Project order and Flow
Order an Initiative's Projects, see their dependency steps, and read them as a Flow.
Overview
Each Initiative keeps its own order of Projects. The order is a preference for how the team wants to work through the Initiative. It sits alongside two other planning signals that it does not replace:
| Signal | What it answers | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|
| Position | In which order do we prefer to take this Initiative's Projects? | The Position column, Initiative order ordering, and the numbers on Flow cards |
| Step | Which Projects must finish first because others wait on them? | The footprints number beside the position, Step grouping, and Flow columns |
| Dates | When is each Project planned? | Start and target dates, and the Timeline |
A position belongs to one Initiative. A Project in two Initiatives has a separate position in each.
How steps are worked out
Steps come from Project dependencies. A Project that others wait on comes before them. Step 1 holds the Projects that wait on nothing else in the Initiative. Every other Project is one step after the latest Project it waits on.
A Project with no dependency link at all, in either direction, shows a dash instead of a number and appears under Independent. Links to Projects outside the Initiative, and to Projects your filters hide, count too: a Project that only an outside Project waits on is not Independent, and it keeps a step. A Project that waits only on a Project outside the Initiative is in Step 1, and the outside Project appears in the Flow's Outside this Initiative column when you can open it. Projects you cannot open are never shown, although a dependency on one can still place a Project in a step.
Positions follow dependencies. A Project cannot be placed above a Project it waits on, and Integrity keeps the order consistent when dependencies change.
See order and steps in a table
On an Initiative's Projects tab, the Position column shows the step and the position of each Project. The column is also available on the workspace Projects table when you filter it to one Initiative or group it by Initiative.
Filters can hide some of an Initiative's Projects. The remaining Projects keep their real positions, so you may see gaps such as 2, 4, 5.
Archived and deleted Projects leave the order entirely: the remaining Projects number without a gap and can still be moved, and a restored Project returns to the position it had before.
Use Step grouping in the List to see which Projects can move forward together. Step is available as the main grouping when the table shows one Initiative, and as a sub-grouping under Initiative groups. Projects in no Initiative stay listed under No initiative. Board and Timeline do not offer Step grouping.
Change a Project's position
Click the position number in the Position column and choose the new position, or open a Project row's actions and choose Move in Initiative…. Positions a Project cannot take are listed but disabled, with the reason, such as the Project it waits on.
Changing a position needs permission to edit the Initiative's Projects, which workspace members and above have for Initiatives they can open. Without it, the numbers are shown without a menu.
You can still reorder the Projects of a Completed Initiative. A Canceled Initiative keeps its order: Move in Initiative… is disabled and says Initiative canceled, rows cannot be dragged, and the position numbers are shown without a menu. Archived and deleted Initiatives keep their order too.
Each move adds one Activity entry, such as "moved this Project from position 5 to 2 in the Initiative". Projects that shift to make room do not get their own entries.
Change what a Project waits on
Click the step number to open Waits on for that Project. Choose a Project to add a dependency, or choose a selected one to remove it. The step updates when the dependency saves.
Dependencies created by a repository plan show a lock and cannot be removed here; they change when the plan changes. Changing a dependency needs Project dependency edit access to both Projects.
Read the Initiative as a Flow
Flow draws an Initiative's Projects as cards in step columns from left to right, with a line from each Project to the Projects that wait on it. Dashed lines with a lock are dependencies set by a repository plan.
Each step column's header shows the step number in a small badge and the step's name, with what the column holds on the line below: how many Projects, and how many of them are in progress, Ready or Blocked (only when there are some). The Initiative's Overview shows the same headers in its Flow preview. When the Flow shows Initiative lanes, every other step keeps a faint stripe with dashed edges, so you can still tell which step a card is in far below the header.
When a Project waits on another that the chain already leads to, Flow leaves that line out so each card gets one arrow per step. For example, if C waits on A and on B, and B waits on A, only A → B → C is drawn. Hover over or focus A or C to show the hidden line as a dotted line. The dependency still exists and still counts toward steps.
Projects without any dependency link sit in the first column, Independent, marked with an empty dashed badge instead of a step number, top to bottom in Initiative order. They can be worked on at any time, so they come before the steps. The Flow's header counts them, for example "16 of 18 Projects are independent", so you can see when an Initiative's steps are missing because its dependencies are not recorded yet. The count includes only the Projects the Flow shows.
Each card has three rows. The top row shows where the Project stands: its status, Ready or Blocked by and the number of open blockers, and, while an agent holds it, the agent's state. The title has the middle row to itself and ends in an ellipsis when it is longer; hover over or focus the card to see its properties, or open the Project to read the full title. The bottom row shows the due date and the lead.
Each card shows where the Project stands as the band down its left edge: green when it is Ready, red when it is Blocked, yellow while it is in progress, and neutral for every other Project. A Blocked card, and an in-progress card that still has open blockers, also says Blocked by with its number of open blockers in red. A Backlog card never does. Readiness never moves a card. Columns come from dependency links only, so a Ready Project can sit in any step.
Turn on Show related in Display to also draw Related links. They appear as lighter dashed lines without an arrowhead, because a Related link has no direction and does not block anything. They never move a card, add a card, or change a step or a count. The switch is off by default and is saved with a view.
Open Flow from Display → Flow wherever a Project collection has Display controls: the workspace Projects page, Personal, Workspace or Team Views, or an Initiative's Projects tab. Filter by several Initiatives or a label such as V1, or leave the collection unfiltered. The Initiative Overview also shows a read-only Flow preview with a link to the full Flow. The preview always leaves out completed and canceled Projects, as a Flow view does by default, and its heading says how many of the Initiative's Projects it hides; open the full Flow to show them.
Each matching Project appears once, even when it belongs to several Initiatives. Flow follows its readable prerequisites across Initiative boundaries. A prerequisite excluded by your filters remains visible as a dimmed Outside this view card; opening it does not change your filters. Its hover panel identifies its primary Initiative and other memberships you can see. A hidden prerequisite reveals no identity; an authorized unavailable blocker stays generic.
A combined Flow has dependency steps, without a global Initiative position. An explicitly scoped Initiative keeps its canonical positions in the hover panel and its existing Move actions. Switching layouts or opening a blocker never changes memberships or order. Archived Initiative Flow retains its read-only behavior.
If a graph is too large to load at once, Partial Flow shows what is loaded and offers Load more. Partial graphs and dependency cycles do not establish order or readiness. A failed read offers Try again, separately from a view with no matching Projects.
On those two pages, press Ctrl + B (⌘ + B on a Mac) to switch between List and the layout you used last, such as Flow. Press Alt + 1 to Alt + 4 (Option on a Mac) to go straight to List, Board, Timeline, or Flow. The shortcuts do nothing while you type in a field or editor. On larger screens, each layout button in Display shows its key, and the keyboard shortcuts list shows both.
Select a card to highlight everything it waits on and everything that waits on it. Click a card to open the Project; the card dims while the Project opens. Right-click a card, or focus it and press Shift + F10, to open the same actions as its table row, including Move in Initiative….
Hover over a card, or focus it with the keyboard, to see a panel beside it. A band across the top, tinted in the status colour, shows the status, a Ready or Blocked by count when Readiness or open blockers apply, the dependency step and, when one Initiative is scoped, its canonical position. Below the title, a row shows the properties that have a value: lead, target date, priority, Issues, and Teams. Empty properties are left out. While an agent works on the Project, its execution state has its own line, so the status stays visible.
At the bottom, a short chain reads from top to bottom: the readable Projects it Waits on, the Project itself, then the ones it Unblocks. Each side names up to three Projects and counts the rest, for example +2 more. The full Flow follows their upstream chain; the Overview preview shows the ones its page has loaded.
While an agent holds a Project, the right end of its card's top row shows the same execution icon as the Projects table's Execution column, next to the status. While the work is live, in execution or integrating, it says Agent working and the card glows. Otherwise it names the state, such as Held, idle or Abandoned, without the glow. The icon and glow appear and disappear as the agent starts and stops, without reloading the page. With reduced motion turned on, the glow stays still.
