Complete the Initiation checklist

Mode: how-to. Lay an approved investment’s foundations by working the Initiation checklist.

The morning after approval is a distinct shape of work: turning a funded thesis into a running investment. Tollgate keeps a non-blocking Initiation checklist that composes itself deterministically from your registers. It never blocks a save and never emails you — it shows what a well-founded investment has in place.

Open the checklist

The checklist lives in the How this stage works drawer, not on the dashboard itself:

1. Open the project’s Tollgate tab and the Investment Health view.
2. Choose How this stage works. The drawer opens on the current stage — for a newly approved investment, Set the baseline.

Each item shows whether it is satisfied, with the evidence behind it (“3 of 4 have a named owner”). A link leads to the tab where you act on it. Nothing needs a manual tick — the items answer themselves from the register data.

Work the checklist

Six items make up the Initiation foundations:

1. Define work packages. Add coarse work packages — typically 4–6 — on the Work Packages tab. One satisfies the item.
2. Name owners. Every work package, not most — an unowned work package has nobody to ask.
3. Work packages inside the approved plan. Approving the business case sets baselines. Later packages join at the next approval.
4. Create an adoption work package. Turn the Business Case’s Adoption quartet into live work.
5. Schedule the first steering committee — satisfied once you schedule the meeting, or once you hold it.
6. Seed the R/I/O register. Log the risks and opportunities known at outset on the Risks tab.

The items carry their reasons. A single catch-all package is rarely a real decomposition. Until an approval sets baselines, the derived RAG (red/amber/green) pillars stay muted: pre-baseline variance is setup, not drift. Adoption gets its own work package because outcomes only land if adoption lands.

Note

Item 2 wants an owner on every work package, not most. The evidence line reports the position in its own words — “3 of 4 have a named owner.” An unticked item beside a plausible count usually marks the one package still unowned.

Complete Initiation

Initiation completes when the first steering committee is held. Tollgate takes that from evidence rather than asking you to assert it. The first steering minutes you record for the project mark the committee as held, and complete Initiation in the same act. See Record the minutes.

Note

Nothing here is a gate. The checklist is a recommendation, and the Set the baseline gate is advisory like every other. You can move into Delivery whenever the investment is ready, not when a box is ticked. An investment that moves on without the evidence shows a hollow tick — passed without recorded evidence — on the gate ladder.