SLA Friendly Subitem Automation

There are several floating ideas that have been closed on this topic. I wanted to shed light on why it’s crucially important.

Scenario:
As for most departments in an organization, it is important to create internal Service Level Agreements (SLA) so other departments can understand when they might receive a tangible solution from a team.
In example, the sales team requests a webinar from the marketing team be hosted on “X” date. The marketing team knows it will take 3 days to set up the webinar based on their SLA documentation.

The Problem:
The marketing team cannot incorporate SLA timelines in to subitem automation. Explained- If we know that the webinar needed above takes 3 days to complete the tasks related to the webinar, we cannot back date subitem due dates from an assigned parent item date.

The Solution:
When creating a set of subitems, based on a dropdown criteria, we should be able to make the automation say “create subitem, and set subitem {Due Date} “X” days before parent item {Due Date}”. This way we only have to set one date in the parent item and it auto-generates dates for our subitems related to a parent item. Additionally, a capability that allows us to auto-adjust those subitem dates based on the parent item date.

Why it’s important:
Having to manually set these dates leaves WAY TOO MUCH room for error in subtask date management. Our team members are forced to reference SLA documentation constantly to then back date subitems. We have changing SLA’s based on average project time completion and team member workload. Not having this automation causes backlogs of projects and time taken away from our team to manage a project, rather than work on said projects. Kind of contradicting to the premise of the platform eh?

This is also critically important when quarterly planning. If we set due dates at a parent item, and assign a team member, we would be able to see immediately wether a week/day/month has too much workload on a team member. Then be able to adjust one item instead of that item plus 6-10 subitem dates… EACH time a due date changes. And if you got this incorporated, we could potentially plan a 6 -12 months ahead and help inform if a new team member is needed to hire based on desired projects planned.

If there is another post with this topic I can upvote that is farther down this process please let me know. Thanks in advance.