Implementation Levels

Each initiative in your program must go through an Implementation Level process (also often referred to as Stage Gates). Wave has been designed to fit your program's governance and implementation process to ensure that initiatives have been properly planned, implemented, and that their impact numbers are validated.

Wave also requires initiatives to go through approvals at particular implementation levels. Most commonly, initiatives must be approved by a senior leader or workstream lead in order to move forward to the L3 - Implementation level. Your program may include additional approvals between various stages, all intended to validate the information that has been entered into the initiative.

Note: The implementation levels process in your program may vary slightly or use different naming conventions

Example Implementation Level Process

	L0: Idea	L1: Identified	L2: Validated	L3: Implement	L4: Realize	L5: Signed Off
In this level you have:	Initial idea	Sized initiative	Business case	Approved plan	Completed implementation	Realized value and signed off by Finance
What must happen to enter this stage:	Idea generated	Owner assigned Value estimated	Validation complete Plan developed	Plan feasibility confirmed Finance confirm size/timing of savings	All planned actions have been taken	Financial impacts have appeared in bottom line results
Key activities in this stage:	Rough sizing Rough L3/L4 milestone dates Assign owner	Refine value Build the business case Develop high level action plan	Develop concrete action plan Identify risks & resources	Complete all steps laid out in the action plan	Savings are accruing	Cost savings seen in cash flows at level of new run rate
Who typically approves entry?	Initiative Owner	Workstream Lead	Sponsor	Sponsor, Finance	Initiative Owner	Finance
Example Initiative	An opportunity exists to save on filter spend	We spend $10m on filters and we think we can get 10%	We have checked pricing across sites and believe a 15% improvement is possible	We confirmed applicable baseline and estimate opportunity value of $1.4m. We are now implementing the initiative	We have firm price commitments from suppliers and have changed ops practice to begin buying	We are only buying the lower cost items and/or following the new process

Note: It is possible that some initiatives will not make it to implementation. For these cases, users can update the "Weekly Status" field to "Cancelled" in order to indicate that the initiative is no longer active.