Initiative Flow
Requires a RaiSE server
This feature talks to a RaiSE server rather than working purely locally. Stand one up with the self-hosted guide, or point the CLI at an existing deployment.
Most frameworks that give you portfolio-level governance — deciding which bets are worth funding, and holding them accountable to a business outcome rather than "the feature shipped" — borrow vocabulary from SAFe. RaiSE doesn't: the Initiative Flow is RaiSE's own methodology-neutral implementation of the same idea, built as a first-class, gate-enforced pipeline like story or epic.
What an Initiative Is¶
An Initiative is a portfolio bet: an investment hypothesis with a measurable business outcome, not a bucket of related features. The test that separates the two:
- If "done" means "the feature is built" → it's a container, not an Initiative.
- If "done" means "business outcome Y moved metric Z" (and the bet is cancellable if the hypothesis fails) → it's a real Initiative.
Every Initiative belongs to a Strategic Theme (the "why" it exists) and decomposes into Epics once it's ready to build.
The Six States¶
The Initiative Flow is a repeatable path from a raw idea to a proven or disproven bet:
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Captured | A raw idea, no commitment yet. |
| Shaped | Framed against strategy; an owner is assigned. |
| Validated | Hypothesis, leading indicators, and MVP are defined — go/no-go decision. |
| Committed | Prioritized, fits budget/guardrails, scope is partitioned in/out. |
| Delivering | Decomposed into Epics; the MVP is built and measured. |
| Concluded | The hypothesis is proven or disproven — Continue, Pivot, or Retire. |
Like every RaiSE pipeline, this runs through pipeline_start / pipeline_advance — your AI assistant orchestrates the phases conversationally, the same way it drives a story or epic pipeline. See Pipelines for how the underlying engine works.
Gates¶
Two gates enforce the Initiative Flow's discipline mechanically, not just as a convention:
- Strategic fit (before leaving
Validated) — blocks an Initiative from being committed if it doesn't carry a Strategic Theme registered in your portfolio's theme registry. An Initiative without a real Theme is a portfolio defect, not a technicality. - Child Epics complete (before leaving
Concluded) — blocks final closure while any decomposed Epic is still open, so an Initiative can't be marked resolved while its own build is still in flight.
Both gates are opt-in per project (portfolio_gates in your manifest) — enable them once your team is ready to enforce portfolio discipline, not before.
Why Not Just Use SAFe Vocabulary?¶
RaiSE ships under a permissive, CC BY 4.0 license for its methodology content. SAFe's terminology carries trademark and copyright constraints incompatible with that kind of open distribution — so RaiSE coined its own vocabulary, grounded directly in the same primary sources SAFe itself draws on (Eric Ries' MVP/Pivot, Don Reinertsen's cost-of-delay, Kaplan & Norton's Strategic Themes, among others). If your team already speaks SAFe, LeSS, or another named methodology, a translation cartridge can map that vocabulary onto the Initiative Flow without RaiSE itself reproducing anyone's trademarked terms.
Next Steps¶
- Pipelines — how the underlying pipeline engine works
- Governance — how RaiSE tracks decisions and artifacts across a work item's lifecycle