Portfolio Planning Roadmap Demands

[nderiley]

Hi all,

I hope this is the correct forum. Newbie questions here, I'm testing out creating a Portfolio Planning Roadmap that contains a mix of projects and demands and I have a few questions that the documentation doesn't clarify for me:

1. Am I correct that some of the demand fields and entities editable from the portfolio plan item form only exist in relation to the portfolio plan? Specifically, I note that you can add Approved Start Date and Approved End Date (and that these fields are critical to the demand showing on your road map), and you can add milestones, but if I go to the demand form itself, none of these fields are present from what I can see
2. In the roadmap view, I can turn on tracking mode that shows % complete.  % complete pulls through for the projects, so I understand how it's set for those, but where do I control % complete on demands? I don't see it as a field from any view. Am I glazing over it somewhere?

Thanks!

[nderiley]

I'll partially answer myself. In my production env demands have a number of different views. Approved start date and Approved end date are visible on the Planning Console view, but not my default one

[nderiley]

Still looking for help on demand completion % - the demands have tasks that are completed, so if it is supposed to drive from demand tasks (as projects do from project tasks) something is broken in my env.

[Namita Mishra · Accepted solution]

Hi @nderiley ,

Thanks for contacting the community.

Short answer is that demand tasks has no impact on demand completion.

Below is the explanation - both technical and functional and to respond the %complete related query, first let me provide the basic difference between the way project and demand is created in the product (SPM). This is technical but important to understand -

Basically demand is extended from Task table and project is extended from planned task table.

%complete field is present in planned task; it is NOT present in the task table.

Hence it is in the project table (as mentioned above because project is extended from planned task).

 

Now the functional reasoning:

Demand task functionality was added to demand in the New York release. Prior to New York release, it was very difficult for the demand manager to assign the activities to team members - it was all done over emails as a result of which there was no visibility of the ownership. In other words, if a demand is not completed as planned, there was no evidence in demand that this delay is due to which all activites or in other words - whose activity caused the delay...

So, the main reason of adding these demand tasks was to provide a way so that demand manager can assign certain light weight activities to team and get away from following up these tasks outside of the demand. By no means these demand tasks are same as project tasks.

For example: 

Functionality	Demand tasks	Project tasks
Dependency between tasks, in other words - the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)	Not supported	Supported
Dates like planned start date, planned end date, actual start date and actual end date	Not present	Present
Percent complete is available	False	True
Task completion impacts the parent (demand or project) completion	False	True
Task constraint such as Start ASAP and Start on Specific Date	Not supported	Supported
Execution type such as Waterfall, Agile, Hybrid	Not supported	Supported

Summary:

 Demand tasks and project tasks are not same.

Demand Tasks are light weight tasks, mainly created to put the onus on the assignee to track the activities within the demand.

Refer this link for demand task details.

Hope this answers the query and if it does please mark the response as correct to help me and others in the community.

Additional  Note: Percent Complete is not available in demand that is why on the Investment Portal when you configure the 'Percent Complete field, you will notice that Percent Complete will be blank for Demands.

 

Thank You!

Namita Mishra

[nderiley]

Thank you for the thorough explanation Namita!  I think then, it's just an odd design choice to show 0% when in tracking mode for a portfolio plan for demands, if the demands have no way of moving past 0%.  I would think it just shows no percentage, otherwise this is confusing when briefing up to management