Project Approval Workflow

Learn how project approvals work and how they can help your company put out better projects. 

One of the most powerful features of ScopeStack is the standardization of project approval flows.

Check out this video overview of the feature:

Defining Technical, Sales, and Business Approval Users

Approvers for projects are defined in Settings > Governance > Project Approval. Admin's can setup Project Approval at 3 levels: Technical, Sales, and Business.

Technical Approval allows you to designate specific users or groups of users to approve projects.

To define an approval stage for a specific Line of Business, click the "+ Add LOB Approval" button.

Here, you can define the approval parameters for a specific Line of Business.

1. First, select the Line of Business to create an approval mechanism for

2. Next, select the number of approvals necessary for technical approval to be achieved. Be aware that if you require more approvals than the number of users in your designated pool who can authorize the project, you risk creating a situation where the project cannot be approved.

3. Determine whether the presales engineer assigned to the project should have approval authority. This decision can affect the number of available approvers needed to satisfy the required approvals.

4. If you are using Teams, decide if you want the approval to be limited to the same team as the Presales Engineer on the project. If you restrict approval to a team, please ensure there are enough approvers from each team in the pool to satisfy the number of approvals required to approve the project.

After you've defined these settings, click Submit. Now, you can define users who may approve of the project. To add a potential approver for this Technical Approval level, click "+ Add Approval User."

 

Here, you can define users who can approve of a project. You can also designate specific users as required approvers.

 

Users designated as Required Approvers must approve a project for it to advance through the approval process. This system is beneficial for establishing groups where certain users are mandatory for approval, while others are optional. It is important to note that even if the overall number of approvals has been met, a project will still need the approval of any Required Approver who has not yet given their consent.

Using these settings, you can create several different permutations of Technical Approval situations.

Sales Approval provides an opportunity for the Sales Executive designated on a given project to review the project.

Business Approval provides a final step of approval for projects.

It is activated based on specific logical conditions and can request particular users to approve or deny based on the criteria met by a project.

 

To create a new Business Approval level, click the + Add Approval Level button. 

The same descriptions of the Number of Approvals Required, whether the Presales Engineer may approve their own projects, and restricting approvals to a team from the Technical Approval setup apply in the business approval setup.

Instead of requiring approval based on the presence of services, the business approval allows you to define tests based on certain project parameters. If the project that's had approval requested meets the criteria, the required level of approval is triggered. You can define a single variable to test on, or multiple.

For example...

• I can require approval for all projects that are above $1,000,000 in revenue by the CEO of the company.
• I can require approval for all projects in the New Zealand business unit by the leader of that business unit
• I can require approval for all projects with managed services revenue greater than $0 in the Atlanta business unit by the managed services leader from that unit.

After defining your tests, you can save them. If you've accidentally added extra criteria, you can still save your setup. To remove the additional criteria, simply select the checkbox for the test you want to remove and click the submit button again.

Once you've defined your tests, you can set up your pool of approval users in the same fashion you set up your pool of approvers at the technical approval level.

Requesting Approval

After you have created a project with tasks, you can Submit it for Approval. Under General > Project Overview, you will now see an option to Request Approval

After you submit your project for approval, the platform will automatically send email notifications to the appropriate approval users as designed in the Settings menu and triggered based on the details of the project. The email contains some basic information about the project so the administrator can quickly review.

The icon next to the project in the list will also change from yellow to red while it is pending approval.

Canceling Approval Requests

Any user of the platform with a Role that has the Projects Overview permission set to Manage can cancel the approval request of any project. This will bring the project back to the Scoping state making it editable.

The Cancel Approval Request button will be visible on the Project Overview screen of projects in the approval flow if you have appropriate permissions.

Completing the Approval Flow

An Approvals section will also appear in the project's menu, giving you a rundown of who needs to approve a project before it can proceed. It will stay updated based on what approvals have been completed.

That user can then click on status and select if they would like to approve or decline the project, and give comments to the project creator.

After a project is approved at one level, it will move on to the next level of approval as applicable.

If a project is not approved, it will move back through the process depending on the point at which it was disapproved and why it was disapproved.

• At the business level, a project can be disapproved on either Scope or Price. If it is disapproved on Scope, it will move back to the Pre-sales Engineer.  If it is disapproved on price, it will move back to the Sales approval if applicable.

• If it is declined at the Sales level or the sales level is not required, it will move back to the Pre-sales Engineer to adjust the project before resubmitting for approval.

Once a project is resubmitted, it will move back through the Technical Approval process before proceeding to Sales and Business, if applicable. Email notification are sent throughout the process to notify users if they need to take action. Every time a project is submitted for approval, it iterates a new version in the platform. 

Happy scoping!

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