We are analyzing the possibility of having projects and sub-projects inside Portfolios.
Best answer by mserafinowski
If you’re not using Programs or Strategies at the moment, you could just repurpose the Strategy structure and treat that as your main project. Then link your sub-projects to it using the standard association functionality. You can do the same if you’re not using Outcomes. To be honest, this usually looks a lot cleaner out of the box. You can build roadmaps at the Strategy or Outcome level, so from a reporting point of view it actually works quite nicely and gives you a good rolled up view. There are also a few other ways of doing, for example, you could create a master project and use buckets inside it to represent sub projects but that comes with quite a few drawbacks. It doesn’t really work well from a financials perspective and roll ups aren’t fully there. You can also link things via external dependencies (native functionality) or use custom attributes but again, it really depends on what you’re trying to achieve and how you want the end result to look. So yeah, there are quite a few options, it just depends on the goal and which modules you’re actually using.
Yes, Planview Portfolios can support this type of structure and reporting in a couple of different ways.
Holistic View Across Projects Planview’s Strategic Management capability is well suited for scenarios where you want to view a “parent” initiative with multiple related projects. It allows you to roll up key KPIs—such as financials, schedule health, and capacity—across all projects associated with a Program or similar higher‑level entity. This provides both an overall view of the main initiative and visibility into individual project performance. The reporting available here is robust and largely out‑of‑the‑box, typically requiring only light configuration.
Structuring Projects with Workflow and Templates Another approach is to use workflow stage gates to represent decision points in a project’s lifecycle. At these points, actions can be configured to paste predefined WBS project templates into an existing project. This allows you to effectively introduce additional scoped work (similar to sub‑projects) at the right time. Templates can be inserted anywhere in the lifecycle, or you can allow manual template pastes if more flexibility is needed. All standard project‑level reports remain available for tracking progress and attributes.
Reporting Both approaches support reporting on individual projects as well as rolled‑up views. In addition to the out‑of‑the‑box reporting options, Planview also supports custom reports if the standard reports don’t fully meet your reporting requirements.
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Sean Swank
Winmill
Thanks for the update
+2If you’re not using Programs or Strategies at the moment, you could just repurpose the Strategy structure and treat that as your main project. Then link your sub-projects to it using the standard association functionality. You can do the same if you’re not using Outcomes. To be honest, this usually looks a lot cleaner out of the box. You can build roadmaps at the Strategy or Outcome level, so from a reporting point of view it actually works quite nicely and gives you a good rolled up view. There are also a few other ways of doing, for example, you could create a master project and use buckets inside it to represent sub projects but that comes with quite a few drawbacks. It doesn’t really work well from a financials perspective and roll ups aren’t fully there. You can also link things via external dependencies (native functionality) or use custom attributes but again, it really depends on what you’re trying to achieve and how you want the end result to look. So yeah, there are quite a few options, it just depends on the goal and which modules you’re actually using.
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