What does each Health mean in Cascade?

Cascade uses Health to categorize the current state of your goals based on whether they’re on track, at risk or somewhere in between. Health is constantly updated based on how your goal is tracking compared to its expected progress (or the expected progress of its success criteria.)

• Health of Objectives and Projects

• Health of Actions

• Health of Measures

• Health of "Maintain" Measures

Health is nothing but the tag or category that a goal is labeled with based on the behind-the-scenes health calculation.

In summary:

Health	Description
Exceeded	Greater than 100% of overall target (Exceeded the target set).
Achieved	100% of the overall target (Reached the target set).
On track	Goal is trending to be completed by deadline.
Behind	Goal is trending to be behind deadline.
At risk	Goal is trending to be severely behind deadline.

Health of Objectives and Projects

Objectives and Projects do not have their own expected progress. Instead, the health of an Objective or Project is calculated based on the average health of its associated success criteria.

The calculation also takes into consideration any nested or contributing objectives, which are considered success criteria for the parent objective.

For example, if an objective has two actions and two measures (see table) contributing to it, the health will be calculated as follows:

Success criteria	Actual Progress	Expected Progress	Health Calculation	Health Label
Action 1	50	55	(50/55)=90%	Behind
Action 2	99	100	(99/100)=99%	On track
Measure 1	120	100	(120/100)=120%	Exceeded
Measure 2	15	22	(15/22)=68%	At risk

Now,

• Health calculation for the objective = (90+99+100+68)/4 = 89.25%

• Objective health:  89.25% falls within the 85-94% range, making the health Behind.

In the above scenario, though one success criteria's health was Exceeded, we cap it at 100% for objective health calculation.

If there're any nested or contributing objectives added as success criteria to this main parent objective, then their health will also be calculated in the same way as mentioned above. Now, their health percentage will also be taken for aggregation while calculating the health for the parent objective.

This calculation can also be impacted by weighting of the success criteria. Find out more about weighting in this article.

A point to note for objectives with maintain measures:

If the objectives has only "maintain measures" as its success criteria, then we just take the average of the health of those measures. In those case, if their health is on track, we can consider its health as 100% and if at risk, then 0%. Average of those health scores will be the health of that objective.

Consider that an objective has 8 maintain measures as success criteria, out of which 6 are on track and 2 are at risk.

With 6 measures deemed On Track, the health score is considered 100%, totaling 600. The remaining 2 measures, assessed as at risk, are considered 0.
Therefore, the health of the objective is determined by adding the scores of 600 and 0, then dividing by 8, resulting in 75%. This places the objective in the Risk bracket.

Health for Success Criteria

Health for measures and actions is calculated using an equation of the expected progress (where you should be to achieve your goal on time) and actual progress (the current completion of your goal).

• Not Started - the goal hasn’t started ‘tracking’ yet because the start date is in the future.

• Not Tracked - tracking is not yet defined for the success criteria (i.e., you have created a measure for the objective, but it does not yet have an initial or target value defined), meaning there is no health to evaluate.

• On Track - the goal is on track to be completed by the deadline. The actual progress is 95-105% of the expected progress.

• Behind - the goal is trending behind the expected progress and is not tracking to be completed by the deadline. The actual progress is 85-94% of the expected progress.

• At Risk - the goal is not on track to be completed by the deadline. The actual progress is 0-84% of the expected progress. This health can also indicate that the end date has passed with no tracking defined.

• Achieved - Actual progress has met the target defined - the goal is complete.

• Exceeded - Actual progress is above the target value - the goal is complete and surpassed the target.

Health of Actions

The health of actions is calculated using the base formula: Actual Progress / Expected Progress

The expected progress for an action is informed by one of three options:

• The due dates of the associated checklist items. When a date of a Checklist item is not defined, then the end date of the parent Action is considered for expected progress calculation purposes.

• The due dates of the associated milestones.

• The calculated spread of progress based on update schedules (i.e., if the update schedule is once per month, and the action spans one year, the expected progress will be about 8% a month (100% / 12 months = 8.3% progress per month)

Once you input the data that informs the expected progress, Cascade will perform the health calculation behind the scenes and display the health according to the ranges dictated above.

Health of Measures

The health for measures is also calculated using the base formula Actual Progress / Expected Progress.

