Customising update cycles

What an owner is asked to fill in during a cycle is configurable. There are two levels: the organization default, which applies to every future cycle, and a per-cycle override for the one month where you need something extra.

Built-in sections

Every cycle offers the same built-in fields. You can relabel them, and switch most of them off if they are not useful to you.

Overall RAG and Overall trend

Load-bearing — these cannot be switched off. The portfolio view, trend lines and exports are all built on them, so a cycle without them would not produce a readout.

Schedule, Scope, Resources and Quality RAG

Per-category ratings. Useful when “amber” on its own does not tell you where the problem is. Optional.

Key wins, Risk narrative, Milestones at risk

Free-text narrative. This is where the actual information usually lives. Optional.

Custom sections

You can add your own sections beyond the built-ins. Resist the urge to add many. Every field you add is paid for by every project owner, every cycle — a form that takes fifteen minutes gets filled in carelessly, which is worse than a short one filled in honestly.

Changing just one cycle

Sometimes a single cycle needs something the others do not — a board month, a reorganisation, an incident review. Open the cycle and customise it there rather than changing the organization default and remembering to change it back.

When you first customise a cycle, its sections are frozen as a snapshot of the org default at that moment. Later changes to the default will not reach back into it. That is what makes the override safe: a cycle you have already started collecting cannot have its questions change underneath the people answering them.

A customised cycle can be reset back to the organization default if you change your mind.

Where to configure each

• •Organization default — Admin → Setup & Data → Forms & Templates → Cycle update template.
• •A single cycle — open the cycle from Updates and edit its sections there.