The SAM lifecycle

Mode: reference.

An investment under SAM (the Softwired ATL Method) moves through six stages grouped into three acts. Tollgate surfaces the stages. The acts are the sponsor-facing framing.

Act	Stages	The sponsor’s question
Commit	Discovery, Approval	Is this worth funding?
Run	Initiation, Delivery	Is it still worth it?
Realise	Close-out, Benefits Realisation	What did we get, and what next time?

The six gates

One gate governs each stage. The persistent stage rail — the stepper across the three acts in the app header — reports the position against all six. The Gate status panel on Investment Health details the current gate — see Move an investment through the SAM stages.

Act	Gate	The decision that opens it
Commit	Define project charter	A business case draft exists — or the idea is archived with a rationale.
Commit	Make the business case	The sponsor approved the business case and project charter.
Run	Set the baseline	Baselines set, owners named, first steering committee held.
Run	Deliver the outcome	The outcome is delivered, with the case file kept current throughout.
Realise	Close out the investment	Close-out signed off and handed over to BAU.
Realise	Judge the benefits	The sponsor declares the benefits realised, or not.

Each gate node carries one of four states, derived from the case’s approval status and lifecycle timestamps: done, done-unevidenced, current, or upcoming. Done is evidenced — a solid tick. Done-unevidenced means position says the investment moved past the gate, but nothing on record backs the tick. It renders as a hollow tick reading “passed without recorded evidence.” The states are advisory: they report the position, they never block a transition.

Charter approval states

Most stages map to the approval status of the investment thesis (business case) — VALID_CHARTER_APPROVAL_STATUSES. The full ordered enum:

State	Stage	Meaning
Exploring	Discovery	Candidate under pressure-test. Relaxed gates.
Draft	Approval	Being prepared for submission (also where a returned case lands).
Submitted	Approval	Awaiting the sponsor’s decision. Ages visibly.
Approved	Approval → Run	Chartered. The investment is committed and runs.
ClosingSubmitted	Close-out	Close-out submission awaiting sponsor sign-off.
Closed	Close-out	Sponsor signed off. Retired from active steering. Terminal (escape valve: reopenClosure).
Archived	Discovery / Approval	Killed with dignity — explored, not pursued. Terminal, findable.
InRealisation	Benefits Realisation	Benefits realisation under way.
Realised	Benefits Realisation	Sponsor verdict: benefits realised. Terminal.
NotRealised	Benefits Realisation	Sponsor verdict: benefits not realised. Terminal. Carries an elevated lessons-learned field.
InMaintenance	Benefits Realisation	Realised investment graduated to annual review.

Note

Initiation and Delivery are not charter-status values. They are computed from the Approved state plus status timestamps (SAM’s stage states are thesis-governance lifecycle, not delivery-phase enums). The get-project-health action reports a derived lifecycleStage — one of the thirteen fine stage labels (deriveFineStage). The labels: Discovery, Drafting, Approval, Initiation, Delivery, Close-out, Close-out sign-off, Closed, Realisation, Maintenance, Realised, Not realised, Archived. Each fine label refines exactly one coarse stage (test-enforced).

Stage transitions

Discovery

• Exploring → Draft — PM takes the business case to charter draft (Take to charter draft).
• Exploring → Archived — killed with dignity (Not pursuing, a one-line rationale). Terminal, but findable.

Approval

• Draft → Submitted — PM submits the business case for approval. (A submit from Exploring first flips the case to Draft.)
• Submitted → Approved — sponsor approves (optional rationale).
• Submitted → Draft — sponsor returns it with structured notes (audit action charter.returned), or the PM withdraws the submission.
• Submitted → Archived — sponsor archives rather than returns.
• Approved → Draft — the case is reopened for amendment (version + 1), always under an enabling change request.

The BCM / Adoption quartet at business-case submission is one of the product’s two deliberate hard content gates. The other is the lessons requirement on a NotRealised verdict. Every other gate is a soft signal.

