What's New This Week (August 1, 2026)
Assessments now measure progress, not just position - polling cycles, cycle comparison, and five new analytics views
This was the biggest shipping week since the demo launch, and it all serves one idea: an assessment shouldn't be a snapshot you take once and argue about forever. As of this week, assessments run in cycles, results compare across them, and a new analytics suite reads far more out of the answers you already have. Plus: the survey that prices the cost side of your value analysis, and an important fix. Highlights below.
Polling cycles - your assessments get a time axis
Every assessment your team completes is now stamped with the polling cycle it belongs to: a labelled collection window like "2026 Q2." Your first cycle opens automatically when your company is created; one cycle is open at a time; and a cycle opened at the company covers every plant and division beneath it.
The important behavior: closed cycles are the record. Your reports and value analysis read the most recent completed cycle - a finished quarter's story, not a moving target that shifts while people are still answering. While a new round is collecting, its answers accumulate without disturbing the published picture.
Admins manage all of this from a new Cycles section in company settings: see what's collecting now, close a round, open the next (leave the label blank and it names itself for the current quarter), and tag pre-cycle history into a cycle so nothing is stranded. Tagging is additive only - nobody can rewrite which quarter an answer belongs to.
Retake and re-invite - the re-assessment loop actually closes
Opening a new cycle now does what you'd hope: members can retake their assessments, and the completed card offers the retake instead of a dead end. Assignments and completions belong to the current cycle, so the Assign assessments page can finally answer the question every program owner asks: who still owes me this quarter? Re-inviting last cycle's respondents is one action.
Cycle comparison - progress becomes a chart, not a recollection
With two or more closed cycles, the comparison views open up: your current round against the last one on the results pages, and the trend over time on the maturity surface. Comparisons are cohort against cohort - this quarter's answers versus last quarter's, never a blend of whoever answered whenever - and the anonymity floor applies to both sides of every delta, with per-cycle respondent counts shown. Closed cycles never change, which is exactly why the trend line can be trusted.
Useful for: anyone who has to show leadership whether the improvement program is actually improving anything.
Five new analytics views - more signal from the same answers
The maturity heatmap now has company behind it:
- Consensus - the maturity distribution per pillar, not just the mean. Where your team agrees, and where the same process gets rated 2 by one group and 4 by another - because that disagreement is usually the finding.
- Perspective - insider versus outsider views per function, with the blind-spot and hidden-pain quadrants those two angles reveal.
- Taxonomy lens - regroup consensus results and the gap generator by CESMII area or use-case family, so the same data answers a different shape of question.
- Self in context - on your personal results, your own answers marked against the peer distribution (k-anonymity still guarding the peers).
- Organization profile - a deterministic four-axis scorecard per node of your company tree, with grounded AI callouts on the Summary tab.
Every view is k-anonymity gated, and every maturity surface now shares one scope dropdown across your company tree - pick any plant, division, or the whole company, and the views follow.
The solutions-status survey - the cost side of your value analysis
A dedicated deployment survey now asks the question the value math needs answered: which solutions do you already have in place, and which need modernization? Answers flow directly into your cost assumptions - "in place" zeroes acquisition cost, "needs modernization" prices a refresh - and corporate answers inherit down to sites, with sites overriding only where their reality differs. Less form-filling, more accurate economics.
Fixed: editing a completed assessment no longer un-completes it
An unwelcome surprise, now removed: opening a completed assessment for edit could silently flip it back to in-progress, making the completion vanish from every report until it was re-submitted. That's fixed, and affected completions have been restored. If a department's numbers ever seemed to dip for no reason, this was likely why - and it won't happen again.
See it all in the demo
ExampleCo, our fictional five-plant demonstration company, has been rebuilt with three closed cycles and a deliberate story in the data: company maturity moving 2.82 to 3.10 to 3.43 across three quarters, with the focus departments outpacing the rest - and one deliberate slip, because real programs have those too. The cycle comparison views are live on it now: mfg-surveys.com/demo/exampleco
As always: the department surveys are free for any registered user, and the in-app Feedback button goes straight to us.