Gate readiness
The health signal on every phase — what on track, at risk and off track are computed from, and what to do about each.
Every phase carries a health signal that answers one question: on today's evidence, will this phase make its gate?
It is computed from the phase's own data every time you load the page. There is nothing to configure and no model involved.
Where you see it
- Project sidebar — each phase's status icon is coloured by its readiness. The shape still tells you the status; the colour tells you the health.
- Phase page — a badge beside the phase name, reading In progress · At risk.
- Project summary — a Health row for the phase the project is currently in, with the reasons behind it.
- Report — every phase's readiness, inside the weekly digest.
Hover any of them for the score out of 100 and the top three reasons.
What the signal is made of
A phase starts at 100 and loses points against four signals. Each one is capped, so no single problem can sink a phase on its own.
| Signal | Costs up to | What counts |
|---|---|---|
| Exit criteria | 30 | The share of the phase's gate criteria still incomplete. Conditionally passed counts as met. |
| Overdue tasks | 24 | Open tasks past their deadline — 8 points each. |
| Unassigned critical work | 18 | Open Critical and High priority tasks with nobody on them — 6 points each. |
| Time versus work left | 28 | Estimated hours still open, against the days left before the phase deadline. |
Open means any task that is not completed or cancelled. A task that is late, unowned and critical costs on two signals — that is deliberate.
Time versus work left
The last signal is the one people ask about. cadence. turns the estimated hours still open into working days at eight hours a day, and compares that to the days remaining:
| Work left, as a share of the time left | Costs |
|---|---|
| Up to 75% | nothing |
| Up to 100% | 10 |
| Up to 150% | 20 |
| More than 150%, or the deadline has passed with work still open | 28 |
Work that exactly fills the time remaining is already a problem — which is why the points start at 100%, not at 150%.
The three levels
| Level | Score | Read it as |
|---|---|---|
| On track — teal | 80–100 | Nothing material in the way. |
| At risk — amber | 55–79 | One real problem, or several small ones. The kind of thing an afternoon of triage fixes. |
| Off track — red | 0–54 | The gate date is not credible as things stand. Either the scope, the owners or the date has to move. |
What it deliberately does not do
- No configuration. The signals, weights and thresholds are the same on every project in every workspace, so amber means the same thing to you as it does to the team next door. If you disagree with a score, the argument is with the data, not the settings.
- No AI. It is arithmetic over your project — same inputs, same score, every time. The weekly digest narrates these numbers, but it never invents them.
- No criteria, no penalty. A phase with no gate criteria takes no criteria penalty; there is no evidence to be missing. A phase with no deadline takes no schedule penalty for the same reason.
- No noise from finished work. Completed and cancelled phases are behind their gate, not waiting on it, so they always read as on track.
Acting on it
The reasons are ranked by what they cost, so work down the list rather than across it. In practice most amber phases come back on track from three moves: give the unowned critical tasks an owner, close the criterion that is actually met but never recorded, and move the deadline that nobody has believed for a fortnight.
The one worth escalating is a phase that is off track on time versus work left. Owners and criteria are within a team's gift; a fortnight of work in a week is not.