Project Maturity
VERA judges a project against a ladder. Each step is a gate: it cannot be assessed at one step until every step below it is satisfied.
The ladder is ordered by how much VERA can truthfully say about a project — not by what to do next, which is a separate question the advice on each project page answers.
The ladder
| Step | Name | Reached when | What it makes answerable |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Nominal | the project exists | nothing |
| 1 | Owned | it has a project manager | accountability, and it appears in manager comparisons |
| 2 | Scoped | it has a deadline and an hours budget, and a contract value if it is fixed price | "late" and "over" become meaningful; the burn-up, budget health and revenue all have something to measure against |
| 3 | Staffed | at least one person has an allocation | committed capacity, and the allocation reading on the page |
| 4 | Timed | every allocation says when its hours sit | capacity is spread across the weeks the work is actually expected in, rather than the whole life of the project |
| 5 | Shaped | allocations carry a week-by-week plan | pace is judged against the plan the manager drew, rather than an even spread nobody agreed to |
| 6 | Tracking | it is on course, within budget health, and will not run out of hours before its deadline | — |
| 7 | Profitable | it is earning at or above the target ratio, with healthy margin and billing in step | — |
| 8 | Closed well | it finished on time and on budget, and the plan it was measured against turned out to be right | the retrospective verdict |
A project's step is the highest one for which every step below it is also satisfied. One allocation missing its window drops an otherwise fully planned project back to Staffed — deliberately, so the advice points at the window rather than at the shape beyond it.
Recorded time is a gate, not a step
Time is recorded from the first day, often before anyone has been allocated, so it is not a step of its own. It is a precondition on steps 6 and above: without recorded time those are unanswerable, which is not the same as failing. A brand-new project is not behind schedule; nothing is yet known about it.
What step 6 says, and what it will not say
Once a project is planned and time is being recorded against it, VERA can tell whether it is tracking. It reports on that in a deliberately narrow way.
When nothing at all has been recorded. If someone has an allocation here, weeks that have already finished expected hours from them, and nothing whatsoever has been recorded against the project, VERA names that person and says so. That is a gap in what VERA knows, not a statement about the person: the work may have been done and not logged. The wording says exactly that, and it is only ever shown to the people who run the project — never to the person it names.
When time is recorded but differs from the plan. VERA says the project as a whole is above or below its plan, and points at the per-person view. It does not name anybody, because a plan that was not followed is as often a plan that was wrong.
Never a ranking. VERA does not say who is furthest behind, does not order people by how far off they are, and uses no superlatives about anybody.
Only finished weeks count. The week in progress is never judged, which is also why this does not change from one day to the next — it changes when a week closes.
Pace is only raised when it is serious. The project page already reports schedule slippage as soon as it passes ten percent. Advice waits until twice that, so it stays quieter than the reading it sits above rather than repeating it.
What step 7 says, and who hears it
Step 7 asks whether the project earns enough for the work going into it. It is the one part of the ladder where who is looking changes what is said.
Owners see it in full. They already see what a project earns and what it costs, so nothing here is new to them.
The project's manager sees the ratio, and only the ratio. Someone who runs a project already sees how much revenue it earns per dollar of work — that has been true since the figure appeared beside their own projects in the sidebar. Step 7 says the same thing in words. It never shows them what the project is worth, what it costs, or what anyone is paid.
Everyone else is told nothing at all. A manager who does not run this project cannot see the figure, so VERA does not comment on it. The distinction that matters: the project is recorded as unknown, never as unprofitable. Saying a project is losing money to somebody who cannot see whether it is would be a confident claim about data they do not have.
A project nobody has priced is not judged. A fixed price project with no contract value, or a time and materials project with no billing rate, earns nothing on paper — so its ratio would read as a disaster when the truth is that nobody has said what the work is worth. VERA says that instead, and says it only to an owner.
Advice is quieter than the reading above it. The project page shows this ratio as a colored pill. Advice stays silent for as long as that pill is green, and speaks only once it is not — the same rule step 6 follows by raising pace at twice the threshold the schedule reading uses.
Two different bars, deliberately. Reaching step 7 means hitting the target. Being advised about it means falling well below the target. A project a little short of target is doing fine and is left alone; it simply has not earned the step yet.
Losing money today and closing at a loss are different things. A project can be earning its keep so far and still be heading for a loss once every allocated hour is logged and every supplier is paid. VERA says that separately, to owners, and stops repeating itself when the project is already losing money today.
Nobody is named at step 7, ever. It is a statement about a contract and the hours booked against it.
Retainers: the one thing said about the engagement itself
A retainer engagement stops at step 1, because each of its periods is assessed on its own. One thing about the engagement as a whole is still worth saying: when the current period is about to end and no next period exists, the advice says the renewal is due and points at the Periods card. It is the same test as the renewal message VERA sends that morning, so the two always agree. An owner is also told when people with allocations on the project have no cost rate, because their hours then cost nothing and LER reads too high; the link goes to the Rates tab.
Not every project should reach the top
A project's kind sets how far up the ladder it can meaningfully climb, and stopping at that point means it is configured correctly — not that something is missing.
| Kind | Stops at | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Internal, and all time-off projects | Owned | they carry no budget, deadline or allocations by design |
| Pro bono | Tracking | they earn nothing by definition, so step 7 would read as total failure on every one of them |
| Time and materials, fixed price | Closed well | the full ladder applies |
| Retainer and agile engagements | Owned | the engagement itself holds no period values; each period is assessed in full on its own |
Without these ceilings the advice would nag forever about projects that are set up exactly as intended.
The one-line headline
Each project page opens with a single line that answers "does this project need me?":
| Headline | When |
|---|---|
| Needs setup | Something must be configured before VERA can judge the project, such as a missing budget, deadline or allocation. |
| Needs attention | Something is wrong now: the project is off course, running out early, losing money or past its deadline. |
| No action needed | The project is on course and nothing is waiting on you. Any suggestions below it are optional. |
The headline has no rules of its own. It is read from the advice beneath it and from the project's schedule verdict, so it can never disagree with them. A finished project, a time-off project such as PTO, and a project with no time recorded yet show no headline, because there is nothing to judge.
Where advice appears
On the project page, every item. In Needs you, only the blocking items of projects that need setup. Blocking rules read setup facts alone, which one bulk read can supply for every project at once, so the list there agrees exactly with the project pages it links to. Attention advice needs each project's own analytics, so it is not listed in Needs you.
Keeping this current
This page is the contract. The advice on each project page cites the step each piece of advice belongs to, and a test checks that every cited step exists here. When VERA gains a new capability it either belongs to a step already on this ladder, or it extends the top — it never quietly reorders the middle.