Phases
How phases are ordered, how they progress, and the three ways to read the work inside one.
A phase is a stage of a project and the unit a gate applies to. Projects are a sequence of them, and work only moves forward one phase at a time.
Phase status
| Status | Means |
|---|---|
| Not started | Ahead of the current phase |
| In progress | The phase the project is in |
| Blocked | Stalled on something outside the phase |
| Review | Work is done; the gate is being assessed |
| Completed | Gate passed |
| Cancelled | Dropped from this project |
A phase moves to completed through one action only: passing its gate. See gate criteria.
Status says where a phase is; it says nothing about whether it will make its gate. That is what the colour of the status icon is for — teal, amber or red, from the phase's gate readiness. A phase can be perfectly in progress and still be red.
Order and progression
Phases are explicitly ordered, and that order is the project's spine. When you complete a phase, cadence. immediately starts the next one in order — sets it to in progress and stamps its start time if it has not run before.
This is the one piece of automation in the phase model, and it exists so that "which phase are we in?" always has exactly one answer.
You can reorder phases by dragging them, add a phase mid-project, or delete one. Deleting a phase deletes its tasks and criteria.
Dates
Each phase carries a start date and a deadline, separate from the timestamps cadence. records when it actually starts and completes. The gap between planned and actual is what the timeline and report views draw.
Three ways to read a phase
Every phase can be viewed as:
- List — a dense, sortable table. Best for triage and bulk editing.
- Kanban — columns by status, drag to change. Best for a standup.
- Gantt — tasks against a calendar, with dependency lines. Best for spotting a slipping critical path.
Your choice is remembered per user across projects — pick the one that suits how you work, not how the last person left it.
Working inside a phase
Within a phase you can:
- add tasks, assign them, and set priorities and deadlines inline,
- reorder tasks by dragging,
- add or edit gate criteria,
- comment on the phase itself, which is the right place for "why did we hold this?" as opposed to a note on a single task.
When to add a phase
The useful test is whether there is a decision at the end of it. If the answer is "no, it is just a chunk of work", it is a group of tasks in an existing phase, not a phase. Six phases with real gates beat twelve phases where half of them wave everything through.