What is the Configuration Page?

The Configuration Page is the central hub where the Strategic Portfolio framework is set up to align with your organizational goals. This includes configuring the timeline and business units, incorporating custom fields, specifying initiative and outcome details, defining team skills, establishing OKR measures, outlining lifecycle stages, integrating with other systems, and incorporating financial metrics.

Timeline

Timeline Periods

A well structured timeline tailored to meet your organization's needs serves as the cornerstone for valuable Roadmaps in Kiplot. To configure your timeline, navigate to the Timeline tab in the Configuration page. There, you can set the period length to monthly, quarterly or yearly. We suggest for this to be set to monthly. You can also select when to start your timeline. You should start your timeline prior to the current period to account for any work committed for then. We recommend setting up your timeline to start at least 5 years prior to the current date!

If you choose a custom date, the day of the month of the timeline start will be used as the start of each subsequent period. By default, the period label will be set to the month and year⁠.

Period Groups

Period Groups are typically used for tracking and managing Planning Increments as defined in the SAFe framework. They are a grouping of periods primarily used for capacity management. They can be useful to see a “zoomed out” version of the roadmap and for reporting at the Period Group level.

To set up your Period Groups, select ‘Add period group’ and create a Period Group label with an assigned Start and End period (this will be limited to the timeline periods set up in Timeline Periods).

An Example would be:

Label: Q1 24

Start Period: January 2024

End Period: March 2024

Operating Model

The Operating Model tab is where you can create and manage business units, sub-business units, and departments. Examples of business units can be Operations, Back Office, Loans – anything that your organization uses to categorize where work is being done! Each unit can be given a unique name and description. Business units are used as swimlanes in the Initiative Roadmap view, where swimlanes help to group and order initiatives for better tracking.

For instance, when an initiative is added to a particular swimlane in the roadmap, it is associated with that business unit⁠. Where a business unit might be Operations, this indicates that the initiative is being delivered for the Operations unit in your organization. Filtering on the Operations unit on the Initiative Roadamp will allow you to see all initiatives associated with Operations.

Custom Fields

The Custom Field tab allows you to create and manage custom fields that can appear against initiatives or outcomes.

Creating a new field

In the Custom Fields section of this page, selecting Add custom field will allow you to create a new field and define it’s field type. Field types can be text, number, currency or multi-select list and can be configured to appear on initiatives, outcomes or both.

Once set up, you will find your custom field in the Information tab on an initiative or outcome, in a ‘Custom Fields’ section.

Creating a new section

Should you want assign your custom fields to a ‘new’ custom section on the Information tab, you can create a new section in the Sections portion of this page. Once created, you will be able to assign custom fields against your new section.

Initiatives

The Initiatives tab allows you to specify the different fields that you want to appear as fields against each of your initiatives. These settings are universal across all initiatives that appear in Kiplot.

Initiative Types

Allows you to specify bespoke categorizations to be applied to your initiatives e.g. Client Request or Product Strategy. Once created on this page, you’ll be able to assign each initiative a ‘type’. This field can then be filtered on or applied as a lens in the Initiative Roadmap view.

Delivery Updates

This section houses fields associated with the delivery of an initiative. Default fields include RAG Status and Executive Summary but you can also add custom delivery fields to meet your organization’s needs e.g. Finance RAG or Key Scope.

Risk and Issues

This contains a list of fields that are available against risks and issues associated with an initiative. These fields can be switched on or off according to your organization’s needs. Fields that are switched on will be be visible in the Risks and Issues tab against a given initiative.

Visit the Initiatives guide for more information on creating and managing initiatives.

Outcomes

The Outcomes tab allows you to specify bespoke categorizations to be applied to your outcomes. The Type field can be filtered on or applied as a lens in the Epic Roadmap view in Kiplot. Common types which our Customers might use are Product, Customer & Tech Debt in order to see the time spent proportionally across these areas in the Epic Roadmap view.

Visit our Outcomes guide for more information on how to create and manage outcomes in Kiplot.

