icon for the circular profile image to remove a person as a participant.

• This content area allows the definition of expected proposal outcomes and the deliverables supporting those outcomes. Outcomes need to be defined before deliverables can reference them.

• Click on the ‘+’ sign next to ‘Add Outcome’ to add a new outcome. A form will be displayed to collect information about the outcome, including a field to assign responsibility and track due dates.

• Click on the ‘+’ sign next to the ‘Add Deliverable’ to add a new deliverable. A form will be displayed to collect information about the deliverable, including the outcome it supports and who it is assigned to. If the deliverable is document based, an attachments field is available to attach a template or the finished deliverable.

• Use the drill-down to access the proposal deliverables page which will list outcomes and deliverables in more detail.

• The ‘Timeline’ content area provides a Gantt view of milestones. Milestones may be ones in the proposal lifecycle itself and/or may be ones for the project if the proposal is approved.

• Click on the ‘Drill-down’ arrow to access the milestones

• Refer to the Entity Task Planning End User Guide for further help with the proposal task plan.