Capturing Actions

Introduction

Actions break a milestone into specific steps that can be assigned and tracked to completion. This page describes what an action holds, how its status works and where you see actions.

What an action is

An action is a specific task or commitment that has to be completed to meet a milestone. Actions are normally created under a milestone, which keeps each one tied to a purpose instead of building up as a general wish list. An action can also sit directly under the plan. An action is assigned to one person in the plan, either by themselves or by someone else.

What an action holds

• Description: what has to be done. Write it as a concrete task.
• Owner: the person responsible for it.
• Due date: when it is due.
• Status: unstarted, in progress or done.

Action statuses

• Unstarted: the action has been identified and work has not begun.
• In progress: work is under way.
• Done: the action is finished.

Each action has a square. Select the square, then choose unstarted, in progress or done.

Creating an action

You can create an action in three places:

• Under a milestone: expand the milestone and add the action there.
• On the Actions page: select the prompt in a block.
• On the Dashboard: select the prompt in Actions Due, which dates the new action today.

Where actions appear

• On the Actions page, in blocks: Unstarted Actions, Actions in Progress, Recently Completed and Overdue, followed by blocks for actions due yesterday, today, tomorrow, this week, next week and this month. You can organise them by kanban, date, owner, workstream, when they were updated, or what is upcoming.
• On the Dashboard, in Actions Due and Changes to My Actions.
• On the Review page, where the summary report counts actions by status. See Reports & Snapshots.

Good practice

• Write each action as a task that can be clearly finished.
• Break large tasks into smaller actions.
• Give each action one person to be responsible for it.
• Keep statuses current, so the team can see what is next.