Initiatives

Overview

An Initiative is the top of Vigilo's work hierarchy — the quarterly or annual outcome that justifies a basket of underlying projects and changes. Where a project answers "what are we building?" an initiative answers "why does it matter?" It is the surface a product lead or executive looks at to see whether the org is shipping against its stated bets.

Initiatives live under /ws/{slug}/initiatives. Each row has a name, owner, status, target date, expected impact, and a list of linked projects, changes, and key results.

Why it exists

Project lists rot the moment they outgrow a sprint. A team running ten projects with no umbrella loses the thread of which projects compose which strategic effort and ends up either rebuilding the picture in a slide deck every Monday or letting drift happen unchecked. The Initiative model puts that umbrella in the same database the projects already live in, so the rollup is always current and the link between strategy and execution is one click each way.

It is intentionally lighter than a full OKR tool: Vigilo does not score key results numerically, does not enforce a quarterly cadence, and does not require a top-down hierarchy. Use it the way that fits.

Key concepts

• Initiative fields — name, description (markdown), status (proposed, active, paused, completed, cancelled), owner (UserProfile), target_date, impact_statement, theme_tag (optional one-word grouping for the roadmap view).
• Linked projects — many-to-one from Project. A project can belong to exactly one initiative, or to none. The project header shows the parent initiative as a chip; the initiative detail page lists every child project with its current status.
• Linked changes — many-to-many from ChangeRequest. Use this for one-off changes that contribute to an initiative without going through a whole project.
• Key results — free-text lines on the initiative description (markdown checklist). Vigilo does not auto-track numbers; this is on purpose — pick the source of truth (CRM, analytics tool, spreadsheet) and link out.
• Roadmap view — /ws/{slug}/roadmap renders initiatives as a Gantt-style timeline grouped by theme_tag. See Roadmap for the view's own controls.

Common workflows

1. Create an initiative and attach existing projects

1. Open Work → Initiatives → + New initiative.
2. Fill the name (concise — this is what shows on the roadmap), owner, target date, and a one-sentence impact statement.
3. After saving, scroll to Linked projects and pick from the project picker. Multi-select is supported.
4. Existing projects keep their own owners and timelines; the link is non-destructive metadata.

2. Track progress at a glance

1. Open the initiative detail page.
2. The Progress card aggregates the linked children: percentage of completed tasks across all linked projects, percentage of completed changes, and the burn-down of remaining work versus the target date.
3. The Risks card surfaces any linked Risk row whose impact ranks above medium. The colour reflects the highest-impact open risk so leadership sees red without drilling in.

3. Pause an initiative without losing context

1. Set the status to paused and write a short note in the description explaining what's blocking.
2. Paused initiatives are excluded from the active counters but still appear on the roadmap with a hatched bar so the absence is visible.
3. When you resume, set the status back to active — the timeline picks up where it was.

4. Close an initiative

1. Set the status to completed (success) or cancelled (descoped / killed).
2. Vigilo writes an audit row capturing who closed it, when, and the outcome status. The roadmap shows the completed range with a solid bar.
3. Linked projects are not auto-closed. Decide per project whether to wrap them up or transfer them to a successor initiative.

Permissions

Initiative endpoints inherit WorkspaceScopedMixin, so a workspace cannot see another workspace's roadmap.

Troubleshooting

A project I linked doesn't appear under the initiative. The link is one-way enforced — a project can only have one parent initiative. If you previously linked it to a different initiative, the picker silently rebinds. Open the project detail to confirm the current parent.

Target date in the past but status still active. Vigilo does not auto-cancel overdue initiatives. The roadmap renders the bar in red so the slip is visible; closing or pushing the date is a deliberate choice.

Roadmap shows the same initiative twice. Initiatives with multiple theme_tag values render once per theme group, which is intentional — a single bet that spans two themes deserves to be seen from both lenses.

Related articles

• Tasks, projects, sprints — the child entities an initiative wraps.
• Roadmap — the timeline view over initiatives.
• Risk register — risks surface on the initiative detail.