Creating and Managing Dev Items

A dev item is any feature, improvement, or change you want to measure the impact of. It’s the central unit in VEKTIS — everything else (baselines, releases, post-release data) hangs off a dev item.

Creating a dev item

1. Click “New Dev Item” from the dashboard
2. Fill in the required fields (see table below)
3. Optionally add:
   • Target release date — When you plan to ship (informational, not enforced)
   • Dev tickets — Links to related tickets or PRs (up to 10 URLs, 500 characters each)
   • Notes — Additional context (up to 2,000 characters)
   • Initiatives — Link to one or more initiatives this contributes to
   • Success Threshold — The smallest improvement in your target metric that you’d consider a win (e.g., if tracking conversion rate, a value of 2 means changes smaller than 2 percentage points won’t be flagged)
4. Save the dev item

Field	What to enter	Limits
Title	A clear name for the feature	1–200 characters
Description	What it does and why you’re building it	1–2,000 characters
Target Metric	The specific metric you expect to change	1–200 characters
Target Impact	Your expected change (e.g., “Increase by 15%“)	1–200 characters
Direction	Whether success means the metric goes up or down	Increase or Decrease
Owner	Who’s responsible for tracking this	Select from team members
Success Threshold	The smallest improvement you’d consider a win (optional)	Positive number, same units as target metric

Tip

Write the Target Metric as specifically as possible. “Signup conversion rate” is better than “conversions.” The more specific, the easier it is to measure consistently.

Dev item statuses

Every dev item moves through a lifecycle:

Status	What it means	What you can do
Planning	Gathering requirements and defining the metric	Add/edit baselines, mark as released
Development	Feature is being built	Add/edit baselines, mark as released
Measuring	Feature is live, collecting post-release data	Add baselines (pre-release dates), add post-release metrics
Complete	Measurement period is over	Add/edit post-release metrics, view results
Archived	No longer actively tracked	View only — no changes allowed

See Dev Item Lifecycle for the full status transition diagram.

Note

You can move backward in the lifecycle (e.g., from Measuring back to Development) if needed — except from Archived, which is a final state.

Editing a dev item

Open any dev item and click Edit to update its fields. All fields from creation are editable, with the same validation rules.

Changes to the dev item’s fields (title, description, metric, etc.) don’t affect existing baseline or post-release data — those are tracked separately.

The measurement workflow

Here’s the typical lifecycle of a dev item:

1. Create the dev item with your target metric and direction
2. Collect baselines — Add 4+ data points showing pre-release metric values
3. Mark as released — Record the actual release date
4. Measure impact — Add post-release data points over the following weeks
5. Review results — Check impact badges and confidence levels
6. Complete — Mark as complete when you have enough data to draw conclusions
7. Archive (optional) — Move to archived when you no longer need to reference it

Linking to initiatives

Dev items can be linked to one or more initiatives — larger goals or projects that multiple features contribute to. You can set these when creating or editing a dev item.

See Organizing Work with Initiatives for details.

Tips

• One metric per dev item — If a feature affects multiple metrics, create separate dev items for each. This keeps the before-and-after comparison clean.
• Be prescriptive with target impact — “Increase by 15%” is better than “Improve.” It gives you a benchmark to evaluate against.
• Start collecting baselines early — Don’t wait until development is done. The earlier you start, the stronger your baseline.
• Use notes liberally — Future you will thank present you for the context.