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Initiatives are key projects or programs developed to achieve strategic objectives. They are often known as operational programs, projects, actions and activities. They differ from objectives in that they are more specific; have stated boundaries (a beginning and end date); have a person/team assigned to accomplish them; and have a budget. Several initiatives together may support a specific objective or pathway.

Use the Initiatives component in SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management to explore summary views of initiatives supporting overall objectives, as well as the milestones supporting each initiative, interdependencies between them, and schedule and budget status. This component helps put ongoing organizational activities in the context of overall goals to ensure that everyone is doing the right work to achieve objectives.

Click the Initiatives tab to display the Initiatives component.

Integration

Initiatives are integrated into these aspects of the application:

  • Initiatives are shown in the My Performance Summary panel of the Home component.

  • In the Home component, you can subscribe to particular initiatives so you can monitor them and keep of them moving forward. You can receive notification when an initiative's start date, target date, completion date, actual, budget, owner, budget status, or schedule status changes. You can receive notification if a milestone or sub-milestone of an initiative has a changed start date, target date, completion date, status, importance, or % complete. You can also be alerted immediately if a comment has been added to any of the selected initiatives, or if a milestone or sub-milestone from any of the selected initiatives is due within x calendar days, and is currently incomplete. For more information, see online Help for the Home component.

  • An initiative is listed as detail information whenever you get detail information about an objective associated with this initiative. In the Objective Detail screen of the Scorecard component, the objective's initiatives are listed.

  • An objective's initiatives are listed in the objective information box that appears in the Goal Diagram subtab of the Strategy component.

Features

The Initiatives component has the following features:

Feature

Description

Initiatives Summary

The Initiatives Summary provides a status of initiatives so you can gain insight into how they impact goals and objectives. Learn where initiatives fit within overall organizational priorities, which require immediate attention, as well as trade-offs between various initiatives and milestones. This helps to ensure the resources are directed to those most critical to achieving organizational goals. For more information, see Initiatives Summary.

The Initiatives Summary displays either the Milestone Summary or Fishbone Diagram in its detail view.

  • The Milestones Summary in the Detail View of the Initiatives Summary shows you the milestones and sub-milestones for an initiative.

  • The Fishbone Diagram in the Detail View of the Initiatives Summary assesses critical interdependencies between milestones and sub-milestones, which increases understanding and helps resolve bottlenecks within an initiative.

For more information, see Detail View.

Prioritization Matrix

The Prioritization Matrix provides a view of initiatives’ relative importance in relation to its schedule status, budget status, or target status, as well as the dependencies between individual initiatives and/or milestones. For more information, see Prioritization Matrix.

Functions that are standard to most components

You can use various standard features throughout all components. For more information, see Standard Features of Most Components