Plan next year's portfolio with the Plan 2027 template

Plan 2027 is a built-in project template for planning a year of work. It lays next year out as one project: the initiatives you are weighing, the reviews you will hold, and two lists to decide with, one for capacity and one for scoring. It is available on every plan, Free included.

What it creates

• One project, starting the day you create it and running for about 400 days.
• Eight phases, one per sample initiative: Customer portal refresh, Finance system upgrade, Data and reporting platform, Security hardening, New market launch, Process automation, Office consolidation, and Skills and training programme. Each phase holds three tasks: agreeing the scope and business case, the delivery, and measuring the benefit. That makes 24 tasks.
• Five milestones: Portfolio plan approved, Q1 portfolio review, Q2 portfolio review, Q3 portfolio review and Year-end portfolio review.
• Two risks on the project’s risk register, drawn from the sample capacity figures: developers planned above capacity in Q2, and a finance cutover that could miss its period end.
• Two lists on the project’s Lists tab: Capacity by role and quarter (20 sample rows) and Initiative scoring guide (8 sample rows, one per initiative).

Every name, date, score and figure is a sample. They tell one consistent story so the template reads sensibly on day one; replace them with yours.

Create it

1. From the sidebar, open Projects and select New Project.
2. Type a name for the project. Choosing a template does not fill the name in.
3. In the Template picker, under Built-in templates, choose Plan 2027. The dialog previews it before anything is created: how many tasks and milestones it has, about how many days it runs, and its phases in order.
4. Select Create Project. The project opens.

Note

The template’s lists are its own. Plan 2027 does not add the five standard lists (success factors, assumptions, constraints, stakeholders and a decision log); tick Add the standard lists in the dialog if you want them as well.

Put your own initiatives in

Each initiative is a phase (an epic). Rename the sample phases and tasks to your initiatives, delete the ones you do not need, and move the dates to when the work will really run. Renaming, adding and removing phases are part of epics, on Professional and up; on every plan you can group the task list by phase and edit the tasks inside it.

Score the initiatives

Open the Lists tab and then Initiative scoring guide. The list’s description is the guide itself.

Score each initiative from 1 to 5 on five criteria:

Column	What it asks
Strategic fit (1-5)	How directly it serves next year’s goals
Value (1-5)	The benefit if it lands: revenue, cost or risk avoided
Urgency (1-5)	What it costs to wait a year
Confidence (1-5)	How well the scope, cost and team are known
Effort (1-5)	The size of the work, 5 being the largest

The guide’s formula is Score = 2 x Strategic fit + 2 x Value + Urgency + Confidence - Effort, which runs from 1 to 29. Fund from the top score down until the capacity sheet runs out, set Decision to Fund, Fund later, Hold or Stop, and use Notes to say why when a decision departs from the score.

Caution

Score is a number column you fill in. The list does not calculate it, so work it out when you change a criterion. The sample rows already carry the right totals for their sample scores.

Check capacity before you commit

Open Capacity by role and quarter. Each row is one role in one quarter, with People, Capacity (days), Planned demand (days) and Notes. Capacity (days) is people x 55 days a quarter: about 63 working days less leave and overhead. Planned demand (days) is what the funded initiatives need from that role.

Where demand is above capacity, move a start, cut scope or add people before the plan is approved. In the sample, the developers are 60 days over in Q2, which is the risk the template puts on the register. Filter the Quarter column to compare one quarter at a time.

To replace the sample rows with figures you already keep in a spreadsheet, see Import a spreadsheet into a list.

Run the year as a portfolio (Business)

The template is one project, so it works on every plan. Running each funded initiative as its own project, grouped with health and budget rolled up, is a portfolio, and portfolios are on Business and up. Create a project for each initiative you fund and add them to a portfolio. See Group projects into portfolios.

For capacity drawn from people’s real availability rather than a sheet, see Plan team capacity (Professional and up).

FAQs

Does it create a portfolio? No. It creates one project, with the initiatives as phases. Portfolios are a Business feature, and the template runs on Free too.

Can I use it for a year other than 2027? Yes. Rename the project and move the dates; nothing in it depends on the year.

Is it in Onplana Schedule? No. Its substance is its two lists, and a Microsoft Project file has no place for them, so it is not in Onplana Schedule’s template set.

Related

• Create your first project, the New Project dialog and the other built-in templates
• Save and reuse project templates, saving your own plan as a template
• Group projects into portfolios, the Business step