If you're looking to enhance your PMO workflow and create a seamless approval process for your projects, we've got you covered with monday projects. There are several aspects to the project approval process that need to be managed and these processes can be time-consuming and nerve-wracking—it's a lot of work! To make your life easier, our project approval process standardizes your approval processes and centralizes communication between team members in order to save time, money, and avoid any potential mishaps.

 

Approval process basics

You may be wondering "What exactly is a project approval process? Well, in simple terms, an approval process is a method used by an organization to approve any project in a structured way.

An example of an approval process workflow may look something like this:  

• Employees can submit an approval request
• The approval is entered into an "approvals queue" where it can then be managed and tracked
• Approvers will be notified of a new request and can review a submitted approval and communicate with others involved if needed
• Files to be approved are centralized in one place for easy access
• Management can easily oversee and analyze all of the approvals

Now that we have a basic understanding of what an approval process may look like, let's see how this kind of workflow can come to life with monday projects! 

 

Keep track of requests

Having a clear and concise board that shows all of your project requests as they come in is a great foundation for your project approval process! The Project Approvals board is structured into four different groups representing the four varying stages of a project:

• New Requests
• Under Consideration
• Approved
• Rejected Requests

 

Each group contains different requests as items that are submitted and automatically entered into this board. The columns indicate various pieces of information and data that are required for the team in order to evaluate these new requests. We can view the data points that we need for each approval with ease!

You can see the default view below for our Projects Approvals board that highlights the important data to see at a glance. Read on for more information and different views that will give you the bigger picture behind project requests! 

 

 

Streamline requests with monday Forms

 

 

Project score

Let's gain some insight into the answers provided in our projects request forms with our project score column! A project score is a calculated number, based on gathered statistics, and reflects the value of each project. The Formula column weighs several sets of data together from particular Numbers columns to decide the impact each project will have on company goals and therefore which projects should be prioritized. 

The several numbers columns that make up the project score are hidden in the default view of the board, but are shown in our main table view so you can get the full picture of the approvals process. See our main table view below:

 

 

 

Once the project scores are determined, conditional coloring applies coloring to the cells that meet your defined criteria to visually emphasize and differentiate the different project scores. For instance, we designated the color red to project scores that are equal to or less than 4, yellow for scores greater than 4, and green to scores greater than 7. This helps you understand the relevant project scores easily at a glance! 

Automations to enhance your workflow

Keep your processes organized with automations! monday.com Automations allow you to easily ramp up your workflow by setting automatic actions that save you time and reduce your workload. Communication within your team will be at an all-time high, as you can set automations that notify your team at any step of the process. For our approvals workflow, we've added the useful automation recipes below.

These automations automatically move items from one phase of the project to another based on their status (New requests, Consider, Approved, Rejected) and the initiator of the project is immediately notified and milestone dates are set.  

A key automation for monday projects is the automation that links the Projects Approval board with the Portfolio Management board. When a project is approved, an item is automatically created in the Portfolio Management board and linked with the current Approval board. How great is it to easily monitor any project from each board at a glance?! 

 

Overseeing project approvals doesn't have to be a time-consuming hassle. Using monday projects for your approval processes will give you the secure structure you need for your team to really thrive. Get started with monday projects today and check out how the other features of this product will help your team prosper!    

 

 

 

If you have any questions, please reach out to our team right here. We’re available 24/7 and happy to help.