Business Case Workflow?

[MikePe]

Hi all! I'm hoping the Business Case gurus of these fine forums can help me out with a bit of a quandary I've encountered on my quest to build a better Workfront experience for my users :) (sorry for the lengthy read ahead, but much appreciated if you make it all the way through!) We are currently in the midst of evaluating our request submission process, and are working toward using the Resource Planner, Scheduling Tool and Utilization Tool for our assignments to users and resource allocation. We would also like to build a process solution that will eventually be able to make use of the Business Case feature in Workfront, so we no longer have to manually assign priority to the list of projects in our queue. We currently have a system in place where issues are submitted by our sponsors and routed to Request Queues by brand (we cover multiple brands). Our brand managers approve/reject the issue via an Issue Approval Process we set up for them, and if the issue is approved, it then goes to our creative project managers to convert the issue to a project, assign a template, Creative resources, etc. The two snags we've run into are 1) by the time the issue has become a project, it has already been approved by our Brand Manager, and 2) even if we wanted to have them review it again WITH a business case, we would need to bounce the project back and forth between multiple users multiple times to do so (something like this:) Sponsor submits request Brand Manager approves request Creative PM converts to project Sponsor updates business case Brand Manager reviews business case and approves again/rejects Project is automatically prioritized in the Resource Planner using Business Case information Brand Manager reviews priority list with Resource Manager Resource Manager budgets projects and notifies Brand Manager of projects that fall below the red line for resource availability. Ideally, the system would be something more like this: Sponsor submits request (complete with business case) Brand manager reviews issue, along with business case Creative PM converts to project Project is automatically prioritized in the Resource Planner using Business Case information Brand Manager reviews priority list with Resource Manager Resource Manager budgets projects and notifies Brand Manager of projects that fall below the red line for resource availability. I am only left thinking I've either overlooked something, or there will need to be a fundamentally different way of handling project requests if we want to use the Business Case feature in Workfront. If we were to allow our users to create projects directly, we would need to stock up on our Plan licenses (which is not my favorite option). Long explanation to reach a short (but complicated!) question: how do you handle Business Cases and Request Queues? Or do you even use Request Queues? Mike Perez Tailored Brands

[VicAl]

Hi Mike, I don't think you're overlooking anything. Unfortunately the Business Case feature is only available under projects and not Issues/Requests. So we do something similar to what you've described. We don't have as many approval steps so it's not as cumbersome for us, but I see your dilemma. If you want to use the Business Case feature in WF, I'm afraid you're stuck with what you have or as you mentioned use the Project for requests. There might be away around giving everyone a Plan license. Not sure if it's better or not but you could do the following: Sponsor submits request Have Creative PM convert to a project immediately (or if you use the API do this automatically) Sponsor updates business case Brand Manager reviews business case and approves again/rejects Project is automatically prioritized in the Resource Planner using Business Case information Brand Manager reviews priority list with Resource Manager Resource Manager budgets projects and notifies Brand Manager of projects that fall below the red line for resource availability. Another option is to either use something outside of WF for the Business Case (i.e. Word doc etc.) or create a custom form for the Request that has everything you want in the Business Case and either use that on its own or transfer the data to the Business Case feature. Here is the process you were hoping for with those modifications: Sponsor submits request (complete with business case – in the Issue/Request custom form ) Brand manager reviews issue, along with business case (in the Issue/Request custom form) Creative PM converts to project (and adds data to the WF Business Case feature using the data from the Form) Project is automatically prioritized in the Resource Planner using Business Case information Brand Manager reviews priority list with Resource Manager Resource Manager budgets projects and notifies Brand Manager of projects that fall below the red line for resource availability. Choose your poison �� . Or maybe someone here will have a better solution. Hope that helps a little.

[MikePe]

Thanks Vic, I appreciate the response! It is comforting to at least know my understanding of the situation is about right, even if the situation isn't necessarily how I'd like it :) I think of the two options, I would probably be inclined to use the first one, because the main reason we want to use the business cases at all is for the ability to have automated prioritization through Portfolio Optimization/the Resource Planner (if for no other reason than to give us a ballpark on priorities, even if we manually adjust them after). Either that or I suppose we just need to structure the workflow in a way that a select few Plan users are actually filing the requests. Hmm... Mike Perez Tailored Brands