Idea & Demand Configuration
About 21% of the CIS-SPM exam — see all 10 domains.
This is one of the two heaviest domains. It covers the front end of the SPM value stream: capturing raw ideas, turning the good ones into demands, and assessing/prioritizing demands before they become funded work.
Idea Management & the Idea Portal. The Idea Portal is the central, employee-facing place to submit, view, vote/comment on, and collaborate on ideas. Ideas move through Zurich Idea Portal states such as Submitted → Under Review → In Backlog → Planned → In Development → Completed, with Need more information, Unlikely to implement, Already exists, and Duplicate branches. A user with the idea_manager role evaluates submitted ideas. To accept a feasible idea, the idea manager sets it to In Backlog (this replaced the legacy Accepted state; there is no Accepted or Qualified idea state), then uses Create Task to convert it into a Demand, Project, Epic, Story, or SAFe item. The demand manager takes over once a demand exists. Ideas are stored and grouped in Idea modules (for example, one per product, department, or business unit) with idea categories kept as records in the Idea Category [im_category] table; there is no idea campaign feature. A duplicate idea is associated with the original and closed for comments and votes.
Demand Management. Demand Management captures, centralizes, and assesses both strategic and operational demands and provides a single place to manage all demand information. A demand is a formal proposal for work that has not yet been approved/funded.
Demand lifecycle / states. A demand progresses through Draft → Submitted → Screening → Qualified → Approved → Completed, and can also be Deferred or set to Incomplete. There is no Rejected demand state; a demand that does not move forward is deferred or closed, not deleted. Key behaviors to memorize:
- Moving a demand to Screening sends assessments to the stakeholders when the Assessment Required field is set.
- In the classic Demand Management UI the demand manager selects Qualify to move a demand to Qualified. In the Next Experience for Demand Management the state moves to Qualified automatically once the required assessments are submitted, and the demand manager can still set it manually (for example, when assessments are delayed or not required).
- An approved demand can be converted into downstream work based on its Category and Type: a Project, Enhancement, Change, Defect, an Agile Development 2.0 Epic or Story, or EAP entities.
- Zurich recommends the Next Experience for Demand Management (in Portfolio Planning Workspace or Strategic Planning Workspace) for new customers; the classic UI and Demand Workbench remain for existing customers.
Assessment & scoring. Demands are evaluated with question-driven assessments (the platform Assessment engine). Demand Management ships an assessment metric type named Demand with five default categories (Size, Strategic Alignment, Risk, ROI, Cost). Categories and metrics carry weights (a 1 to 10 weighting scale is recommended; the default weight is 10). The demand Score is calculated from the risk, value, and size attributes, which come from the assessment category results.
Demand Workbench. The Demand Workbench (classic) is the single-screen tool to assess and approve qualified demands and create projects, enhancements, changes, or defects. Its bubble chart plots risk (X axis), value (Y axis), and size (bubble), configurable in Workbench Config - Demand. Dragging a bubble changes the demand's risk or value; it does not rank demands. Relative ranking (Rank By Score or an edited Rank) is done in portfolio planning.
Configuration topics likely tested: idea states and Idea modules, idea categories, demand states and stage rules, the Demand assessment metric type and the Assessment Required field, idea conversion with Create Task and the data migrated from a demand to a project (fields, cost and benefit plans, budgets, RIDAC, resource assignments), demand workbench configuration, and roles (idea_admin, idea_manager, idea_manager_professional, it_demand_manager, it_demand_user).
Sample questions from this domain
Three of the 63 in this domain, with the reasoning. The full set is in the question bank.
Which portal do end users typically access to submit ideas in Innovation Management?
- A. Idea Portal ✓
- B. Agile board
- C. Live Feed
- D. Demand form
Why: End users submit, view, vote on, and subscribe to ideas through the Idea Portal, which an idea admin configures with Idea modules and idea categories. The Agile board is where agile teams plan and track sprints and stories, Live Feed is a general collaboration stream (the Demand Workbench list view uses it to show demand activity), and the Demand form is where demand users create demands, which come later in the pipeline than ideas.
In Innovation Management, what is an 'Idea module' used for?
- A. To store and group ideas, with their categories, for a specific product, department, or business unit ✓
- B. To define the idea states, from Submitted through Under Review to In Backlog, that ideas pass through
- C. To route accepted ideas to the Demand Workbench, converting each one into a demand with its assessment
- D. To hold the assessment metric categories and weights that an idea_manager uses to score submitted ideas
Why: An Idea module stores and groups ideas and defines which ideas and categories appear in the Idea Portal, often one module per product, department, or business unit (the module form holds fields such as Module Id, Idea table, and Enable downvote). Idea states such as Submitted, Under Review, and In Backlog are part of the idea lifecycle, not something a module defines. Accepted ideas become demands through Create Task on the idea, not through the module. Assessment metric categories and weights belong to demand assessment, not to Idea modules.
Which Idea Portal capability lets community members register support for submitted ideas?
- A. Subscribing to ideas (subscribers get a notification on each state change)
- B. Commenting on ideas (comment threads close once an idea reaches Completed)
- C. Up-voting and down-voting ideas (down-voting is enabled per Idea module) ✓
- D. Converting ideas to demands (Create Task with the Demand task type chosen)
Why: Users up-vote or down-vote an idea to register their level of interest and support, and the Idea module form has an Enable downvote option (selected by default). Subscribing is real but tracks an idea's progress rather than registering support. Commenting is for discussing and exchanging information about an idea, not for registering support. Converting an idea with Create Task is an idea manager action that turns an accepted idea into a demand or other task, not a community support signal.