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Update cycles

The core loop: how StatusLoop collects status from owners and turns it into one portfolio view.

A cycle is a dated request for status across your projects. It is the mechanism the product is named after, and most of the value sits here: instead of chasing people individually and assembling a deck by hand, you open a cycle, owners submit, and the portfolio view builds itself.

How a cycle works

  1. An admin opens a cycle with a period label and a due date — “October week 3”, due Friday.
  2. Every project with an owner becomes a pending submission in that cycle.
  3. Owners submit a RAG rating plus a short narrative: what moved, what is at risk, what they need.
  4. The dashboard and reports update as submissions arrive, so you can see coverage before the deadline rather than after it.
  5. The cycle closes. The submissions stay as the historical record of what was true that week.

What a RAG rating means here

StatusLoop treats status as a deliberate statement, not a calculation. A project has no rating until someone sets one — shown as “Not set” in grey rather than silently defaulting to green, because a fresh project is not the same as a healthy one.

Green
On track. No help needed.
Amber
At risk. Still recoverable, but something needs attention or a decision.
Red
Off track. The committed outcome or date will not be met without intervention.
Not set
Nobody has stated a status yet. Not a judgement — an absence of one.

Getting submissions in on time

Coverage is the hard part of any status process, and chasing people is the work nobody wants. StatusLoop can send a reminder to each owner who has not yet submitted — once the day before the deadline, and again on the day itself.

Reminders only go to owners with something outstanding. Someone who has already submitted is not emailed again, and nobody is emailed twice for the same cycle on the same day.

What you get at the end

  • A portfolio view by RAG, filterable by space or program.
  • Trend over time — whether a project is improving or sliding, cycle to cycle.
  • An executive deck export, so the readout does not have to be rebuilt by hand.
  • A permanent record of what each owner said, and when.

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