Overview: Analyze and approve project proposals

Microsoft Project Server 2010 includes new features to help you evaluate whether project proposals fit in with your organization's business strategy, as well as with its financial and resource constraints. Once the right people have determined which proposals make the most sense to implement, then the proposals can be approved as projects.

Note:  This article assumes that proposals have already been submitted. For more information on proposals, see Overview: Set up and submit project proposals.

What do you want to do?

Analyze proposals

Approve proposals

Analyze proposals

When users submit project proposals for review, the portfolio manager is responsible for guiding them through the analysis process. Reviewers analyze the proposals to determine whether they are viable projects for your organization. If a project is deemed viable, it is approved and becomes part of your organization's project portfolio. This process is sometimes referred to as portfolio analysis.

So what kinds of things are reviewers analyzing when they review project proposals?

1. First, reviewers look at the relative priority of each proposal. How well does this proposal fit in with what your business is trying to accomplish? The portfolio manager helps the reviewers evaluate the proposal's impact on the organization's business drivers, resulting in a rated list of all of the proposals included in the analysis.

2. Then, the reviewers look at each proposal's value, relative to the organization's high-level cost constraints. If a proposal will cost more than your budget allows, it may not be a viable project for your organization.

3. Finally, the reviewers look at each proposal's resource requirements. Does the proposal require an unreasonable number of resources given its schedule needs? Reviewers look at how adjusting the number of resources or the schedule will affect whether the proposal is a viable project.

After reviewing these factors, a subset of the proposals will stand out as having the greatest strategic value with the most reasonable cost and resource needs. These proposals are selected for approval as projects.

I want to…	Description
Create analyses and prioritize projects	Create an analysis, where you will try out different ways of fitting proposals into your portfolio, and prioritize the proposals you're analyzing.
Analyze portfolio based on high-level cost constraints	Reviewers evaluate each proposal's impact to your organization's budget.
Analyze portfolio based on time-phased resource requirements	Reviewers evaluate each proposal's resource and schedule needs, and try to find a balance that works with the portfolio.
Commit selection decisions and communicate to portfolio stakeholders	The selection decisions are made, and stakeholders are notified.

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Approve proposals

Once selection decisions are made, the next step is to approve the proposals as projects.

I want to…	Description
Approve or reject a proposal	Use the Workflow Tasks page in Project Web App to review and approve or reject a project proposal.

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