Return-note classification

The sponsor classifies returned-case notes:

Field	Values
Severity (VALID_RETURN_NOTE_SEVERITIES)	Blocker, Significant, Minor
Pinned section (VALID_RETURN_NOTE_SECTIONS)	businessProblem, outcome, returnExpected, adoption, sponsor, steeringCommittee, theme, general

Submitted-case aging

Submitted theses age against the site’s monthly steerco cadence (APPROVAL_AGING_THRESHOLDS): amber at 7 days, red at 14, deep-red at 28. The signal appears on surfaces the sponsor already opens. Tollgate emails nothing.

Initiation (computed)

The morning-after-approval stage. A visible-but-non-blocking checklist composes itself deterministically from the registers (INITIATION_CHECKLIST_ITEMS):

Item ID	Satisfied when
define-work-packages	≥ 1 work package (INITIATION_MIN_WP_COUNT — lowered from 3 so a small investment clears it without inventing fictional packages).
name-owners	every work package has an owner.
set-baselines	at least one work package carries an approval baseline. (It reports which packages sit inside the approved commitment. A package added during Initiation joins at the next approval, so this item no longer demands every package.)
create-adoption-wp	at least one work package of an “Adoption” type.
schedule-first-steerco	charter.firstSteercoScheduledFor has a value (or the first steerco was already held).
seed-rio-register	≥ 1 open R/I/O item (INITIATION_MIN_RIO_COUNT — lowered from 3).

The newly approved window is 14 days (INITIATION_NEWLY_APPROVED_WINDOW_DAYS). The checklist recedes when the first steerco is held. Records that already carry initiationDismissals keep rendering those items muted, but the explicit dismiss act was removed. Checklist items are recommendations, not stipulations.

Delivery (computed)

The long stretch while the investment runs (Approved, in flight). The PM keeps RAG (red/amber/green) and the self-reported Outcome and Adoption confidence current. Materialised risks route to decisions. The since-last-steerco digest answers “what’s changed?”

Close-out

• Approved → ClosingSubmitted — PM submits the close-out record.
• ClosingSubmitted → Closed — sponsor signs off. Terminal.
• ClosingSubmitted → Approved — sponsor returns the close-out with structured notes, or the PM withdraws it. The registers re-open.
• Closed → (reopenClosure) — escape valve to reopen.

The close-out record carries the as-built outcome and return, residual R/I/O dispositions, lessons, and the BAU (business-as-usual) handover.

Dispositions captured at close-out:

Set	Values
R/I/O disposition (VALID_RIO_DISPOSITIONS)	Closed, TransferredToBau, Accepted, Pursued, Dropped
Pending decision/change disposition (VALID_PENDING_DISPOSITIONS)	Adjudicated, Withdrawn, ApprovedAsShipped, DeferredToBau
Per-work-package scope disposition (VALID_SCOPE_DISPOSITIONS)	DeliveredAsChartered, DeliveredReduced, DeliveredExpanded, Dropped, Deferred
BAU handover state (VALID_BAU_HANDOVER_STATES)	Pending, Acknowledged, Escalated

Benefits Realisation

Lifecycle: Closed → InRealisation → Realised | NotRealised → InMaintenance (or terminal).

• 90-day adoption checkpoint, a 6-month prose sniff-check, and a 12-month verdict.
• At the verdict the sponsor declares Realised, NotRealised, or defers the call (“not ready yet”).
• The declaration is the governance act. The said/got prose-pair is the artefact. No calculation.

BR review cadence (VALID_BR_CADENCE) is Monthly, Quarterly, or Annual. Default: Quarterly (DEFAULT_BR_CADENCE). In-window reviews age as fractions of the review window (BR_REVIEW_AGING_FRACTIONS). Amber lands two-thirds of the way through the window. Red lands when the review falls due, and deep-red at half a window past due. An Annual record is never punished on a Quarterly clock.

Note

VALID_CHARTER_APPROVAL_STATUSES has no Returned value. A returned case lands back in Draft, with the return captured via the charter.returned audit event and returnNotes.