About initiatives
An initiative is a task associated with a measure and location pair. An initiative belongs to the measure in which it is created. Typically, a measure owner creates an initiative to address a problem with a measure’s performance, or to define goals related to the organization’s performance management strategy. Then, the measure owner creates subinitiatives as needed. For example, the Survey Customers subinitiative, as shown in Figure 1‑10, represents a task that supports the Customer Service Improvement initiative.
To assess the performance of an initiative, the initiative’s owner typically specifies start and end dates, budget values, or selects a rating. The owner enters planned, forecast, and actual data for date and budget values. A rating is a qualitative assessment of the initiative’s performance. The owner updates the status of the date, budget, and rating values as work progresses on the task defined by the initiative. Metrics Management displays start and end date, budget, and rating performance indicators for an initiative, as shown in Figure 1‑10.
Figure 1‑10 The Customer Service Improvement Plan initiative tree
There are two types of initiatives:
*Data initiatives are children of group initiatives. A data initiative can contain start date, end date, budget values, rating, and percentage complete values. A user inputs data for a data initiative. An inward pointing arrow indicates a data initiative, as shown in Figure 1‑10.
*Group initiatives are parents of data initiatives or other group initiatives. A group initiative obtains performance data from the data subinitiatives at the next lowest level in the tree. Metrics Management supports assigning weights to the subinitiatives of a group initiative. A downward pointing arrow indicates a group initiative, as shown in Figure 1‑10.