Everyone in the organisation needs a clear indication of what red means and then they need to behave in an appropriate way to address the underlying problems in the project not just “ shoot the messenger“. This raises a cultural issue about the way we use RAG status reports as part of a project management environment and the reactions of the organisation when a project manager sets the project to red. The danger of this approach is that it relies on the project managers being confident enough to give genuine reports on project status. This can be used by the senior management in the organisation to quickly identify those projects which are in trouble and need support from the organisation to address weaknesses. RAG status reporting is extremely effective in a program or portfolio environment because it enables the organisation to create a summary report that consolidates all the status reports from a number of projects into one simple spreadsheet (download a template below). The RAG reports give an instant indication to senior management of the project status and the need to intervene if the project is going out of control. Typically RAG status reports are used to summarise more qualitative data based on planned expenditure and the project schedule. ![]() ![]() ![]() Some status reports just use one traffic light to indicate the overall project status, but typically project status report will include indicators the things such as performance against the budget, timescales, quality, and resources. A red traffic light indicates problems, amber everything is okay, green things going well. RAG status reporting is used when project managers are asked to indicate, how well a project is doing using the series traffic lights. Can we trust project and programme managers to be honest when using RAG reporting for their projects? What do we mean when a project has a red status? How should senior managers respond when a project flags a red status? In this post, we will explore the practicalities of using RAG status reporting for projects, including a template RAG status report to download for free. Many projects and programmes use RAG status reporting but what are the advantages and disadvantages of using Red, Amber, Green reporting.
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