# Initiatives

> Strategic bets that bundle features, each carries a hypothesis, a success metric, and the team allocations behind it.

Source: https://productos.ca/documentation/pages/golden-thread/initiatives (last reviewed 2026-09-22)

Initiatives answer **why** you're building this group of features. Each is a strategic bet with a hypothesis and a measurable success metric.

## What you'll see

- **Lifecycle strip**: proposed / planned / active / completed / paused counts above the table; click a node to narrow to it
- **List view**: title, ID, status, progress, owner, team, target date, linked theme, feature count, assigned members, problem, hypothesis; sorted by progress by default
- **Filter bar**: status (`proposed | discovery | planned | active | in-progress | shipped | completed | paused`; the API also accepts `off-track | at-risk`), owner, team, target date

## Row drawer

- **Problem + Hypothesis**: the bet
- **Status, progress, owner, team, target date**
- **Theme**: the upstream theme, if any
- **Features inside**: junction list, with each feature's own status
- **Releases** and **Outcomes**: releases this initiative ships in, and the outcomes recorded against it
- **Members**: with an `allocation_pct` slider per person
- **Success metric** (`success_metric`: baseline / target / unit / current) and **external links** (`jira_link`, `figma_link`, `external_links`) exist on the API but aren't editable in the drawer

## Common actions

- Entity-context shortcuts apply once a row has focus (see [Keyboard shortcuts](https://productos.ca/documentation/pages/settings/keyboard))
- Link features from the drawer's Features picker, or press `N F` on a focused initiative to create one already linked
- **ProductSense** button in the toolbar to surface alignment + breadth suggestions (no `m` shortcut on this page)

## Data flow

Created top-down ("we should make a strategic bet on X") or bottom-up via theme promotion. Junctions: `feature_initiatives`, `release_initiatives`, and `team_member_initiatives` for allocations; outcomes point back at their initiative through `outcomes.initiative_id`.

## Related

- [Initiatives API reference](https://productos.ca/documentation/api/v1/reference/initiatives)
- [Outcomes page](https://productos.ca/documentation/pages/golden-thread/outcomes): closes the loop
- [OKRs page](https://productos.ca/documentation/pages/strategy/okrs): initiatives often ladder to key results