Frequently Asked Questions

Why should I use Carbon14 instead of just better communication?

Good communication still requires manual aggregation across teams and levels. Carbon14 adds structural visibility: automatic cascades, quantified confidence with trends, centralized narrative context, and instant goal‑level impact—without someone stitching updates together.

Your rituals continue; the system removes the manual glue work and preserves the story.

What does “strategic health” mean?

Strategic health measures confidence that something remains relevant, aligned, and viable now. A project can be “on schedule” yet have declining health if confidence in its relevance or viability drops. Dimensions vary by level (e.g., relevance/aggregation at goals; alignment/delivery at projects; progress/resources/technical/alignment at work areas) and are configurable.

What are “cascades” and why do they matter?

Cascades are automatic ripple effects. Strategic changes flow down (goals → projects → work areas); execution constraints flow up (work areas → projects → goals). They bring speed, shared reality, full context, and remove the translation burden from PMs/leads.

What is “structural transparency” and why does it matter?

Every update captures who/when/what/why, creating context protection. If you surface a concern early, there’s timestamped proof with reasoning. This reduces risk of honesty in decent‑but‑imperfect cultures and enables earlier intervention by leadership.

Will Carbon14 work with my existing tools and workflows?

Yes. Carbon14 is standalone and methodology‑agnostic. Keep using Jira/Asana/Linear, Slack/Teams, docs, and schedules. Carbon14 overlays connection visibility, confidence tracking, cascades, and an audit trail. No integration required; start in minutes.

Typical flow: do your work as usual + add a 2‑minute confidence update when reality changes.

Does Carbon14 work with Agile? Waterfall? Hybrid?

Yes. It complements any delivery approach by showing how execution connects to goals, surfacing constraints early, and preserving context. Especially valuable for scaled Agile, hybrid planning + agile execution, growing or matrix organizations.

What if my team is small?

It works well for a single team if you track all three levels (2–3 goals, 5–8 projects, 10–15 work areas). You’ll get internal connection visibility, health trending, cascades, and structural transparency. Very tiny or flat teams may not need it yet.

What kind of culture do we need?

Best fit: decent‑but‑imperfect cultures where people want transparency but fear consequences. Audit trail attribution + context shifts the risk calculus and enables earlier surfacing. Won’t fix truly toxic cultures; less transformative in already‑perfect ones.

How long does setup take?

10–20 minutes: list your structure, assign health owners, set baseline confidence with brief reasoning, optionally tweak weightings/decay/cascade settings. Done—Carbon14 starts tracking. Updates take ~2 minutes when confidence changes.

How much ongoing time does Carbon14 require?

Event‑driven 2‑minute updates when confidence changes. No weekly status decks, no extra meetings, no manual aggregation. Typical time ≈ 6–10 minutes/week per owner; dashboard is always current.

How much does Carbon14 cost?

Simple per‑project monthly pricing with cumulative tiers and volume discounts. Save with yearly billing. No contracts; cancel anytime. See the pricing page for details.

What is “decay” and why does it matter?

Health follows configurable half‑life decay without updates (e.g., goals ~6 months, projects ~3 months, work areas ~2 weeks by default). Decay forces validation, surfaces slow drift, and captures the story even when things are stable (you confirm with reasoning and reset confidence).

What is the audit trail and what benefits does it provide?

For every update, Carbon14 records who/when/what/why. This enables timeline reconstruction ("when did we know?"), preserves decision rationale, protects honest surfacing, reveals patterns across time, improves retrospectives, and creates accountability with context—not blame.

Who updates what? How do we know who’s responsible?

Each element has a visible health owner (goals: execs/leads; projects: PMs/leads; work areas: ICs). Ownership is transferable and tracked. Others can add updates with attribution when they have context. Update frequency is visible, creating gentle social accountability.

What gets tracked at each level?

Goals: strategic relevance + aggregated project health. Projects: strategic alignment + delivery confidence (influenced by work areas). Work areas: progress, alignment, resources, technical confidence. All dimensions and weightings are configurable to your context.

How do I configure Carbon14 for my context?

Optionally adjust: (1) dimension weightings per level, (2) decay rates per level, (3) cascade influence up/down. Start with sensible defaults; tune later as you learn. Templates are provided for common team types.

Is this just more overhead and status reporting?

No. It replaces weekly status decks and manual aggregation with event‑driven, 2‑minute updates that cascade and update dashboards automatically. Most teams save ~2 hours/week while gaining better visibility and preserved context.

What if people game the system?

Decay forces validation, cascades expose discrepancies, narrative context is required, update patterns are visible, and the audit trail creates transparency. If gaming persists, it becomes visible as a people/culture issue rather than a tooling gap.

How is this different from spreadsheets or docs?

Spreadsheets are static snapshots that require manual updates, recalculation, and notification. Carbon14 provides automatic cascades, decay, real‑time dashboard, notifications, audit trail with reasoning, and structural transparency, none of which spreadsheets can match at scale.