A Project in Cascade is a group of tasks or actions executed to achieve the desired outcome. Projects come in handy when you're looking at breaking down large pieces of work to small, executionable actions. These are nested below the objectives and contribute to the health of that objective, and thereby to the plan. These projects can have actions that can be assigned to different owners. For example, if your objective is "Lead to shift towards an electrical and autonomous mobility", the project can be "Research and onboard", and the actions underneath this can be "Hire best-in class talent", "Research for AI advancements", "Form a core team", "Implement technological advancements in electric mobility", and so on.
Technically, Projects are time-bound investment of business resources (funding, people, materials, etc.) to achieve a given outcome. They're key vehicles for organizations to execute on strategic pieces of work that deliver large-scale or business-critical transformation and change.
Some more common examples are:
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Research and development to drive product or service innovation
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Optimization of existing products or services
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Process change or re-engineering
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System or program implementation
You can add a new project:
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From the relevant Objective's sidebar, click + Add success criteria > New project to add a project in the Sidebar view.
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From the Planner page, click + icon under the relevant Objective, and click New project to add a project inline. You can then fill in the details from the Edit project Sidebar.
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From the Success criteria tab of the relevant Objective's Goal hub page, click + icon and click New project. This'll add the project inline, and you can later edit it from its sidebar to add more context.
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Name your Project something that specifies how you want the objective to be assessed. Though there's no character limitation, keep the title concise and use the Description field to provide additional context.
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Set a Start date and End date, which will set a timeline for your project. The dates will default to the due dates of the parent objective and its recommended that the dates do not exceed the range of the parent objective.
If there're "time horizons" added in your workspace by default or by the Admins and they're assigned to the parent objective, then the project will be assigned to that horizon automatically. If desired, you can choose precise dates for the project from the standard date picker in the "Custom" tab.
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Add further context about the project in Description to provide more narrative with rich text, bullets, embedded links and videos.
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From the Collaborator area, you can add or manage collaborators, who will be able to work on the project.
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Update Schedule - Set schedule cadence to post updates for your project. Once set, the owner of the project will receive notifications both in-app and mail to remind them to make progress updates. See Set-up Reminders for Goal Updates for details.
Remember that the notifications will not be triggered if the project is past the end date that's set up and the status of your projects is "Done", "Won't do" or "On hold". But you'll still be notified if the health is "Achieved" or "Exceeded" to enable you to make updates and let everyone know if you're still keeping well on the goal.
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Contributes to area will show the plan and the objective your project belongs to. Click Edit and choose the relevant objective from the list if you wish to move them either under a different objective of the same plan, or under an objective of a different plan. Alternatively, click Move from the three dots across the Project title and choose the relevant destination objective. Remember that it will list only those objectives that fall within the date range of the parent objective.
In "Essentials and Enterprise+" tiers, you'll see one more field - "Type". Add types to define the category of work from the Admin > Strategy Model. See Add Goal Tags: Advance Strategy Model Customization for details.
When you save the Project, you’ll have a progress bar that tracks the progress and health of the project. This depends on the actions nested under the projects. You can add an action either inline or from the projects' sidebar.
If you wish to convert this project into an action or objective, then click the three dots beside its title, and click Convert. Remember that you'll not be able to convert the project which already has actions added to it or made some progress. Also, any updates, comments, risks, relationships or custom fields that were added to it will not be retained in the conversion.
Every time the progress of those actions are updated, the progress and the health of the project gets automatically updated. You can add an objectives table in a report to pull information on the health of projects in an objective.
Edit Project from its Sidebar:
When you edit a project from its sidebar, you can provide additional context that you wish to add on to the project. These can be:
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(Essentials and Enterprise+ only) Types added to the projects to define their category of work. See Add Goal Tags: Advance Strategy Model Customization for details.
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(Essentials and Enterprise+ only) Custom fields defined for the projects and saved in a template. You can populate data against those from here. See Apply Templates with Custom Fields to Plans for details.
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(All tiers) Risks added to the projects along with its impact, likelihood, and mitigations. See Add Risks for details.
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(Essentials and Enterprise+ only) Relationships between projects, or objectives, measures, and actions. See Add Relationships for details.
See the article on Sidebar for more insights into the functionalities offered within it.
FAQs
How do I interpret the data from Projects?
While the goal hub of a project gives you a quick view of its performance over time, you can build some custom charts (line, bar, pie) for projects and effectively manage its performance, and take guided actions on prioritization. See Custom Charts: Project Analytics for details.
You can also pull up a report with an objectives table which can be drilled down to look at the projects, its progress, data populated against its custom fields, risks associated with it, and so on.
Can I change a project into an objective?
Yes. Click the three dots beside its title and click Convert. Choose Objective from the list and click Confirm to convert the project into an objective. Remember that you'll not be able to convert this project if it has actions added under it or has made some progress. Also, any updates, comments, risks, relationships or custom fields that were added to it will not be retained in the conversion.
How to put an initiative on hold? Or, projects on hold?
Though you can change the status of the project to On hold from its sidebar, it'll not have any impact on its progress or health as the status information is just contextual right now.
However, if you do not want this project or initiative to affect the progress or health of its objective, then you can apply weights and exclude this project from aggregating to the objective's progress. See Add Weights to define the Progress of your Objectives to learn how to add weighting to the success criteria.
Can I add multiple types to the same project?
No, you cannot choose multiple types.
How to move the project to a different objective?
Click Move from the three dots against the project title, choose the relevant objective within the same plan or a different plan, and click Confirm. The project will now be displayed as a success criteria under the chosen objective.
Can actions exist independently of projects?
Yes - there is now the option to create actions that contribute directly to objectives, or to create a project and break it down into one or more actions.
Can I add measures or contributing objectives to projects?
Not right now. Projects are purely a way to break down the execution aspect of work.
Can projects be shared across plans/teams?
Not right now. Projects can only exist on one plan, linked to a specific objective. However, owners and collaborators from any team can be assigned to a given project. Based on the current permissions model, these users will be able to update the project as long as they have permissions to update the plan.
I want to use more advanced project management capabilities, is that on the roadmap?
Yes. Some of the value-add features being considered include:
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Dependencies
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Budgeting and forecasting
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Resource allocation and optimization
Can I add custom fields to projects?
Yes. Once defined, you can apply that template to the projects in a plan. You can then populate data against these fields and include in the objectives table in Reports.
How to delete projects?
Click the three dots against the project, either from the Planner or the Sidebar to delete it. Once you delete the projects, the actions underneath it will also get deleted.
Can I rename or give an alias to project?
Yes, if you're an admin, you can customize the name of projects from the Admin > Strategy model.
I'm looking at much more project management capabilities like change management, cost benefit analysis, etc..
At this point, you can:
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add risks and mitigation plans,
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add relationships to define blockers, dependencies to manage projects,
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create custom fields, and populate data against them,
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build insights with dashboards and reports,
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view timelines (Gantt charts),
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integrate with project management tools like Jira, ClickUp, etc.,
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add milestones and checklists to track your tasks and manage projects.
However, detailed project management capabilities like the ones you asked for, schedule variances, predictive forecasting, building S-curves, etc. are not supported now.
If you want this feature, you can suggest it - Go to your profile initials/profile picture > General > What's new, and click Feature Requests tab. Click Suggest a feature, and fill in the details.