Understand the proposal pipeline

The proposal pipeline is a staged workflow for deciding which initiatives become projects. Every proposal passes through the same sequence of working stages and review gates, so approvals are deliberate decisions with a recorded trail, not a thumbs-up in chat.

The stages

A proposal on the happy path moves through:

1. Draft, the author is still writing.
2. Submitted, ready for a reviewer to pick up.
3. Proposal Review, the first gate: is this worth investigating?
4. Business Case, the author builds out costs and benefits.
5. Business Case Review, the second gate: do the numbers hold up?
6. Planning, the author drafts the delivery plan.
7. Plan Review, the third gate: is the plan executable?
8. Approved, then Active once delivery starts, and Completed when the work is done.

A rejection at any gate moves the proposal to Rejected. Finished proposals (completed, rejected, approved, active, or on hold) can be archived to keep the pipeline tidy.

Between the working stages and their review gates, the author (or anyone with review rights) selects Ready for Review to hand the proposal to the gate panel.

Board and list views

The Governance page in the sidebar shows the whole pipeline. Toggle between Board (a column per stage, drag-free kanban reading) and List (a sortable, filterable table that loads more as you scroll). Quick views above the pipeline narrow it down: My Approvals shows proposals waiting on your gate decision, and there are filters for stage, priority, risk, and department.

What you see depends on your rights: reviewers see every proposal in the organization, while members without governance review permission see only the proposals they submitted.

Put a proposal on hold

Sometimes a proposal is sound but the timing is not. Holding parks it without losing its place.

1. Open the proposal and select Put on Hold. Any proposal that is not completed, rejected, or already on hold can be held.

2. The proposal moves to On Hold. It stays visible in the pipeline with an amber marker, and the submitter is notified.

3. When you are ready, select Resume. The proposal returns to the exact stage it was at before the hold, so a proposal held during Business Case Review picks up at Business Case Review, not back at the start.

Holding and resuming require governance review rights, which is Portfolio Manager and above by default.

Tip

Once a proposal reaches Approved or Active, the Reject action disappears on purpose. Stopping a live initiative is a project decision, so cancel the linked project instead; the proposal record stays intact for the audit trail.

Who gets told what

The submitter is notified whenever someone else moves their proposal (submitted for review, put on hold, rejected, and so on). If the proposal names a sponsor, the sponsor receives the same stage-change notifications. When a proposal enters a gate that has designated reviewers, each reviewer gets an approval request in their inbox, see Review a gate.

Best practices

1. Run gate panels on a known cadence. Weekly gate reviews work for most orgs; bi-weekly for slower-moving portfolios. The cadence matters more than the day — sponsors and submitters can plan around “every Tuesday” in a way they can’t around “whenever reviewers get to it”.
2. Use the Board view for triage, the List view for reporting. The kanban shows where flow is bottlenecked (a fat Business Case Review column means too many proposals stuck at gate 2); the list view answers “show me all high-risk proposals submitted this quarter” with one filter.
3. Treat “On Hold” as a real state, not a graveyard. Holds need a reason and an expected revisit date. Otherwise the pipeline fills with held proposals nobody remembers why they’re held. Add a comment when you hold; set a calendar reminder to revisit.
4. Resist re-opening rejected proposals. A rejected proposal can be re-submitted as a NEW proposal that addresses the rejection reasons. Re-opening the original muddles the audit trail. The new submission also forces fresh framing — usually better than the original.
5. Archive completed proposals quarterly. The pipeline board should show in-flight work; completed and rejected proposals belong in the archive. Quarterly archive sweeps keep the board scannable without losing history (archived proposals are still searchable).

Troubleshooting / common pitfalls

• A proposal isn’t moving forward despite all reviewers approving. The multi-reviewer quorum requires ALL approve; if even one reviewer hasn’t decided yet, the stage stays at “pending”. Check the gate’s review list to find the missing decision.
• The Reject button isn’t visible. Two cases: (a) the proposal is in Approved or Active — rejection is intentionally unavailable past approval; cancel the linked project instead. (b) You don’t have governance review rights.
• A held proposal won’t resume. Three causes: (a) governance review rights — only Portfolio Manager and above can resume by default; (b) the proposal was on hold from a stage no longer valid (rare, e.g. if evaluation criteria changed); (c) browser cache — refresh.
• Two reviewers can’t agree on a gate decision. The quorum rule: ANY rejection rejects, ALL must approve to advance. So one rejection wins. The dialog allows recording a “more info” decision that bumps the proposal back to its working stage without locking it as rejected — use that for “we need more information” cases.
• My filter narrowed it but the count looks off. Filter counters on the pipeline page count unique proposals across stages; a single proposal appearing in My Approvals + High Risk shows in both filters but is one proposal. Total count at the bottom is accurate.

How this combines with other features

• Pipeline + Designated reviewers. Gate-level reviewer panels let specific people (e.g., Finance for Business Case Review) own a gate. Without panels, any Portfolio Manager can decide; with panels, the named reviewers must. See Set up gate reviewers.
• Pipeline + Evaluation criteria. Each gate scores the proposal against criteria you configure (strategic fit, financial return, risk, etc.). The scoring produces a number that backs the decision. See Configure evaluation criteria.
• Pipeline + Project creation. An Approved proposal becomes the seed for a project. The new project inherits the proposal’s sponsor, budget, scope, and associated documents. See From proposal to governed project.
• Pipeline + Notifications. Submitters and sponsors get notified on every stage transition; gate reviewers get an approval-request notification when a proposal enters their gate. The notification model keeps the pipeline running without anyone refreshing the page. See Manage notification preferences.

Coming from another tool

Tool	Mapping
MS Project Online Demand Management	Direct concept: same stage-gate flow with Project Detail Pages and workflow approval
ServiceNow PPM	Demand management module ≈ Onplana proposal pipeline; same kanban + gate review pattern
Smartsheet Control Center	Intake-then-gate flow is analogous
Spreadsheet + email approval	Onplana replaces “fill row, email approval chain” with an auditable workflow with role-gated decisions
Jira + Advanced Roadmaps	No native gate model; teams use a “Demand” project type with custom statuses, weaker than Onplana’s built-in 12 stages

FAQs

Can a proposal skip stages? No. The pipeline always advances one stage at a time, and the three review gates can only be passed by a recorded review decision.

Who can move a proposal between stages? The author can submit their own draft and mark working stages ready for review. Everything else (starting a review, holding, resuming, rejecting, archiving) requires governance review rights, Portfolio Manager and above by default.

What does archiving do? It moves the proposal out of the active pipeline views without deleting anything. Reviews, scores, and history remain available.

Can we customize the 12 stages? The 12 stages are fixed today. Field-level customization (which proposal fields appear, which are required) is configurable per org; stage-level customization is on the roadmap.

What’s the typical time from Submitted to Approved? 3-8 weeks for most orgs running weekly gate reviews. The bottleneck is usually the Business Case stage (the work the proposer does between gates 1 and 2), not the reviews themselves.

Can multiple proposals be approved in one gate review session? Yes — each proposal is reviewed independently. A typical gate session reviews 3-8 proposals; spending 10-15 minutes per proposal is the common pacing.

Does the pipeline support escalation paths? A proposal stuck at a gate for too long can be escalated via the sponsor (who is notified at every stage). There’s no automatic escalation chain today; ad-hoc escalation is the pattern.

Related

• Submit a proposal — the entry point
• Review a gate — what reviewers do at each gate
• From proposal to governed project — what happens after approval