Core concepts
Projects and project health
What a project is in Srishti, the statuses it can have and exactly how its health is worked out, what schedule deviation and the two launch dates mean, and how the project list and project page are laid out.
- Everyone
A project is one new product's journey from brief to launch. It holds the plan (activities, dates and owners), the documents filed against it and the conversations about it.
Every project carries a status such as On track or Behind schedule. Nobody types it in: Srishti works it out from the plan's dates and dependencies, so the status tells you the truth about the schedule. Knowing how it is worked out tells you what to fix when it turns red.
What a project is
- Project ID
- A code such as
KAP-NPD-2026-00041, given when the project is created or sent for approval. It never changes. A draft has none yet. - Name
- Entered in the first step of creation. Search the project list by name or ID.
- Type
- One of six: Innovation Class A or B, Renovation Class A or B, White Label or Hybrid. It comes from the activity template the project starts from.
- PM
- The person who created the project. Only the PM changes its plan, starts a new baseline or closes it. Nothing in Srishti changes a project's PM.
- Start date
- The start date of Activity 1, set while building the schedule. Every other date follows from it.
- Baseline launch
- The launch date of the approved plan, the baseline. See Baselines and re-baselines.
- Forecast launch
- The date the last activity is planned to finish, as the plan stands today.
A project starts as a Draft that only its creator sees. Once created it runs, possibly after an approval, until its PM closes it: usually when every mandatory activity is done, or earlier if it is cancelled, put on hold or merged. Closing makes it read-only for good. Creating one step by step is on Create a project.
Project statuses
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| On track | The forecast launch is on or before the baseline launch, and nothing below applies. |
| Ahead | The forecast launch is earlier than the baseline launch. |
| At risk | The launch has not slipped yet, but critical activities are close to their deadline. |
| Behind schedule | The forecast launch is later than the baseline launch, by any amount. |
| Completed | Every mandatory activity is complete. The project is ready to close. |
| Closed | Its PM closed it, finished or not. Nothing more can change; everything stays readable. |
| Pending approval | The plan runs past its template's duration and waits for an approver's decision. |
Pending approval is about a person's decision, not the schedule. The other six describe schedule health and are worked out as below.
How health is worked out
Srishti checks these rules in order and the first one that fits sets the status:
- Closed if the PM has closed the project.
- Completed if every mandatory activity is complete.
- Behind schedule if the forecast launch is later than the baseline launch.
- At risk if an unfinished critical-path activity has less than 20% of its own duration left before its planned end, or if two or more other activities are near critical (their float is 5% or less of the project's length).
- Ahead if the forecast launch is earlier than the baseline launch and no critical-path activity is past its planned end.
- On track in every other case, including a project that has no baseline yet.
The status is recalculated whenever the plan changes (an edit, a completed activity, an approved baseline) and at least once a day for every active project, because time passing alone can make an activity critical or late.
Schedule deviation and the launch dates
Schedule deviation is the baseline launch minus the forecast launch, in days. A plus number such as +5d means the plan now finishes five days early; a minus number such as −12d means twelve days late; 0d means on baseline. A dash means there is no baseline or no forecast to compare yet.
The baseline launch only moves when an approver approves a new baseline. The forecast launch moves every time the plan does. So a delay stays visible as a deviation until someone fixes it or a new baseline is agreed.
% complete (shown as Progress or Timeline) weighs activities by duration: the days of completed mandatory activities divided by the days of all mandatory activities. A finished 30-day activity counts three times as much as a finished 10-day one; optional activities do not count.
The project list
Projects lists every project you can see. With Projects: View or Action that is every project in Srishti.
Starts a new project. Shown with Projects: Action.
How the projects you can see split by status, one colour per status.
Click a tile to show only the projects in that status. Total projects clears it.
Search by name or ID, filter by status or type, and switch between Table and Board.
Worked out by Srishti, as described above.
Days ahead (+) or behind (−) the baseline.
Forecast on top, baseline below. Red when the forecast is later.
- Columns. Project, Type, Start date, Tasks (open tasks, with the overdue ones in red), Status, Timeline (% complete), Schedule deviation, PM, and Launch. Click a column heading to sort.
- Board. The same projects in seven columns, one per status.
- Your drafts. Projects you saved and have not submitted sit at the top of the table, marked Draft ("Only you can see this", with Continue and Delete). One an approver sent back is marked Changes needed, with their comment and Make changes. Drafts are not on the board. The search finds them by name and the type filter applies to them; a status filter hides them.
- Pending approval. Clicking such a project opens its review instead of a project page, because it has not started yet.
The project page
Click a project to open its page. The header and tabs are the same for everyone who can open it; only the PM gets the controls that change it.
The project's code and its type.
The project's health right now.
Baseline launch minus forecast launch, in days.
The agreed launch date beside the date the plan forecasts now.
Create new baseline and Close project. Shown to the PM only.
Days elapsed of the planned days, deviation, open tasks and progress.
Overview, Activities, Gantt, Documents, Conversations and Team.
Overall status, days on or off baseline, % complete, days to launch and open tasks.
- Overview
- The summary cards, the critical-path card (the activity most at risk or the current bottleneck, and what comes next on the critical path), Team workload and Needs action now.
- Activities
- Every activity with its dates, status, float and owner. Click one for its side panel. See Activities and tasks.
- Gantt
- The plan on a timeline, with the baseline beside it. View Gantt at the top opens it too.
- Documents
- Everything uploaded against the project. See Document storage and project documents.
- Conversations
- The project's threads.
- Team
- Who owns which activities, read-only.
Activity log at the top opens the project's permanent log of project-level events. Open tasks counts tasks whose activity has reached its start date and is not finished; a task is overdue once its activity's planned end has passed.