How do you define status color code (Green, Amber, Red)?

It was one fine Tuesday afternoon in the middle of July, 2013 when I was browsing my piles of pending emails. Daniel Reddy, a colleague of mine dropped by my desk. Looking at him I know there is something messed up. Preparing myself to hear out Daniel, I said, “Let’s go to cafeteria and have a masala tea”. He looked little disturbed and said “No, let’s chat here. I ran into some trouble.”

“Okay. What’s going on” I asked.

“You know about the EZ-Audit project right.” He asked.

“Of course, I know! Everyone knows about EZ-Audit project. It’s supposed to be the next big thing in the company. What about it?” I inquired.

He said “You know, we were going to setup a team of 15 for this project and the domain training was to start from next Monday for which a trainer from States was going to fly down. We rolled out the offer letters for all of them about 2 months back. 7 of them joined last Monday and 8 more were to join yesterday (Monday). However, only 3 of them showed up yesterday and 5 of them didn’t join and we can’t reach them on phone either. Looks like, they might have taken our offers and joined elsewhere.  Now, we are in all sorts of trouble.”

“Relax. I don’t know how much blame you can take for this. Granted, your stateside team won’t be happy about candidates not showing up, but it’s not something that you can control.” I tried to make him feel better.

“No, buddy, the problem is not only about the guys not showing up. That’s only part of it. Bigger problem was, my Stateside SVP was really upset because, the status report that went out last Friday showed the project status as GREEN and suddenly by Monday evening, the project entered into RED. She is quite upset that, how could project status change over a weekend from GREEN to RED” he clarified.

“Okay, you need to slow down. There are too many Mondays and Fridays that you are referring to. Help me understand in little detail” I asked.

“Okay. Here is the whole story. This whole thing began sometime in April 1^st week. Our Insurance audit department in States wanted to start a new BPO team for processing back office audit transactions. Over the next couple weeks, we finalized the approach, team composition and next steps. I initiated the recruitment and at the same time, we also have listed down other activities such as identifying the cubicle space, purchasing the hardware including a finger print devices, procuring specialty software so on and so forth.” He took a pause.

“I prepared a detailed project plan and initiated all these activities in parallel and started sharing the weekly status updates to all stakeholders” he continued.

“Except for first couple of weeks, we are always running faster than the plan and so we were pretty much in GREEN all along. Except for the 5 guys who didn’t show up, all other activities were completed well ahead of time. Hence, our weekly status was always GREEN and that’s what we shared last Friday also. But since the team didn’t join this Monday, the whole thing has gone for a toss. Now, the stateside manager is not ready to send the SME to train the team here unless we get another couple of guys at least and so, it delays the whole planning. That’s why the project has moved into RED now.” He concluded.

“So, your stateside manager is upset because there is a delay in the process due to non-joiners and perhaps even more upset because you kept telling her the project was in GREEN all along and suddenly, it’s in trouble without any heads up. Is that what it is?” I clarified my understanding

“Yes. That’s correct.” He responded

“So, tell me, when you mentioned status as GREEN, what have you considered each week.” I asked

“I considered the project schedule and how all planned activities are doing against their target dates, and any issues and risks. Like I said, except for first couple of weeks, all the project activities were well ahead of the plan and there were no major issues or risks. We did capture few risks but as we kept moving, those were mitigated except for these ‘no-shows’. How could I give the status as RED just by anticipating that, 30% of the team may not show up?” he was understandably upset.

“Buddy, I think you missed out few critical points for your status consideration. Status code of GREEN/AMBER/RED shouldn’t just depend on project schedule and issues/risks. It has to be little more than that.” I clarified.

“Like what?” he was little more upset that I was probably adding insult to injury.

“What is the status of a project on day one”, I asked him.

“What do you mean on day one. What else can it be other than GREEN?” He replied as if I was asking a stupid question.

“Why do you say so?” I asked

“Because, on day one, you don’t have any pending activities. How could it be anything else other than GREEN?” he questioned again.

“What if I say, on day one of any project, its status is RED?” I quizzed

“RED…!? Why would that be?” he was confused

“Because, there is lot of uncertainty in the project and the probability of successfully completing the project is very little. You don’t have much clarity on what you going to do except for a project initiation document or a project definition document. So, shouldn’t it be RED?” I asked

“Well, your uncertainty and probability piece is making sense, but in that case, the only day the project can be in GREEN, is the last day, right? Because only that day, you are 100% sure, the project is going to be completed, isn’t?” he asked

“Well, technically, yes” I replied.

“Oh...common...it’s absurd. If that’s the case, all projects in the world would be in RED status all the time. Tell me something else for heavens!!” he demanded

“Well, that was a technical answer. But the reality is, as the schedule progresses, the uncertainty reduces and probably of successfully executing the project increases. So, the status doesn’t necessarily have to be RED all the time. What you told me was you considered project schedule and issues/risks to arrive at your status right. I think that’s a good start, but my point is those two parameters are not the only pieces. ” I replied

“Sekhar, I don’t know if I am getting you completely.” he said with a question mark face

“Let me elaborate. You said, purchasing hardware was one of your major activities, right?” I asked

“Yeah...so...?” he was puzzled

“Let’s say, you break that down into five sub activities namely 1) