Show what a project returns

A project's Value tab puts two things side by side. One is what the project cost, in people and in AI. The other is what it set out to move: each driver is read before the work and after it, against a target. Use it for project reviews, and to decide where the next piece of work should go.

Go to Delivery → Roadmap → Projects, open the project's full page and select Value.

Before you start

• Your organisation has driver types to choose from. See Set up driver types.
• Effort is reported for the teams on the project, so it has an actual cost. See Set up weekly effort reporting.
• To see cost, you need access to financial figures. To add drivers or record outcomes, you need access to manage drivers. Ask your Flowstate admin.

Set what a project should return

1. Open the project's full page on the Overview tab.
2. Next to Driver, open the picker.
3. Under Add Driver, choose the driver type. Type in Search drivers... to find one.

To remove a driver, open the picker and select it under Current Drivers.

Choose drivers that name a measure, such as contact deflection, handle time or production incidents. Pair every speed or cost driver with a quality one that should stay where it started, such as satisfaction. This is a guardrail: it shows Guardrail, and its verdict is Held or Regressed.

Not available yet

You can't yet set a driver's reading before the work, its target, its target date or which way is better in the app. Send them to your Flowstate contact, who sets them for you. Until a driver has readings from before and after the work, it shows Not read.

Read beat, hold or miss

1. Read the sentence at the top. It gives what the project cost, split into people and AI, against the forecast to date.
2. Read the figures: Cost to build, AI share of cost, Drivers hit and Primary driver.
3. Read the Drivers table:

Column	What it shows
Driver	The driver type, and whether higher or lower is better. Guardrail marks a driver that should stay where it started
Business metric	The business metric this project's team produces, when there is one
Before	The reading before the work, and when it was taken
Target	Where the project aimed to get it
After	The reading after the work, and when it was taken
Movement	After minus before, green when it moved the right way
Against target	How far it got towards the target
Verdict	See below

Verdict	Means
Beat target	Reached or passed its target, or moved the right way when it has no target
Near target	Got at least 80% of the way to its target
Missed	Got less than 80% of the way, including moving away from its target
Held	A guardrail that stayed put or improved
Regressed	A guardrail that got worse, or a driver with no target that didn't move the right way
Not read	Is missing its before or after reading

Not read means nobody has recorded a reading. It doesn't mean the measure didn't move. The table says how many drivers have a reading, so a review can see what's still unmeasured.

Compare what it cost with what it moved

• Cost to build is what the project has cost so far, people and AI together. AI share of cost is the AI part of that.
• Expected against actual charts the project's cost against its forecast. What it cost to build shows the cost month by month.
• What the movement is worth sums up how each driver moved.

Capacity isn't cash

Treat a better result as capacity freed up, not money saved. It only becomes a saving when headcount comes down or the team takes on more work. A project can beat its deflection target and still miss on cost per contact, because nobody moved people off the work and the AI bill was added on top.

For example, a support team's AI assistant might have four drivers: contact deflection, handle time, satisfaction as a guardrail, and cost per contact. Deflection and handle time can beat their targets while satisfaction holds and cost per contact misses. A spend report shows only one of those four, so read all four before calling the project a success.

Model more of this

Model more of this appears when the project has three things:

• a percentage driver that should go up;
• readings before and after;
• a linked business metric with costs.

Move Token budget and Heads taken out to see Capacity released, Cash a year and Net a year. Nothing is saved. Select Reset to today to start again.

Record an outcome

When a driver's target date passes with no reading after the work, the Value tab says so.

1. Select Record an outcome →.
2. Enter the Value read today.
3. Optionally, describe What happened (optional).
4. Select Save.

The verdict updates straight away. Repeat for each driver the tab lists. You need access to update drivers.

How project value connects to business metrics

A project links to a business metric when the metric's Whose cost this is covers one of these teams:

• the project's team;
• the team of anyone working on the project.

The link appears in the Business metric column; select it to open the metric. See Business metrics.

Set up driver types

Driver types are the list of drivers people can add to projects.

1. Go to Settings → Delivery → Driver Types and select Add Project Driver Type.
2. Enter a Name, such as "Contact deflection".
3. Choose a Category: Revenue, Productivity, Risk Mitigation, Compliance, KPI or KTLO.
4. Choose a Measurement Type: Fixed Amount, Percentage, Date or Custom. Use Percentage for shares such as deflection or automation rates.
5. Optionally, choose a Color and add a Description.
6. Select Create.

To change a driver type:

1. Select its edit button.
2. Make your changes.
3. Select Update.

To remove one, select its delete button and confirm. You can't remove a driver type that projects still use; remove it from those projects first.

You need access to manage driver types. Ask your Flowstate admin.

What happens next

• To see where planned time goes across your drivers, read Effort by Strategic Driver on Strategy.
• To see whether AI changed how the work was delivered, see Compare delivery with and without AI.
• To set this up across your projects, follow Measure what delivery returns.

If something's not right

Every driver shows Not read. Its readings before or after the work aren't recorded. Ask your Flowstate contact to set the reading before the work. Use Record an outcome → once the target date passes.

The sentence at the top says no cost is on record. The project has no actual or forecast cost yet. Check that people are allocated to it and that effort is submitted for their teams.

There's no Business metric column. No business metric covers the team of anyone working on the project.

There's no Value tab. The Roadmap isn't switched on for your organisation. Ask your Flowstate contact.