Submit a proposal

A proposal is how an idea enters the governance pipeline. You describe the initiative, its cost, and its justification; reviewers then decide at each gate whether it deserves to become a project. Any member can submit one.

Create the proposal

1. On the Governance page, select New Proposal. If your organization routes project creation through governance, selecting New Project on the Projects page opens the same proposal form, see Classify strategic vs operational work.

2. Give it a Title (required) and a description of the initiative.

3. Fill in the decision-making fields: Business Justification, the estimated budget with its currency, the estimated duration in weeks, the Department, expected benefits, a risk level, and a priority. Your organization controls which of these fields appear and which are required, so your form may differ.

4. Pick a Sponsor. The sponsor must be a member of your organization and will receive notifications as the proposal moves through the pipeline.

5. Save. The proposal starts in Draft, where you can keep editing it.

Submit it for review

When the proposal is ready, open it and select Submit for Review. It moves to Submitted, where a reviewer picks it up and starts the first gate. From that point the stages and gates described in Understand the proposal pipeline take over.

Tip

A draft proposal also gets its own small workspace, a Proposal Documents library and a stakeholder register table, so you can attach supporting material before reviewers ever see it. If the proposal is later approved, everything in that workspace moves to the new project automatically.

What you see, and what reviewers see

On the Governance page, members without governance review rights see only the proposals they submitted. Reviewers (Portfolio Manager and above by default) see the entire pipeline. Your proposals are always visible to you at every stage, including after rejection or approval.

Staying informed

You are notified whenever someone else acts on your proposal: when it is moved into review, put on hold, rejected, or when a gate decision is recorded. If the proposal is approved and a project is created from it, the notification includes the new project. Your sponsor receives the same updates.

Best practices

1. Write the business justification with the reviewer’s question in mind. “Why does this matter, and what happens if we don’t do it?” is what gate reviewers actually ask. A justification that answers both directly (measurable benefit, real downside) advances; one that gestures at “strategic alignment” without specifics gets sent back.
2. Cite numbers, not adjectives. “Reduces ticket volume by 20%” beats “improves customer experience”; “$120k saved in vendor fees over 2 years” beats “significant savings”. Quantified benefits move through scoring criteria faster.
3. Pre-attach supporting documents in the proposal’s workspace. Reviewers prefer “here’s the financial model and the customer survey” to “we’ll send those over later.” The proposal workspace exists precisely for this; use it.
4. Pick a sponsor who will actually advocate. A sponsor named on the proposal but uninvolved becomes a question at the first gate: “is the sponsor really bought in?” Talk to them first, get their commitment, and only then list them.
5. Submit when you’d defend the proposal in a five-minute meeting. Drafts are free to evolve; submitting is the moment the org commits to spend reviewer time on it. The polish-to-submit ratio matters, the first three drafts should be raw, the submitted version should be tight.

Troubleshooting / common pitfalls

• The Submit button is greyed out. Required fields are missing. The form highlights which ones; usually the missing fields are sponsor, business justification, or estimated duration.
• My proposal went straight to Rejected on first review. Reviewers can reject at any gate. Open the proposal to see the rejection reason and reviewer comments. The proposal stays in your list for reference and can be resubmitted as a new proposal with the issues addressed.
• I can’t see other people’s proposals. That’s by design, non-reviewers only see their own. Becoming a designated gate reviewer (see Set up gate reviewers) or holding the org.governance.review permission gives the org-wide view.
• My submitted proposal seems stuck. Three causes: (a) reviewers haven’t picked it up yet (governance pipelines often run weekly cycles); (b) it’s on a hold state set by reviewers awaiting more info; (c) the assigned reviewer is OOO. The proposal page shows the current stage and any reviewer notes; if it’s been stalled for over a sprint, ping the sponsor.
• I changed something in the Draft after submitting. Drafts and submitted versions are separate states. Once you submit, editing is locked. To revise, you’d need to wait for a “more info” decision (which unlocks edits) or withdraw and resubmit.

How this combines with other features

• Proposal + Proposal documents workspace. Each proposal gets a small workspace (documents library + stakeholder register) that you can populate during drafting. When the proposal is approved and becomes a project, the workspace transfers, the new project starts with the documents already attached. See From proposal to governed project.
• Proposal + Intake forms. Public intake forms can feed proposals automatically: customer suggestions become proposals at draft stage, ready for the PMO to refine. See Turn intake submissions into proposals.
• Proposal + Evaluation criteria. Each gate’s scoring uses the org-defined evaluation criteria. Understanding what reviewers will score against helps you frame the proposal to match. See Configure evaluation criteria.
• Proposal + Designated reviewers. Gates can have designated reviewer panels. Knowing who reviews the first gate lets you have informal conversations before submission (a healthy pattern, not gaming). See Set up gate reviewers.

Coming from another tool

Tool	Mapping
Microsoft Project Online, Project Detail Pages	Proposals ≈ project requests in PWA; same idea of “demand intake before scheduling”
ServiceNow Project Portfolio Management	Direct concept; ServiceNow Demand ≈ Onplana proposal
Smartsheet Project Portfolio Management	Similar intake forms feed proposals
Jira plus Advanced Roadmaps	No native proposal flow; teams use a “Demand” project type
Spreadsheet-based intake	Onplana proposals replace this with structured fields + auditable workflow

FAQs

Can I edit a proposal after submitting it? Drafts are freely editable. Once a review starts, editing is locked so reviewers score a stable document. If reviewers need changes, they can record a “more info” decision and the conversation continues on the proposal.

Do I need a sponsor? That depends on your organization’s form settings; some require one, some leave it optional. A named sponsor strengthens the proposal at the first gate, where executive backing is one of the default scoring criteria.

Who reviews my proposal? Either the designated reviewer panel for each gate, or anyone with governance review rights if no panel is configured. See Set up gate reviewers for proposals.

Can I save a draft and come back to it later? Yes, drafts persist indefinitely until you submit or delete them. The Governance page shows your drafts as the first list when you have no other proposals in flight.

What happens to my proposal if I leave the organization? Submitted proposals stay in the system tied to the org. If the proposal is approved as a project, the project’s ownership transfers to the sponsor (or to an admin if no sponsor was named). Drafts get archived after a retention window.

Can a proposal be withdrawn after submission? Yes, you can withdraw a submitted proposal as long as no gate has been decided yet. After a gate decision (approve or reject) the proposal is locked into its decision record for audit.

What’s the difference between proposals and projects? A proposal is “asking permission to do this work”; a project is “the work itself.” Proposals carry the decision-making artifacts (business case, sponsor, evaluation scoring); projects carry the execution artifacts (tasks, milestones, budget). The transition happens at the approval gate.

Related

• Understand the proposal pipeline, the 12 stages a proposal moves through
• Configure evaluation criteria, what reviewers score against
• From proposal to governed project, what happens after approval