The expected progress of a measure is informed by the calculated spread of progress based on the updated schedule. The expected progress will be visible in table form for each measure in its goal hub page.

The actual and expected progress in percentages are arrived at using the formula:

Actual progress (%) = (Current progress - Initial value) / (Target value - Initial value)

Expected progress (%) = (Expected progress - Initial value) / (Target value - Initial value)

For example, if your measure spans one year and your initial and target values are 0 to $5,000, the expected progress will be about $416.60 per month ($5,000 / 12 months = $416.60 per month). The health will be calculated according to the percentage completion. 

In this example case, if at the end of the first month, your current progress is $300, the health would be calculated as follows:

Actual progress	$300 / $5000 = 6%
Expected Progress	$416.60 / $5000 = 8.3%
Health Calculation	6% / 8.3% = 72.3%
Health: At Risk (0-84% range)

Health of "Maintain" Measures

Maintain measures work a bit differently because they have no expected progress. Instead, their health is calculated based on the actual progress and the critical limits. For more details on maintain measures, please refer to Maintain Measures.

Terminologies to reference:

Expected progress:

The expected progress is the target value for a goal at a given point in time. The expected progress is informed by the update schedule of a measure or action, or by the checklist/milestone due dates of an action if relevant.

For example, if a measure’s timeline is one year, and the update schedule is quarterly, the expected progress will be 25% of the total target value per quarter.

You can view the expected progress of a goal in table and graph form within the goal hub. The expected progress is labeled as the ‘Target’ in the table.

Actual progress:

The actual progress is simply the current progress value of a goal.

A few things to note:

• The health calculation occurs behind the scenes and informs the health. The health calculation has not surfaced visibly in Cascade.

• If entities are Exceeded (progress >100%), we cap the progress at 100% before aggregating it into the objective progress calculation. This means the objective's progress will never exceed 100%.

• Objectives, Projects and Maintain measures do not have Expected progress.

• The Status information is available only for actions and projects but are just contextual and have no impact on progress or health calculation. You can change the status from the sidebar or the Kanban board by moving the cards across different status columns. See The 'Kanban' Board for details.

• In case of maintain measures, if the progress updated meets the targets set in the maintain options, and the due date is still in the future, then it would show up as On track. If you are close but not quite there, it will be Behind, and if you're too far from your target, it will be At Risk.

FAQs

Are health and status different?

Yes. While health is calculated from the expected progress vs the actual progress that you make, status is an interpretation that we set manually for actions and is just contextual with no impact on any execution. Health and status in Cascade are independent of each other and cannot be used interchangeably.

I moved the card of my action to "Wont do", but it still shows up as "On Track".

Health and status are two different entities. The status in the Kanban board is not dependent on the health of your action. If you do not make any updates to that action, its health will subsequently change to "Behind" or "At risk" with time, but the status in Kanban board will remain at "Wont do" till you move the card to some other status.

Can I customize the colour of the health label?

No, you cannot customize those colors.

While there is status information available for projects, why am I not able to see the projects that I own in Kanban board?

At this point, only the actions that you own and collaborate are pulled up here. Even those actions that're listed under the projects are displayed, but, in future, you'll also be able to see the projects themselves up here.

If an objective has only maintain measures as its success criteria, how is its health calculated?

Consider that an objective has 8 maintain measures as success criteria, out of which 6 are on track and 2 are at risk. To assess the health of this objective, we calculate the average of the health scores of its measures.
With 6 measures deemed On Track, the health score is considered 100%, totaling 600. The remaining 2 measures, assessed as at risk, are considered 0.
Therefore, the health of the objective is determined by adding the scores of 600 and 0, then dividing by 8, resulting in 75%. This places the objective in the Risk bracket.

Can I customize the health tracking or calculation?

No, not at this point in time. However, you can add different weights on a scale of 1 to 5 from the Success criteria tab of the Objective's sidebar and assign different weightage for each action, project or measure associated with that objective so that they impact the health of the objective accordingly. See Add Weights to define the Progress of your Objectives

Can we set status to objectives and measures?

No. Objectives and measures do not need to be measured by their status as its best to measure them by their health.

Why isn't my action that's achieved not moving to done?

This is not automated and you'll have to manually move the card to done. But if you're moving an action that is "At risk" to "done", once that action has made 100% progress, you'll receive a prompt on it.