TL:DR: This week’s Template Tuesdays spotlight is the Business Improvement Projects Governance template. It is designed to help enterprises organize, track, and manage continuous improvement initiatives in one place. The template includes an intake request form, standardized workflows, and a dashboard to support visibility across projects. It can help cross-functional teams coordinate work, maintain accountability, and monitor progress more consistently.
Hey Community 👋
Welcome back to Template Tuesdays! Every Tuesday, we spotlight a powerful space template, give you a quick overview of its core features, and show you exactly how to start using it right away ✔️
Wrike’s Templates & Solutions Center helps teams hit the ground running with ready-made workspaces for common workflows and use cases. You can access it directly from your profile menu or when creating a new space. Packed with pre-built elements like custom fields, dashboards, request forms, and automation rules, these templates give you a rock-solid foundation that you can easily customize to fit your organization's exact needs. For more details, check out the Help Center article.
This week, we’re diving into the Business Improvement Projects Governance template created by @Summer Wilbur ! 🚀
Managing continuous improvement across an entire enterprise requires a clear framework for capturing ideas, tracking progress, and coordinating execution. When this information is managed in different places, it can be harder to maintain visibility across projects and keep timelines on track. This template provides a centralized system to capture, review, and execute business improvement projects (BIPs). By structuring your intake and governance, you can help ensure each initiative aligns with strategic goals and moves efficiently from concept to completion.
What’s inside this template?
How to Install This Template
- Click on your profile picture in the top right corner.
- Select Templates & Solutions.
- Under the Created by Community section, select Community.
Search for Business Improvement Projects Governance and click Use template.
💡 Note: This template can be added directly into an existing space or used to create a brand-new one. For a step-by-step guide on installing it into a pre-existing space, check out this article. Alternatively, you can find this template directly using this LINK.
Workspace Overview
Once you install the template, your new space will come pre-configured with core folders and specialized Custom Item Types (CITs) to keep your governance clean and organized from day one.
To help you get started immediately, these spaces come pre-loaded with clear examples, showing you exactly how your data will populate:
- Reviewed - Preparing Stage 1 Pitch
- Smart Logistics Route Planning - Optimizing Process Workflow in Logistics & Distribution Production, and more
Let’s Take a Closer Look 👀
A successful governance model relies on consistency, automation, and visibility. Here is how this template handles the heavy lifting for your business improvement lifecycle:
1. Streamlined Intake with Request Forms
Improvement initiatives often begin through emails, conversations, or informal requests, which can make them harder to track and evaluate consistently. This template includes a dedicated Intake Request Form that prompts users for all critical project details upfront. Once submitted, the request automatically generates a structured project plan based on your backend blueprints, funneling new ideas directly into your evaluation pipeline without any manual data entry.
2. Standardized Blueprints & Custom Item Types
When a new project is approved, the template can create it from a Blueprint, reducing the need to set up each initiative manually. These Blueprints are built using Custom Item Types (CITs) and tailored Custom Fields, helping ensure that business improvement projects follow a consistent structure and are tracked using the same standards from the start.
Combined with a tailored Custom Workflow designed specifically for governance lifecycles, team members can smoothly advance initiatives through critical development and approval gates.
3. Automation Rules
To keep projects moving forward without constant micromanagement, the template features built-in Automation Rules. For example, the automation adds a comment and mentions the owners, when the finish date has passed.
4. High-Level Dashboard Reporting
Keep leadership and stakeholders informed without relying on separate status update requests through the pre-configured Dashboards.
- Dashboard - Executive Summaries: Provides a summary of project date change alerts, projects by status, and more.
- Dashboard - BPS Portfolio Overview: Includes chart widgets that provide a visual overview.
- Template Overview Dashboard: Displays all details related to this template.
Customize the Space for Your Needs
This template provides a starting point that organizations can adapt to fit their own processes and requirements. You can further customize the workspace by exploring the following options:
- Refine the Intake: Add or modify questions in the Request Form to capture the exact information your governance committee requires.
- Track the Right Data: Adjust Custom Fields to better reflect essential request details, metrics, or strategic impact scores.
- Define Your Deliverables: Update or add new Custom Item Types to match the specific types of continuous improvement work your teams handle.
- Map Your Approval Gates: Tailor Workflows by adding or changing stages to fit your team’s internal verification and rollout processes.
We hope this template overview is helpful as you review approaches to managing continuous improvement work. The Business Improvement Projects Governance template can be useful for PMOs, operations leaders, and change managers looking to support continuous improvement frameworks with greater visibility and consistency. Special thanks to @Summer Wilbur for creating and sharing this template with the Wrike Community so other users can benefit from it as well 🙏
Are you currently managing business improvement or continuous improvement workflows in Wrike? What criteria does your team use most to prioritize new project requests? Let us know in the comments below 👇
If you’d like to share your own template to help others, you can fill out the Wrike Community Templates Submission Form 😁
