When you create a capital project estimate you breakdown the work into project or work breakdown structures (WBS elements and tasks) as well as the assets or deliverables that may be output from the project. A higher level breakdown, called options or phases, which cuts across both WBS and assets is available to model either:

• Options as in 'capital project for five years' vs. 'capital project for three years' where options are alternative or add-on possibilities falling within the same overall project, or
• Phases as in 'first three years' vs. 'years four to five' where the phases are stages within the project life-cycle with different objectives and attributes.

To start, select whether your project has one or multiple phases in the SETUP tab. Selecting multiple makes the PHASES tab appear.

Project WBS elements are each assigned to an option, WBS cannot be "shared" across several options. Similarly assets/deliverables are also associated with one option and cannot be "shared".

Options are defined in the OPTIONS tab of your project, and in turn WBS structured estimates and assets or settlement rules are linked.

1. Click the + button to add a new option or the - button to delete an option. If you delete an option it will be removed from any WBS elements or assets referring to that option (but the WBS elements and estimates for the deleted option still remain, unassigned). Or click the copy button to copy a phase which in turn:
   • Copies any and all WBS or project structure elements assigned to that phase
   • Copies any and all labor, material, travel or other direct cost estimates assigned to that phase
   • (Line items and/or proposal-specific bills of material are not copied)
2. Enter the description of each option, briefly
3. Optionally specify the start and end dates for each option, keeping within the overall program start and end dates defined in the SETUP tab.  Dates for WBS elements and assets/settlement rules associated with this option should be within the start/end dates defined here and rescheduling a project will push all options, WBS elements and their estimates based on the period of performance
4. The total cost of all estimates for the WBS elements assigned to this option or the stretch goal which is often defined as the total cost minus the opportunity for cost reductions based on stretch-goal policies
5. Clicking on the WBS icon for any phase will jump to the project structure tab only showing those WBS elements linked to this option. WBS elements below an element associated with another option will be hidden
6. Clicking on the Deliverables icon jumps to SETTLEMENT RULES tab showing only the assets associated with this option
   • Once you reach the WBS or priced line item tabs, use the option selector in the top right corner to change or clear the option filter
7. Click on the speech bubble to enter some option-wide remarks, and on the pencil edit icon to edit phase details in a popup panel
8. Some of the columns which are hidden by default:
   • Owner column is hidden from the view above but if displayed, allows you to select an option owner
   • The estimated cost including weighted risk values or risk reserve
   • If the entire phase is optional then check the "option" box.  All priced line items and their indentured part configurations associated with an optional phase are thus considered as options and will be costed independently of the non-optional items
   • You can also upload or download options from/to Excel
9. Options can be sorted by sequence number (the default) or by some other column. Options sequence numbers are automatically derived but can be edited in the phase/option popup or better by dragging rows for each option up and down the list of options. If you click and drag a row up or down the option sequence numbers are re-assigned from 1...n top-down automatically
10. Click on the edit pencil icon to open the phase (option) details popup, shown below. The image bubble numbers refer to the same list of fields above and the same cross-references to the number list above
11. The 'Estimate' column links the phase to your estimates. In this column you can either:
    • Click the 'Create' button which creates a new estimate by creating an assigning a level 1 WBS of type 'basis of estimate' which means that the option's WBS now has an estimate assigned. Technically speaking, estimates are assigned to WBS elements not to phases so this option makes sense when you have your level 1 of the project work-breakdown structure representing the actual options on a 1:1 basis
    • Click the 'Open' button if there are WBS elements in your project structure which are already BOE's and have estimates. If more than one WBS assigned to this option has an estimate the estimate for the first WBS assigned to this option which happens to be an estimate in its own right
    • If the option has WBS elements assigned which cannot possibly become an estimate because there are estimating WBS elements defined above or below those WBS, then this column is blank.

The bubbles in the screen shot above link to the same numbers in the text for both images.