Manage Initiatives - Action Plans for the KPIs and Goals

Learn how to align initiatives (action plans), persons responsible, budgets with KPIs and business goals in BSC Designer.

Initiatives

Initiatives in BSC Designer

To access the Initiatives dialog, select any goal or KPI, and click on the clipboard icon next to the name of the selected item. Alternatively, the KPI table view can be configured to display the Initiatives column.

Learn more about the role of the initiatives in strategic planning.

Initiatives have the following properties:

  • Name of the initiative.
  • Description of the initiative.
  • Document list with the links to the detailed action plans.
  • Owner of the initiative.
  • Type of the item, such as initiative, success factor, expected outcome, rationale, hypothesis, risk mitigation plan.

Process-related properties:

  • Status of the initiative (statuses can be configured on the Workflow tab in the account Settings).
  • Aligned KPI that indicates the progress of the initiative.
  • Timeline for the initiative (is used on dashboard charts).

Dependencies:

  • Depends on and Contributes to define the dependency between initiatives (used on the Gantt charts).
  • Context defines the contextual relationships of the initiative. Use the Add button to link the initiative by context with another initiative, goal, or indicator.

Documents and Discussion:

  • Documents section allows uploading strategy-related documents and linking to external resources.
  • Comments section allows users to discuss the initiative.

Budget properties:

  • Budget assigned to the initiative.
  • Currency of the budget (currencies can be configured on the Organization > Currencies tab in the account Settings).
  • Actual expense.
  • Variance (the difference) between the budget and the actual.
  • Duration of the initiative.
If an initiative has budget and progress information, the software will show:
  • Earned Value = Total Budget * Progress, %
  • Cost Variance = Earned Value - Budget Actual