A saved view keeps Flow as its presentation, like List, Board, and Timeline.
Initiative lanes
When the Projects in a Flow belong to more than one Initiative, Flow groups them into horizontal lanes, one per Initiative. Each lane has a border in the Initiative's icon colour and a tab on its top-left edge, like a folder, and the lanes are sorted by Initiative name. The step columns run across every lane, so you can still read the order from left to right. This also happens when you filter by one Initiative but its Projects have different primary Initiatives. An Initiative's own Projects tab and its Overview preview never show lanes, because everything there belongs to that Initiative.
A Project that belongs to several Initiatives appears once, in the lane of its primary Initiative. A small +1 chip (or +2, and so on) on its card names the other Initiatives when you hover over or focus it. Projects without an Initiative go in a No Initiative lane, and cards outside the view go in a dashed Outside this view lane, both after the Initiative lanes. A card in the Outside this view lane shows a chip with its own Initiative.
A dependency between two Initiatives is drawn in the colour of the Initiative that blocks, so cross-Initiative work stands out. Lines inside one Initiative stay grey, and a dashed or dotted line keeps its meaning. The legend shows the colour as Between Initiatives. On an Initiative's own Flow, a blocker from another Initiative gets the same coloured line and a chip naming its Initiative.
An Initiative lane's tab shows the Initiative's name, its status, how many of its Projects are Ready and Blocked (only when there are some), how many of its Projects are done, and its lead. The done count covers every Project in the Initiative you can see, including ones the current view hides, and leaves Canceled Projects out. The No Initiative tab fills the same places: it says Not in an Initiative, shows how many of the Projects you can see outside any Initiative are done, and shows the leads of the Projects in the lane (up to three, then +N). The Outside this view tab shows how many Projects the lane holds. The tab stays at the lane's left edge, so the summary is in view however many steps follow. Every tab has the same width, and the status and counts start at the same place on each one. A long Initiative name is shortened so they always fit; hover over or focus the tab to read the full name. When the Flow is only one column wide, the tab shows the done count in short form, such as 1/3, and leaves out the lead. The Ready and Blocked counts appear once Readiness has loaded. Click a lane's tab, or focus it and press Enter, to collapse the lane to its tab. Lines into a collapsed lane end just under its tab, so its dependencies stay visible. The Outside this view lane starts collapsed, because its cards only explain why a Project in the view is blocked; open it like any other lane. When the Flow is only one column wide, the No Initiative tab leaves out its pill and leads. Integrity remembers the lanes you collapsed or opened in this browser for that view, even while a filter hides them, until you open them again. Collapsing a lane changes nothing for other people or in the saved view.
Flow and Timeline
Timeline arranges Projects by their dates. Flow arranges them by dependencies and ignores dates. Use Timeline to plan when work happens, and Flow to see what has to happen first.
Ask Integrity AI and coding agents
Integrity AI and connected coding agents can read each Initiative's order and dependency steps, and each Project's Readiness. Ask, for example, which Projects are ready, which are blocked and by how many Projects, which can run in parallel, why a Project is in its step, or where a Project sits in an Initiative. "Ready" means the same to an agent as the green play icon does to you: a Planned Project with no open blocker. Agents get exact Ready and Blocked totals, so they do not count rows. Answers include only Projects you can open. They number steps over every Project in the Initiative, including closed ones. A table or Flow numbers only the Projects it shows and hides closed Projects by default, and the Overview preview always hides them, so their step numbers can be lower. Positions are the same everywhere.
A connected coding agent can also move one Project to a new position in an Initiative, for example "move Billing export to position 2 in the Launch Initiative". It follows the same rules as the table: it needs your permission to change the order, it cannot place a Project above one it waits on, and it cannot reorder a Canceled Initiative. If the order changed since the agent last read it, nothing moves and the agent reads the Initiative again before retrying. Each agent move adds the same Activity entry as a move in the table.
Integrity AI answers are read-only. To change the order, use the table, Flow, Move in Initiative…, or a connected coding agent.