In an interview, Greg Daniels and Michael Schur talk about how originally the idea was to make a direct spinoff of The Office. However, once Amy Poehler got on board, Greg says things changed:
There’s another idea for a true spin-off that involves some Office characters, but once Amy became available to this project, we wanted to go in a direction to maximize what she could do. That other project is out there, but it’s not this one.
Michael explains:
At the beginning of this process, NBC first brought up the idea of a spin-off. But their guiding principle from the beginning was to do a good show, do a funny TV show. And we said we would try to think of ideas that were spin-offs, and if we came up with something that we liked better, (that) we thought would be a better show, that we would do that. And this was the idea that we really got excited about.
Link: Amy Poehler attempts the Tina Fey leap into new sitcom
