Relationship between a Project and a Request

[shill]

Has anyone created a relationship between a project and catalog requests?
Our Project Managers would like to tie a project to one or more requests that are submitted to actually do the work of the project.
Right now, they are creating a project task along with a request, but since there is no native relationship between them, they must manually manage the two records. (manually close the project task when the request is complete).

My thought is to add a field for a related request to the project task form so that we still have a project task (and gantt chart) for the project. Then setup a business rule on the request so when it closes, it also marks the project task complete.

Not sure if this is the best solution though, so I am asking for ideas.

Ideally they wanted a related list that combines both project tasks and requests into one, but there are so many differences between the two (planned start date being just one) that I don't see how that would work very well.

[shealyjs]

Kelly, thanks. As for demand, no we don't have it yet. yes, we hope to head that way. however, right now we interface w/ other depts. via requests (incident and request are implemented, PPM is starting). So to preserve those processes and work flows where they exist, projects will still make requests to other groups; at least in the short term, until some of the other modules (change, release, demand) come online. So, I don't want to go to a huge amount of effort to   make the linkage, since it'll be temporary, but am interested in what can easily be done. I'll check the rest of the resources you provided as well. I am in the PPM community already too.