Initiatives

Use

Initiatives are key projects or programs developed to reach strategic objectives. They are also 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 tab to explore initiatives supporting overall objectives as well as the milestones supporting each initiative, interdependencies between them, and schedule and budget status. This tab helps put ongoing organizational activities in the context of overall goals to ensure that everyone is doing the right work to reach objectives.

Initiatives are integrated into these aspects of the application:

Initiatives are shown in the My Performance Summary panel of the Home tab.
You can subscribe to particular initiatives so you can monitor them and keep of them moving forward using the Home tab. You can receive notification when certain aspects of an initiative changes such as the target date or budget status. You can receive notification if a milestone or submilestone changes. You can also be notified immediately if a user comments on an initiative, or if a milestone or submilestone is due within a certain number of calendar days.
The initiatives for an objective are displayed when you display details about an objective in the Scorecard tab.
The initiatives for an objective are displayed when you click an objective in the Strategy Goal Diagram tab.

New, modified, or deleted initiatives are automatically refreshed whenever you restart a new application session, or you switch from this context to another and then back to this context.

If your system administrator has enabled the option that requires all new and modified initiatives within a context be reviewed and approved by colleagues, you see icons beside the names of initiatives in the Initiatives list depending on your role. Different icons appear for end users, authors and owners, and approvers. Also, if you are an approver who has been assigned to approve newly created initiatives and modifications to existing initiatives, you receive email notifications telling you when an initiative needs your review. For more information, see Initiative Approval Workflow.

Features

The Initiatives tab has the following features:

Feature	Description
Initiatives Summary view	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 reaching organizational goals. For more information, see Initiatives Summary. The Milestones tab in the Initiatives Summary displays milestones and submilestones in the form of a table or Fishbone Diagram. The table shows the milestones and submilestones for an initiative. The diagram assesses critical interdependencies between milestones and submilestones, which increases understanding and helps resolve bottlenecks within an initiative. For more information, see Milestones The Impact Diagram tab in the Initiatives Summary shows the impact of an initiative's actual and forecast changes over a time period for a KPI. For more information, see Impact Diagram.
Prioritization Matrix view	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 milestones. For more information, see Prioritization Matrix.
Functions that are standard to the tab	You can use the standard features throughout all tabs. For more information, see Standard Features of the Tabs

Feature

Description

Initiatives Summary view

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 reaching organizational goals. For more information, see Initiatives Summary.

The Milestones tab in the Initiatives Summary displays milestones and submilestones in the form of a table or Fishbone Diagram. The table shows the milestones and submilestones for an initiative. The diagram assesses critical interdependencies between milestones and submilestones, which increases understanding and helps resolve bottlenecks within an initiative.

For more information, see Milestones

The Impact Diagram tab in the Initiatives Summary shows the impact of an initiative's actual and forecast changes over a time period for a KPI.

For more information, see Impact Diagram.

Prioritization Matrix view

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 milestones. For more information, see Prioritization Matrix.

Functions that are standard to the tab

You can use the standard features throughout all tabs. For more information, see Standard Features of the Tabs