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.

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.