Creating Associations between Corporate and Project items

Associations can be created within projects and between projects and corporate items as a means of providing a flexible way of managing the informal connections between them.

This topic applies to v3.3.1 onwards

Enterprise management relies on the association between the various items that makeup the framework of a project or programme of work. The i-lign Associations feature provides a flexible way to create, view and manage those linkages loosely. (Associations are not hard-wired and don't enforce dependencies between the items.)

For example: A decision may occur as the result of, or result in the creation of an issue, risk or deliverable. It is useful to record that association so that the decision making process is transparent and traceable.

Associations can be made between items within projects and between projects and corporate items:

Corporate	Project
Risk	Decision
Project	Issue
	Risk
	Deliverable

Future development:

This features is work in progress. The functionality released in v3.3 was the first step in providing the ability to create a wide range of association types within projects and between projects and corporate items. In the future:

• Association types will be iteratively extended to include other project and corporate items (e.g. Change Requests, Portfolios, People, Strategies, Goals etc).
• The associations will be displayed graphically, and may form the basis of association diagrams.

Creating an Association

1. Open the detail screen of item that you want to associate from e.g. a decision, issue or risk.
2. In the Associated Items panel, click the New button.
3. Select the type of Source of that you want to associate to. Once selected, this will populate Select Type window with the items available.
4. Select the type of item that you want to associate to. Once selected, these will populate Select Item window with the items available.
5. Select the item that you want to associate to, from those available, by clicking the item row. Only one item can be selected at a time.
6. Enter the reason why the association is being made.
7. Click Save.

 

Setting up Security Permissions for Roles

To allow a user to add and delete an association, add the following permissions to their Organisation Security Role:

• Item Associations: Create
• Item Associations: Delete

Note! These permissions have not been assigned to any organisation role automatically on release of v3.3 and have to be added to the appropriate roles by the organisation's i-lign administrator.