People

The People configuration tab refers to the individuals that you want to assign capacity to. Once they’ve been added here, you will be able to organise these individuals into separate teams in the ‘Teams’ section in the Strategic Portfolio.

The individuals in this page can be both users or non-users in Kiplot. When you click on ‘Add Person’ in the top right you’ll have the option to ‘Select account’ or ‘Create by name’.

Once you’ve added users, the individuals who are also Kiplot users will have ‘account’ appear next to their name. If an individual becomes a Kiplot user at a later date, you can link to their account by clicking on the three dots to the right of their name and select ‘link account to person’.

Capacity Planning

In this tab, you can manage the different Skills that each person in your teams can be assigned to e.g. design, development. This is a crucial for setting up your teams and capacity planning in line with agile principles. Learn more about capacity planning in our dedicated section capacity planning.

Once you’ve set up your Skills in the configuration tab you’ll also be able to add skill level estimates to your outcomes. Read more about assigning estimates to outcomes on the Outcomes help article.

OKRs

Initiatives and Outcomes in Kiplot are connected to strategy through value forecasts, where value forecasts are expressed in Measures (Revenue, Cost, Users, NPS Score etc.). This tab is where you establish Objective Groups and Measures that your organization will be using to track OKRs.

Set up your Objective Group

Objectives that are set in the OKRs tab in the Strategic Portfolio can be further grouped together through an Objective group. With Objective groups set up, reporting on OKRs can reflect how key results connect strategy.

Set up your Measures

This section is where you establish Measures your organization will be using to track OKRs. You can set up multiple measures to represent key results that use different metrics. For example, you might set up cost, revenue and number of customers as measures, which will be able to drive a single or various objectives.

For more information on how to set up a value forecast on an initiative or outcome, visit the dedicated value forecast guide.

Lifecycle

The lifecycle stages mapped out in this tab correspond to the stages present in the Portfolio Kanban view. You are able to apply a different set of stages for initiatives and outcomes, but these are universal settings which will run across all projects. These stages should align with the stages used in your Jira instance to ensure a working integration.

Each stage will belong in one of the following categories:

• Idea
• Analysis
• Delivery
• Closed

You’re able to add, edit or disable stages within each category. You can also reorder stages within a stage using the up and down arrows.

Integrations

This tab allows you to manage the fields that integrate between Kiplot and your projects in Jira. If you are setting up your Jira project for the first time, please reach out to your Customer Success Representative at Kiplot.

You can set up a field mapping between Kiplot entities (Initiatives and Outcomes) and Jira entities (e.g. Work Request & Epic).

The field on the left is the Kiplot field and the field on the right is the field you want to map to in Jira. The arrows represent the direction that the integration is currently set up:

• Left facing arrow (Kiplot → Jira) = when a field is updated in Kiplot, the update will write to Jira and change the field. If I update a field in Jira, Kiplot will not read this change and the Kiplot field won’t update.
• Right facing arrow (Jira → Kiplot) = when a field is updated in Jira, Kiplot will read the change and the field will update in Kiplot. If I update a field in Kiplot, the change will not write back to Jira and the Jira field won’t update.
• Left and right facing arrows (Kiplot ←→ Jira) = Kiplot and Jira are fully in sync and when a field is updated in either platform, the change will be automatically reflected in the other.

It is recommended that you set up all field mappings to read and write both ways in order to ensure your data is up to date in both platforms.

💡 Each integration will require you to include a URL to your Jira instance (this can be for Jira Data Center or Cloud, a Jira username/email for access and your Jira Project ID.

Terminology

The Terminology tab allows you to rename terms in Kiplot to match your organizations naming conventions e.g Initiative → Work Request.

To rename a term, simply click ‘Add term’ in the top right corner, select the Kiplot term you want to rename and define the singular and plural definition. This term will then appear as the new definition throughout the Kiplot platform.

Financials

On the Financials tab, you can edit fields and information relating to the financials page against each initiative. Note that you’ll only have access to this if you’ve purchased the financials add on.

You can edit the financial year start month and currently, as well as enable and disable optional fields. You can also add and manage the cost and benefit items relevant to your organization.

Learn more about how financials work in our dedicated financials guide.