How to Set Up Initiatives in Linear to Connect Projects to Company Goals
Projects tell you what teams are building. They do not tell you why, or how a dozen projects across five teams add up to the goals leadership set for the quarter. That gap usually gets filled by a slide deck that is out of date the day after it is presented.
Linear initiatives close the gap. An initiative groups related projects under a goal, with its own owner, target date, and updates. This guide covers how to structure initiatives, how to connect projects, and how to use initiatives as a living roadmap that leadership can read without a separate planning tool. Availability can depend on your Linear plan, so confirm initiatives are enabled for your workspace before you start.
Before you set this up, check what customers are actually asking for.
Paste call notes, support tickets or feedback. Vantage pulls out the signals and themes in about 30 seconds.
Step-by-step guide
Define initiatives around outcomes
An initiative should describe an outcome, not a feature. 'Reduce time to first value for new workspaces' is a good initiative. 'Build onboarding v2' is a project. Start from your company or product goals for the quarter or half and write one initiative per goal. Three to six active initiatives is a manageable number for most product organizations.
- List the quarter's company or product goals
- Write one initiative per goal, phrased as an outcome
- Limit active initiatives so focus stays meaningful
Create the initiative and set its properties
Open Initiatives from the sidebar and create a new initiative. Give it a clear name, a description explaining the goal and how success will be measured, an owner, and a target date. The description is where the 'why' lives, so write it for someone who missed the planning meeting.
- Create the initiative from the Initiatives page
- Write a description with the goal, success metric, and scope boundaries
- Assign an owner accountable for the initiative
- Set a target date
Add projects to the initiative
Link existing projects to the initiative, or create new projects from within it. A project can contribute to an initiative while still being owned by a specific team. Once linked, the initiative shows the progress and health of each project, which gives you a cross-team view without manual roll-up.
Use initiative status to show lifecycle
Initiatives have a status such as planned, active, or completed. Keep planned initiatives visible so stakeholders can see what is coming, but make it clear they are not yet committed. Move initiatives to active only when projects are staffed. Mark them completed when the outcome is achieved or the work is intentionally stopped, and note which in the final update.
Post initiative updates
Initiative updates summarize the health of the overall goal. Write them after project leads post their updates, and focus on what leadership needs: is the goal on track, which projects are at risk, and what decisions are needed. Link to project updates for detail rather than repeating them.
- Read the latest update for each linked project
- Summarize the overall health in one sentence
- Call out at-risk projects and the decisions needed
- Link to project updates for detail
Share the initiatives view as the roadmap
Point stakeholders to the Initiatives page as the roadmap of record. Because it is built from live project data, it stays current without anyone rebuilding a slide. For external audiences, you will still need a simpler artifact, but internally the initiatives view usually answers 'what are we working on and why'.
Review initiatives at quarter boundaries
At the end of each quarter, close or carry over initiatives deliberately. Carrying an initiative forward should be a decision, with a short note on what changed, not a default. This keeps the list honest and stops it from becoming a graveyard of half-finished goals.
Common mistakes
Initiatives that are really projects
If an initiative contains one project, it is probably a project with an extra layer of admin. Initiatives earn their place when they group multiple projects toward a shared outcome.
Too many active initiatives
Fifteen active initiatives means nothing is a priority. Keep the number small enough that everyone in the company could name them.
No success metric in the description
Without a measurable outcome, you cannot tell when an initiative is done. Write the metric in the description from day one.
Tips
Use the same owner for an initiative and its updates so accountability is clear.
Add a 'not in scope' line to each initiative description to prevent drift.
Link the PRD for each major project in the project description so initiative readers can trace intent.
Review initiative health in a monthly leadership sync instead of a separate status deck.
How Vantage helps
Initiatives show how projects roll up to goals; Vantage helps make sure each project starts from a clear problem and spec. PMs move from signal to PRD to dependency-aware tickets in Vantage, then push to Linear where projects can be linked to initiatives, with bi-directional sync keeping the spec and the work aligned.