Ideas & Demands

Ideas are the front door of the funnel: anyone can submit one, and a small set of reviewer actions moves it toward becoming funded work. Once an idea (or any other source of work) is worth planning, it becomes a demand — the object that carries the business case, scoring, and financials a portfolio or demand manager evaluates before approving a project.

Ideas

The Ideas board groups every idea into five visual columns — New, Under Review, Accepted, Promoted, Declined — each sorted by vote count. Underneath, an idea actually carries eleven lifecycle states:

State	Board column	Typical next action
Draft	New	Submit
Submitted	New	Mark Reviewing, Need Info, Mark Duplicate, Already Exists, or Create Demand
Need more information	New	Mark Reviewing, Mark Duplicate, Already Exists
Under review	Under Review	Need Info, Accept, Decline, Mark Duplicate, Already Exists, or Create Demand
In backlog	Accepted	Plan, Decline, Mark Duplicate, Already Exists, or Create Demand
Planned	Accepted	Start, or Create Demand
In development	Promoted	Complete
Completed	Promoted	— (terminal)
Unlikely to implement	Declined	— (terminal)
Duplicate	Declined	— (terminal; requires picking the idea it duplicates)
Already exists	Declined	— (terminal)

Create Demand is available from Submitted, Under Review, In Backlog, and Planned — it doesn’t advance the idea’s own state; it opens a demand pre-filled from the idea’s title, description, business case, portfolio, and submitter, and links the new demand back onto the idea. An idea that’s already been converted won’t offer the action again.

Demands

A demand carries the business case, financials, and value/risk/cost/size scoring an organization uses to decide whether an idea (or any other request) is worth funding as a project. Its state machine:

State	What it means	Typical next action
Draft	Newly created; not yet routed to a manager.	Submit (requires a demand manager)
Submitted	With the demand manager for triage.	Screen, Qualify, Defer, Reject, or Reset to Draft
Screening	Under initial evaluation.	Qualify, Defer, Reject, or Reset to Draft
Qualification	Passed screening; business case is being assessed.	Approve, Defer, or Reject
Approved	Funded and scheduled.	Create new project, or Complete
Completed	Terminal — work delivered.	—
Deferred	Terminal side-exit — postponed.	Reset to Draft
Rejected	Terminal side-exit — declined.	Reset to Draft

Approve is gated behind the demand manager role and requires an approved start date, an approved end date, and a comment before it will go through. Defer and Reject both require a comment; Reject is also gated behind the demand manager role. Create new project is available once a demand is Qualified or Approved and hands off to the project intake form; the demand keeps its own state and history after conversion rather than being replaced by the project.

A demand’s Stage — the chevron shown at the top of the record (Draft → Submitted → Screening → Qualification → Approved → Completed) — is a read-only view derived from state, not a field you set directly. Deferred and Rejected render off the chevron as plain status badges. Once a project has been created from a demand, the stage badge switches to a plain Project Pending label instead of “Demand …”, so it’s obvious at a glance that the funnel has moved on.

Demand scoring rolls up Risk, Value, Size, Cost, and Strategic alignment into an overall 0–10 score, alongside a full Financials tab (capital/operational budget and outlay, labor and other costs, NPV, IRR, discount rate, expected ROI) and a Business Case tab (in scope / out of scope, assumptions, barriers, enablers, and the risk of performing vs. not performing the work).