R0, R1, R2 are revision round labels at variation review. They give the team a shared vocabulary for where a Variation sits in the review cycle, and they pin every comment and state change to the round it happened in, so the audit trail is structured rather than chronological soup.
The rounds
- R0. Pre-Client iteration. The Lead and the internal team review and refine before the Client sees anything. R0 can run for as long as the internal team needs; it is not bound by an external clock.
- R1. Opens when the Lead first invites the Client to review. The Client sees the work, reacts (Approved, Changes requested, or Rejected per Variation), and the cycle closes when the Lead either ships, kills, or rolls into a new round.
- R2 and beyond. Each Client decision cycle that doesn’t end in ship or kill increments the round counter. R2 is the second Client cycle; R3 is the third. Most campaigns close in R1 or R2; campaigns that need R3+ often signal a brief problem upstream, not a Variation problem.
What rounds record
Each round captures, per Variation:
- The state at the end of the round (Approved this round, Changes requested with comment, Rejected with reason).
- Every comment made by every reviewer.
- The Approver for that round’s state.
- The timestamp of the state change.
That structure makes “what did we agree to in R1?” answerable in the workspace, not in someone’s email.
How rounds end
A round ends when the Lead closes it. Closing R1 either ships (final approval fires, locked masters land in the DAM), kills (the Variation is parked, the round closes as Rejected), or opens R2 (the Lead requests another cycle with the Client). The round counter is forward-only; rounds don’t get re-opened, only superseded.
Related on this site
- /glossary/variation is the artifact the rounds review.
- /glossary/final-approval is the gate that closes the review cycle.
- /glossary/approver is the permission that fires at each round close.
- /use-cases/agency-client-handoff is where the audit trail earns its keep.