Submitting a status update

When a cycle opens, every project with an owner gets a pending submission. If you own a project, that is you. It should take about three minutes per project, and the point is to tell the truth quickly rather than to write well.

Where to go

Open Updates. Any cycle that is open and still wants something from you is listed there, with its due date. Open the cycle, find your project, and fill in the form.

What you must answer

Two fields are required and the form will not submit without them.

Overall RAG

Green, amber or red. There is no fourth option at submission time — if you genuinely do not know, that itself is usually amber.

Trend

Improving, stable or declining. This is about direction since the last cycle, not absolute health. A red project that is improving is a very different conversation from a red project that is declining.

What is optional, and worth doing anyway

Depending on how your organization has configured cycles, you may also be asked for per-category ratings — schedule, scope, resources, quality — and some free text: key wins, a risk narrative, milestones at risk.

The narrative is where the actual information lives. A rating tells a reader that something is wrong; only the narrative tells them what, and whether they can help. If you write one thing, make it the risk narrative.

Writing a useful narrative

• •Say what changed since last cycle, not what the project is. The reader already knows what it is.
• •Name the blocker and who owns it. “Waiting on legal” is useful; “some dependencies outstanding” is not.
• •Say what you need. A status update that needs no decision should say so plainly, so attention goes elsewhere.
• •Skip the hedging. “Slight risk to timeline, likely manageable” reads as green to a skim-reader and red to a careful one, which helps nobody.

Changing your answer

You can submit again for the same cycle and your latest answer replaces the previous one — there is one submission per project per cycle, not a thread. Once the cycle closes, it is the record of what was true that period and no longer editable.

If you get a reminder

Reminders only go to owners with something still outstanding — the day before the deadline and again on the day. If you have already submitted you will not be chased, and nobody gets two in one day. If you are being reminded about a project you no longer own, ask an admin to change the owner rather than submitting on someone else's behalf.