How is Expected Progress Arrived at?

Expected Progress is the term used to describe the ideal progress value for a given entity at a given point in time. It is an aspect of tracking built only into Measures and Actions.

It breaks down the timeline of the action or measure, and allows you to attach certain dates to certain progress checks that you expect to have completed at that time. Depending on the actual progress compared to the expected progress, health will be calculated and displayed (See What does each Health mean in Cascade for more details). The progress tracked on an Measure or Action will be funnelled upward to reflect in the progress made on the attached Objective.

Expected Progress for Measures

From the Edit Measures sidebar > under Tracking> Expected progress, you can leave the default schedule, which is Monthly & Last day of the month, or you can change it according to your need.

Depending on your choice of updating the progress on a measure, you can also choose monthly, quarterly, biannually, or annually, and further select the day on which you're most likely to make updates. Cascade will divide an equal expected progress % based on the Period and timeframe of the measure. Note: you must ensure to update that measure by that period for accurate representation of progress.

If you have custom targets, you can edit the measure and input the custom target(s) or alternatively, click 'Goal Hub' and you can enter in the custom target(s) there as well. Only the custom targets will appear in the Target section if you edit a measure and in the Goal Hub, custom targets will appear in bold.

Expected Progress for Actions

From the Edit Actions sidebar> in the Tracking section, you need to select either Manually, Milestones, or Checklists, and input the values.

If you select Manually, then in the Expected Progress area under Tracking, you can leave the default schedule, which is Monthly & Last day of the month - or you can change it, according to your need. Depending on your choice of updating the progress on an action, you can also choose monthly, quarterly, biannually, or annually, and further select the day on which you're most likely to make updates.


 

• • If you select Milestones, the milestones has its own percentage completion and set of dates for tracking which is used to set expected progress.

    • Depending on the milestone's completion percentage on the current date, its expected progress is displayed. In this case, you'll see Update schedule section where you can set schedule cadence to make progress updates.

  • If you select Checklists, based on the number of checklist items, the expected progress is calculated.

    • Every checklist item has equal weightage and if there're 2 out of 5 items within current date, then the expected progress would be 40%. You can set schedule cadence in the Update schedule section.

Click the (Explore icon) against the Objective or Measure or Project or Action from the Planner or  from the relevant Sidebar page to access the Goal Hub.

For Actions and Measures, if the tracking and schedule are updated, you will see the expected progress in dotted lines, and the actual progress in the Goal Hub. Hover the mouse over the graph to view the progress and health over time.

How is it calculated?

As mentioned above, the update schedule frequency along with the targets and due dates that you set determines the calculation of the expected progress. Let's consider a simple example: 

The initial and target values are 0% and 100%, and due date is set to 1 year (1st, Jan 2023 - 31st, Dec 2023).

Update Annually or Yearly:

If the update schedule is annually or yearly, then the expected progress will just show up as 100% by Dec 2023, and the health will show "On track" till the year end.

Update Biannually or Half yearly:

If the update schedule is chosen biannually or half yearly, then the expected progress will be split by 50% for 6 months interval, i.e., 50% by June 2023, and the rest 50% by Dec 2023. The health will show "On track" between 0-49.4 till June, and 49.5-100 for December. 

Update Quarterly:

If the update schedule is chosen quarterly, then the expected progress will be split by 25% for 3 months interval, i.e., 25% by Mar 2023, 25% by Jun 2023, 25% by Sep 2023, and the rest 25% by Dec 2023. The health will then be determined by the actual progress you make divided by the expected progress, and based on the range that they fit in, it will be displayed as At risk (0-84%), Behind (85-94%), and On track (95-105%).

Update Monthly:

If the update schedule is chosen monthly, then the expected progress is split 100/12 which'll be close to 8.18% per month. This'll be cumulatively added month on month till Dec 2023. The health will then be determined by the actual progress you make divided by the expected progress, and based on the range that they fit in, it will be displayed as At risk (0-84%), Behind (85-94%), and On track (95-105%).

Update Weekly:

Here, the expected progress will be split by the number of days in a week you're set to update the actual progress until the end of year. This'll keep increasing cumulatively till Dec 2023. The health will then be determined by the actual progress you make divided by the expected progress, and based on the range that they fit in, it will be displayed as At risk (0-84%), Behind (85-94%), and On track (95-105%).

Custom Targets on Measures:
Alongside the time Period you select, if you add custom targets, Cascade will re-calculate expected progress equally in between the existing expected target value and the custom value. Custom targets can be seen in bold.

For example, we've added 10, 15 and 25 as custom targets alongside existing targets that came from the period selected, Monthly & Last day of the month. The expected progress between the custom targets are auto-calculated based on the input (10+15/2 = ~12% and 15+25/2=~20%). From here, depending on where actual progress is compared to expected progress, the respective health will be displayed.