Kiplot Core Set up
How do I design Kiplot for my Organization?
The organizational structure serves as the foundational framework for Kiplot's operations within your organization. It's crucial that this structure aligns with your organization's practices and workflows. For instance, consider how your timelines are defined— do you need to align this to your sprints? Additionally, how is your hierarchy organized? Ensuring that these elements are clearly established will allow Kiplot to effectively support and enhance your business processes.
Setting up your organizational structure
To begin configuring your organizational structure, navigate to the Configuration page in Kiplot. To get started, you will need to focus on three main areas:
Timeline
Operating Model
Terminology
Timeline
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. You can set the timeline in Kiplot by creating timeline periods and period groups. This helps organize and manage your planning increments and work phases efficiently.
Create Timeline Periods
On the Timeline page, 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.
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.
We recommend setting up your timeline to start at least 5 years prior to the current date!
Add 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:
Click the Add period group button.
In the modal that appears, select your desired Start period from the dropdown.
Next, select your End period from the dropdown.
Once you have chosen the start and end periods, click the add button to finalize the new period group.
This will be limited to the timeline periods set up in Timeline Periods
An Example of Period Groups 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.
Terminology
The Terminology tab allows you to rename terms in Kiplot to match your organizations naming conventions e.g. Initiative → Work Request.
Adding Terms
To rename a term in Kiplot, use the Add term button. Selecting Add term will reveal available terms in Kiplot that can be renamed. Select the term you want to rename and assign it a singular and plural variation of the word.
Once saved, this updated term will be used consistently across the platform for all users.
Managing and Deleting Terms
To manage existing terms, hover over the singular or plural version of the term to reveal an edit icon, You can also remove an option by hitting the bin button.