But Seriously.......
How often do we make a comment in jest?, then say, but seriously! When I hear that comment I am reminded of the 1989 album ‘But Seriously’ by Phil Collins. One of the tracks was Colours. Great music of course but it got me thinking of the colours we use when reporting Project Status. Or not reporting it, as the case may be. But seriously! I thought this short piece might be interesting and thought provoking.
For a status reporting template I once used, I only had the colours Red and Green. Behind schedule or on track. Perhaps a bit too simple really but it was developed in an excel model using conditional formatting so was easy to do, easy to keep updated and very clear to report. No ambiguity so to speak and it gave a very clear message to the project team, project leader and the stakeholders. We can do this in Project Management tools as well, I just use that as an example.
More frequently we see Red, Amber, Green, and Blue where Blue denotes task completed. However, what are the definitions of the other colours. Amber for example, what is the real interpretation?
I suspect there are hundreds of projects out there where day after day project managers are reporting status using the RAG convention yet there is no common understanding across the given audience what the three colours mean.
There is plenty written on this in project management texts and a quick search of the internet will give some clear statements. Ones you can use to ensure clarity and a base to discuss status and required actions.
My point is not to regurgitate that material but to remind us to make clear to our audience before we start presenting our status reports the exact definition of the colours.
Without that, appropriate actions are really not possible. Are they? But Seriously……………..
About the Author:
Michael has over 25 years experience in leadership roles in prominent customer and vendor organizations working in the UK, Canada, Australia, South Korea and Hong Kong in the Airline, Banking, and Telecommunications sectors.
Good highlighting Michael Dodd of just how ambiguous one person's amber or green is to another person's. I've seen project reports with all green and maybe one amber (across say PMBoK's 9 dimensions) only to then find (when you dig down) the PM doesn't really have the budget numbers to hand or there are delays & sticking points on getting the vendor contract signed! Clearly then you can't report "green" and (depending on your definition of what an amber rating means) likely not amber either! They're probably both dimensions that are red, but people don't want to alarm hence they stay with green as it's more comfortable (just often very misleading!)