Projects and initiatives
The two levels of grouping above an issue: a project collects related issues, an initiative collects projects. Fields, progress, the roadmap, and owners.
There are two levels of grouping above an issue:
- A project collects related issues — a body of work with a start and an end.
- An initiative collects projects — the goal level, switched on once there are enough projects to need one.
Both levels compute their own progress: a project from the statuses of its issues, an initiative from its completed projects. Nobody assembles a status report by hand.
Projects
You start a project when the work is bigger than one issue and smaller than a whole workspace: a launch, a migration, a department's quarterly goal, a process rollout.
A project's fields:
- Name, icon, description — how the project reads in the list.
- Owner — the member or agent running it.
- Status — where the project stands.
- Priority — the same five levels as an issue: urgent, high, medium, low, none.
- Progress — the completion percentage, derived from the statuses of its issues.
| Project status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Planned | Agreed, not started |
| In Progress | Under way |
| Paused | Set aside, not closed |
| Completed | Carried through |
| Cancelled | Closed without a result |
The project and initiative page
A project and an initiative open on Overview: the icon, the title, the properties and the description, plus the resources of a project and the projects of an initiative. Beside it are Activity and Issues (Projects for an initiative), keys 1–3.
- Activity shows who changed what: tasks created and closed, moves between projects, what an initiative holds. People and agents stand side by side, each with their own avatar. It updates by itself.
- The panel on the right (
Ctrl/⌘+I) is the same on every tab: properties, progress and the last five activity rows. A project's progress is split by assignee too.
Projects and issues
- An issue belongs to at most one project, and a project holds any number of issues.
- The link is reversible — an issue can move to another project, or out of one, at any time.
- Deleting a project does not delete its issues. They are simply unlinked and stay in the workspace's issue list.
The project owner
An owner can be a person or an agent.
An agent in that seat is not a formality: a project like "Weekly complaint review" or "Product-page quality" can sit with an agent end to end, leaving a person the acceptance. How work reaches such a project is covered in Assigning and mentioning.
The roadmap
The Projects section renders three ways: a compact list, a comfortable list, and the roadmap — bars across dates, where what is slipping is visible at a glance.
- Project health is computed: On track, At risk, Off track, Completed, or no data when the project's issues carry no dates.
- Grouping — by initiative or by owner.
- Order — "Auto" puts problem projects first and tasks by start date. "Manual" shows the order the team sets by dragging a row by its grip: projects within a group, tasks within a project, sub-tasks within a task. The order is shared by the whole workspace, and tasks keep it in the list and on the board sorted "Manual".
- Pinned columns on the left: the project name and its owner. Drag the edge of the name column to resize it; a double click gives the default width back.
- Range — a quarter, half a year, a year, or everything; a separate control fits it all to the screen.
- The "problems only" filter leaves just what is off track or at risk — the fastest way to walk into a status meeting prepared.
Initiatives
An initiative is the level above a project: it groups projects only, never issues directly.
Initiatives are on in every new workspace. An admin or an owner turns the section off and back on in Settings → Features → Initiatives; while it is off, initiatives exist neither in the interface nor in the CLI, and their links to projects are kept.
An initiative's fields: name, icon, description, an owner (a member or an agent), a status — the same five values a project has — and a target date. Progress counts projects: how many of the linked ones are complete.
- A project can be in several initiatives. Links are added and removed one at a time: on the initiative's page with "Add project" and "Remove from initiative", on the project's page in its "Initiatives" property. Removing one link leaves the others.
- A project can be created right in an initiative. "New project" on the initiative's page creates
the project already in it, in one step. If the initiative is not available, no project is created.
Agents and the CLI (
bounc project create --initiative) do the same. - Deleting an initiative does not delete its projects — they stay in the workspace and simply lose the link.