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Project setup

Project setup is where a project manager turns a draft into a working plan. For a project with a signed contract, Brain has already read the contract and precompiled everything: referents, milestones with dates and dependencies, tasks and subtasks, tasks in the hands of the client with their approval deadline, and the SLAs written in the contract. You check it, correct it, and approve it.

Open it from the project page with Project setup, highlighted while the project is in Planning, or with Edit plan in the Plan card. The header shows the linked contract and its signing date, and a summary of milestones, tasks, client approvals and SLAs.

Set the referents and rules

Referents drive who gets the work: the owner of a milestone cascades to its tasks and subtasks, and tasks of an area without its own owner fall back to the project manager.

Steps

  1. In Nucleo, go to Brain > Projects, click the project, and then click Project setup.
  2. In Referents & rules, under Referents, choose the Project manager, Business owner, Tech owner, Marketing owner and Design owner.
  3. Under Rules and dates, set the Client approval SLA (days): how many days, from 1 to 60, the client has to complete the tasks in their hands.
  4. Check the Start and the Expected end of the project.
Note
Assignments you make by hand on a task are never overwritten by the cascade.

Add and edit milestones

Milestones are the phases of the project, in order. A milestone can be independent, or start after another one: moving the due date of a milestone then shifts the ones that depend on it.

Steps

  1. In Plan, click Add milestone.
  2. Enter the Name and choose the Owner.
  3. Set the Start and Due dates.
  4. Optional: switch on Recurring (monthly service, e.g. maintenance) for a phase that repeats every month. A recurring milestone has no due date.
  5. In Depends on, choose Independent or the milestone it starts after.
  6. Click Add milestone.

To change an existing milestone, edit its name, area, owner and dates directly in the plan. To remove it, click its delete icon and confirm: its tasks stay on the project without a milestone.

Add and edit tasks and subtasks

  • To add a task, type it in Add a task to this milestone… under the milestone. It inherits the milestone's owner, area and dates.
  • For each task, set the Area (PM, Tech, Marketing or Design), the Assignee, and the Start and Due dates. An assignee inherited from the milestone is marked as such.
  • Switch on Client task for a task in the hands of the client, such as an approval. Its deadline is the start date plus the client approval SLA.
  • To add a subtask, type it in Add a subtask… under the task.
  • Tasks that aren't chained to any milestone appear in Tasks without a milestone. Use Move to milestone… to chain them.
  • To delete a task, click its delete icon and confirm. Its subtasks are deleted too.

Manage SLAs

SLAs are the service commitments of the project, read from the contract or added by hand. Once the project is active, client approvals and SLA-linked tasks are checked every hour, and an internal alert fires at the threshold you set and again past the deadline.

Steps

  1. In the SLAs section, click Add SLA, or Edit on an existing one.
  2. Enter a name, such as Ticket response time.
  3. Choose the Metric: Response, Takeover, Resolution, Uptime, Approval, Delivery or Other.
  4. Set the Target and its Unit: hours, days or percent.
  5. Optional: describe the Scope, such as support requests in working hours.
  6. Set Alert at (% of the time window).
  7. Check that Active (monitored) is on, and then click Save.

The Source column tells you whether an SLA comes from the Contract or was added Manually. Deleting an SLA removes its link from the tasks; open alerts stay until the tasks are done.

Solve the checks before approving

Project setup lists what still needs attention. Some issues block the approval; the others are things to check, and you can approve anyway.

CheckBlocks approval
The project has no project manager.Yes
The plan has no milestones.Yes
A milestone starts after it ends.Yes
The plan has work in an area with no owner for that area.No
A milestone has no owner or no due date.No
A milestone starts before the one it depends on ends, or ends after the project's expected end.No
A task isn't chained to a milestone, has no assignee, or is due after its milestone.No
A client task has no deadline.No

Approve the plan

Steps

  1. Solve the blocking issues listed at the top of Project setup.
  2. Click Approve.
  3. Optional: if Asana is connected, keep Create the project on Asana on to create it there too, with milestones as sections and tasks with assignee and due date.
  4. In the dialog, click Approve again to confirm.

The project becomes Active, the team starts working on its milestones and tasks, and client approvals and SLAs start being monitored.

The Asana project is created in the background, so you can keep working: a message says Project created on Asana. when it's ready. If Asana takes longer than usual or fails, the project stays approved in Brain and the message tells you so.

Note
Brain stays the source of truth for the plan: changes made in Asana don't come back. After approval, the setup is read-only for the approval flow, but you can still edit the plan here.

Replan from the contract

If the contract changed, or the draft isn't good enough, let Brain read the contract again.

Steps

  1. In Project setup, click Replan.
  2. Click Re-plan to confirm.

Brain regenerates the milestones, tasks, subtasks and contract SLAs, and tells you how many it created.

Caution
Milestones and tasks you added by hand are kept, but edits you made to generated items are lost. Replan needs a contract linked to the project.

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