Initiative Actions

← Back to Initiatives section

• Availability
  • Plan: All
• Roles and Permissions
  • Add/Delete: Admin, Editor, Product Manager
  • Edit: Admin, Editor, Product Manager
  • View only: Reviewer

Initiatives group together multiple ideas and stories and explain at a high level what it is that you're working on, why, and for whom you're building things for. They help make sense of your strategy and link back to objectives, so you understand how the work that you're doing is having an impact on your business and on your customers. 

Add initiatives

To add a new initiative, go to the roadmap page and click on Add an initiative to prompt the slideout. Alternatively, press the + Add button from the side navigation bar and select Initiative from the quick add menu. 

Give the initiative a title and a description so all team members know what it's about. If you can, try to form the title and description as a hypothesis: How can we do x in order to y. You can also add target outcomes that the initiative will help to achieve. An example of a target outcome could be an increased user adoption rate or a customer retention percentage increase.

Add any attributes that are relevant to the card, including the Objective, Tags, Column, and whether you'd like to make it Public or keep it as Internal. Public and Internal are filter options for sharing your Initiatives. The Public option allows visibility to anyone you share your roadmap with, while the Internal option is specifically for stakeholders who may or may not be ProdPad users but should still see internal updates. This ensures that you can share relevant parts of your roadmap with internal teams or stakeholders without exposing it to the general public. To read more on Roadmap Publishing, click here. 

From this view, you also have access to add ideas and user stories from your backlog.

If you ever need to edit the initiative, simply click on it to open up the initiative canvas. Formatting is available through our text editor when highlighting any text available.

Generate Initiative Description and Target Outcomes from Initiative Title

You can use ProdPad's GPT-powered AI helper to create Initiative Descriptions and Target Outcomes from the Initiative title. To do this, just give your Initiative a title and click the AI Assistant button. 

The result will be displayed in the module where you have the option to Discard (which will remove the AI-created result), Try Again (which will attempt to create a new result), or Add to Initiative. 

You can also click into the module to edit the results as needed before adding them to the Initiative. 

Adding a Target Date to an Initiative

To add a Target Date to an Initiative, go to the Roadmap page and click on a Product followed by an Initiative. You'll then see a Target outcomes menu, which allows you to add a Target Date to the Initiative. 

Click the Add button next to “Target Date” to set a target date for the Initiative. You can select a specific date, a target month, or a target quarter depending on your preference. If a date isn’t required, the field will display “Not set” by default.

To change the date, click Edit and select a new date. You can also click Clear to reset the field back to Not set. 

You can read more about Target Dates here! 

Generate AI initiatives from key results 

ProdPad's GPT-powered AI helper helps you draft initiatives from key results. 

Delete initiatives

To delete an initiative, click on it to open up the initiative canvas and click the ellipsis tool on the top right. Here you will find the option to delete it.

Duplicate initiatives

If you need to duplicate initiatives and content within them - it's as easy as pie! Duplicating Initiatives can be a great time-saving solution if you have multiple products, but a problem to solve that may be relevant across your portfolio.

To begin:

• Click on the initiative you wish to duplicate
• At the top right corner, click on the ellipsis menu
• Select "Duplicate" from the available options

The duplicated initiative will appear directly under the original card, with the title set as "Copy of..." by default.

Share initiatives

Initiatives can be shared directly using the share initiative URL option.

To do so:

• Click on the initiative to open the canvas. 
• Locate and click the paperclip icon on the top left-hand side of the initiative.
• The URL will automatically be copied to your clipboard once clicked.

Move initiatives to other products

If you'd like to move an initiative to a different product - no problem!

First, click on the initiative you want to move to open the canvas.

Under the Attributes section, click on the edit button.

In the Edit attributes pop-up window, click on the Find product field. You will see a list of all available products on the drop-down menu, with any products already assigned to the initiative displaying a tick next to their name. Select the products you wish to move the initiative to and the products you wish to remove the initiative from (if applicable). Once you've finished making your edits, click Save.