The initiative lifecycle
The stages from Identified to Completed, the buttons that move an initiative, and who can approve each step.
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Checked against the product on September 22, 2026
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.
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), if you can decide on it: continue, scale, fix, pause or retire it, with a reason. Otherwise the button is Mark as Completed. See Portfolio reviews and decisions.
The … menu beside it has Pause, Reject (Reviewing only; it asks for a reason) and Dismiss. On a live initiative it also has Mark as Completed, and on a paused one that was live, 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, complete, pause, resume and move back. Approve, Reject and Dismiss are approvals.
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. Measurement usually starts once an initiative is Implementing or Live.
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. 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.