The initiative lifecycle

Every initiative moves through the same stages, and the step from Reviewing to Implementing is an approval.

The stages

Identified — proposed; nothing committed yet. A new initiative starts here, unless it was imported from a spreadsheet or document that gave it a stage of its own.
Reviewing — submitted for a decision.
Implementing — approved; the work is underway.
Live — in use, and value should be accruing.
Completed — finished, or retired by a portfolio decision.

Off the main path:

Paused — stopped for now, from Identified, Reviewing, Implementing or Live. Resume returns it to the stage it was in.
Rejected — turned down at review, with a reason the owner can read.
Dismissed — dropped after work began (from Implementing, Live or Paused).

Completed, Rejected and Dismissed are final. Completing an initiative doesn't lock its figures: its entries can still be edited, except those in a month someone has locked, which stay as they are until the month is reopened with a reason.

How stages change

Open the initiative. The button at the top right is the next step:

Submit for Review (Identified). If the Setup tab still has items to do, Roiva warns you before submitting, because a reviewer would see a number held for review or no number at all.
Approve (Reviewing) moves it to Implementing.
Mark as Live (Implementing), Resume (Paused).
Record Decision (Live, once it has approved value), if you can decide on it: continue, scale, fix, pause or retire it, with a reason. See Portfolio reviews and decisions. Until then there's no figure to decide on, so the button is Open Setup, which lists what it needs to be measured.

Before it's live, Already in use? beside it records that it was running before it was tracked here (see below).

The … menu beside it has Pause, Reject (Reviewing only; it asks for a reason) and Dismiss. On a live initiative, Pause and Mark as Completed open Record Decision with Pause or Retire chosen, because pausing or completing a live initiative is a portfolio decision, kept with its reason and the figures it was made on; the menu also has Change Go-Live Date, and Record Decision while the button is Open Setup. On a paused one that was live, it has Record Decision. You can also click an earlier stage in the stage bar to move back. Moving back to Reviewing or earlier restarts the approval.

Any member can submit, mark as live, pause an initiative that isn't live yet, resume, and move back one that isn't live. Pausing, completing or moving back a live initiative is for an Owner, an Admin or the initiative's approvers, and pausing or completing one is a portfolio decision. Approve, Reject and Dismiss are approvals, and so is recording a go-live date.

Who approves

Each initiative can name an Approval chain on its edit form: up to five steps, each with its own approvers, approved in order. The stage changes only after the last step. With no chain, any Owner or Admin approves, and above the Senior approval threshold in Organization Settings → Approvals, only the Owner can. See Approving value and initiatives.

Decisions are recorded: the Overview shows who approved and when, and a rejection's reason shows as a review note. For anything else worth writing down, Activity → Add Note records a general note, a decision, a blocker or an update. See Activity, notes and blockers.

Costs and value at any stage

Costs and value entries can be recorded in any stage, though not into a locked month (see Allocation rules and accounting periods). Measurement usually starts once an initiative is Implementing or Live.

An initiative that was already running

Most AI tools are in use before anyone tracks them here: a coding assistant rolled out in the spring, a help desk's AI agent switched on months ago. Choose Already in use? beside the initiative's next-step button and enter the date it went into use. When you add your first initiative during setup, tick It's already in use and give the month: the initiative then opens with this dialog filled in, for you to record. The initiative becomes Live from that date, and Roiva:

measures its baseline from the three complete months before that date, where your connected systems have them. A baseline you entered yourself stays as it is. If those months have no history, Roiva removes a baseline it had calculated from later months, which already carried the initiative's effect, and the Setup tab asks for one.
calculates each complete month since, as far back as your readings go. A month is calculated only when every reading in it describes that month, and none is calculated while the before-value is still Roiva's estimate.
sends those entries to Approvals. Recording the date approves none of them.

Where no connected system holds a figure its formulas read each month, Roiva opens Past months once you've recorded the date: a row for each complete month since, with a field for each figure, so you can type in what you have from your own records. A month is calculated once all of its figures are in, and not while its before-value is still Roiva's estimate; its entry is approved as any calculated entry is. A figure the month already has is shown there, not changed (correct one under Entries → Metric Entries), and a month a formula has already booked takes no new figure. Missing Inputs links to it too, from a formula waiting on this month's figures.

Recording the date takes approval rights, because it decides which months count as before and which months book value. On an initiative that isn't approved yet, it also approves it, in your name, and the decision is in the approvals history. If the initiative has an approval chain with later steps, approve it through review first. The date can't be in the future.

On a live initiative, Change Go-Live Date corrects it. Activity keeps the date it replaced, and the baseline and the months are worked out again from the new date. The months a connection syncs later are calculated the same way.

The time-to-value estimate

Est. time to value on the initiative's form is the number of months you expect to wait, from when work begins, for the first approved value entry. Value is dated by the month the entry covers, not the day it was approved: an initiative recorded as live since March whose months were all approved in September delivered in March. Roiva measures the schedule against it: the initiative page says how far past it you are and what the wait has cost at the planned value rate, the review report carries a Schedule row, and the portfolio snapshot totals what slipped initiatives have deferred.

Two things follow from that. Months an initiative spends Paused push the date out, so a held initiative isn't counted late. And without an estimate there is nothing to measure against — those surfaces say so rather than showing an initiative as on time. The Setup tab lists a missing target as an open item.

Changing the estimate later is recorded in Activity, with the old and new figures, so a target that moved after an initiative was already late is visible.