How to control the project the change of project state (project lifecycle) ?

[J-Paul Millet]

Hello @Rajesh_Singh , all,

In our current process, only the program managers can create a project and can give the GO to start it. Today, with the OOTB configuration, there is no control in the tool for managing/controlling the change of State .

Do we have a customer having faced the same kind of need to get a limited number of people being able to move a project from "Pending" to "open"  or "Work in progress" ? If yes, what is the best way to implement it ?

Thanks a lot in advance for any advice or guidance.

[Rajesh_Singh]

@J-Paul Millet 

I haven't heard of this use case before. In my experience no customer asked for this usecase, infact i would strongly suggest not to go with this idea. unless you have strong justification and ok for customisation. but may i know why do you need this customisation? this will impact out of box behaviour badly..

If you still want to achieve this, here is solution

1. Create a custom user role for program managers: To do this, navigate to User Administration > Roles and create a new role, such as "program_manager". Assign this role to the appropriate users who should have the ability to change project states.

2. Set up Access Controls (ACLs): Create an ACL rule to restrict the ability to change the project state only to users with the "program_manager" role. Navigate to System Security > Access Control and create a new ACL with the following parameters:

   • Operation: Write
   • Table: Project [pm_project]
   • Field: State [state]
   • Requires role: program_manager

[Pall Sigurdsson]

Hi @J-Paul Millet ,

I strongly agree with @Rajesh_Singh  on this. The value of the state field in the project is driven automatically by changes in the state of individual tasks in the project. For example, when any task in a pending project is moved from pending state to open or work in progress, the state of the overall project is automatically moved to the same state. The point of this is that even though the project is still being initiated or planned, there is project management work going on, hence the project is in progress. On the other hand, the property (field) which specifies in which lifecycle stage the project is in is called phase. In the out-of-the box setup, this field is located in the details section/tab. This field cannot be changed by an ordinary project user. Only project managers and those roles which include the project management roles can change the value of the phase field.

[J-Paul Millet]

Hi @Pall Sigurdsson  and @Rajesh_Singh , Very valuable feedback. Thanks a lot.  Do you mean it would be possible (and not so complex) to implement a workflow with limited granted users who could move the project from "Initiating" to "Planning"  phase?   and would it be possible to add an additional phase in the LOVs ? Thanks again

[Pall Sigurdsson]

Yes, @J-Paul Millet , such controls could be implemented and I know there are different ways to do it but don't ask me how as I'm not a developer myself 🙂 ... One thing you need to decide is how much flexibility you want to give the users who are allowed to change the phase. Should the tool allow them to jump from any phase to any other phase or should the user always go through a certain flow? Most commonly in project management, the flow be linear from initiating to planning, from there to execution and so on. Should the user be allowed to go backwards, such as from execution to planning? If it should be flexible then restricting access to the phase field should be sufficient. If you want to implement a certain flow, one way to do it would be to hide the phase field and drive the process via buttons. You can restrict access to the buttons.

I think the following article could help you regarding the topic of adding new phases:
https://www.servicenow.com/community/spm-forum/changing-oob-phases-on-project/m-p/1018400