Structuring "Tiered" Blueprints that "Talk" to Each Other

Danielle Arteaga

Hi, everyone. I am a relatively new Control Center user. Our team's work is organized at three altitudes:

1. Strategic Priorities - these are the big-picture, usually fiscal-year-long goals we plan to achieve
2. Initiatives - these are the quarter or multi-quarter "big rocks" we need to move to realize the Strategic Priorities by the end of the year.
3. Tasks - these are the shorter-term projects we have to complete to achieve the Initiatives that roll into Strategic Priorities

When PS helped us stand up our Control Center solution, they built our blueprint at the Initiative level. That means we have provisioning of Initiatives but relationship of those Initiatives to their Strategic Priorities is pretty manual. Adding a new Strategic Priority is a heavy lift. And although Dynamic Scope reporting allows roll-up of metrics on the Initiatives at the Strategic Priority altitude, I think we would benefit from creating a new blueprint for Strategic Priority intake.

Creating the new blueprint is not a problem. Where I am in stuck is in how to get the Strategic Priority blueprint to "talk" to the Initiative Intake blueprint so that the relationships between SPs and Initiatives are automatically created. I have a vague idea that this needs to happen in the Profile Data section, but I've tried a few hacks with cell linking and formulas that seem to work initially but then break on provisioning a new SP, so I'm definitely doing something wrong. Can't seem to diagnose that on my own.

Has anyone done something similar? If so, any tips / insights you can share? Much appreciated.

Brian Besand - Smartsheet

Hey Danielle- Are you familiar with a capability of Control Center called multi-tier? Based on my limited understanding of what you're trying to accomplish, it may be the solution for you! Multi-tier let's you stack blueprints on top of each other in parent/child relationships, including multiple layers. So you could create one blueprint each for Strategic Initiatives , Initiatives, and tasks. Each time you spin up a new Strategic Initiative, you can spin up Initiatives under that, and Tasks under those. All the normal upward flow of portfolio reporting data still works. I've linked to a webinar we did on multi-tier a while back, and your account team can get you started on a more in-depth conversation.

https://www.smartsheet.com/content-center/solutions-stories/Segment-Portfolio-Reporting-and-Access-With-Control-Center-Multi-Tier