Organizing Work with Initiatives

An initiative is a larger goal or project that multiple dev items contribute to. Think of it as a container that gives you the big picture — while individual dev items track specific metrics, initiatives track whether the overall effort is moving in the right direction.

When to use initiatives

Initiatives are useful when:

• Multiple features serve one goal — e.g., “Improve onboarding conversion” might involve a simplified signup flow, better welcome emails, and an interactive tutorial
• You want to track progress over time — Initiatives have start and end dates, and move through their own lifecycle
• You need to report up — Initiatives give leadership a high-level view without diving into individual feature metrics

Creating an initiative

1. Navigate to the Initiatives section
2. Click “New Initiative”
3. Fill in the fields (see table below)
4. Save the initiative

Field	What to enter	Limits
Title	Name of the initiative	1–200 characters
Target Goal	What success looks like	1–500 characters (required)
Start Date	When the initiative begins	Required
End Date	When you expect to wrap up	Optional (must be on or after start date)
Description	Additional context	Up to 2,000 characters (optional)
Owner	Who’s driving this initiative	Optional
Dev Items	Features contributing to this goal	Select existing dev items

Tip

Write the Target Goal as a measurable outcome: “Increase trial-to-paid conversion from 12% to 18%” is more useful than “Improve conversions.”

Initiative statuses

Status	What it means
Planning	Defining scope and goals
Active	Work is underway
Completed	Goal achieved or measurement period ended
Archived	No longer actively tracked

Linking dev items

You can link dev items to an initiative in two ways:

• From the initiative — Select dev items when creating or editing the initiative
• From the dev item — Choose initiatives in the dev item’s initiative field

A dev item can belong to multiple initiatives, and an initiative can contain many dev items.

Understanding initiative health

When an initiative has linked dev items with post-release data, VEKTIS shows an overall health indicator summarizing how things are going.

What the health labels mean

Label	Color	What it means
On Track	Green	Most linked dev items are showing positive impact
Mixed	Gray	Results are split — some positive, some negative or awaiting data
Off Track	Red	Most linked dev items are showing negative or no impact

Reading the health bar

Below the label, you’ll see a visual bar showing the breakdown of linked dev items:

• Positive — Dev items where impact is moving in the right direction
• Negative — Dev items where impact is moving opposite the target
• Awaiting data — Dev items that don’t have enough post-release data yet

The bar gives you a quick sense of how many items are contributing positively versus negatively.

When health appears

Health indicators only appear once at least one linked dev item has post-release impact data. If none of the linked items have been measured yet, you’ll see a message indicating that health data isn’t available yet.

Tip

Health updates automatically as you add post-release measurements to linked dev items. Early in an initiative, you may see “Mixed” or “Awaiting data” simply because not all items have been measured yet — this is normal.

Filtering and sorting

The initiative list supports:

• Filter by status — Show only active initiatives, or planning ones, etc.
• Filter by owner — See just your initiatives
• Search by title — Find a specific initiative quickly
• Sort — By creation date, last updated, title, or start date

Best practices

1. Keep initiatives focused — One initiative per strategic goal. If it has more than 8–10 dev items, consider splitting it.
2. Set realistic end dates — End dates help you evaluate whether you’re on track. You can always extend them.
3. Review regularly — Check initiative progress weekly to catch issues early.
4. Archive when done — Completed initiatives still show results, but archiving keeps your active list clean.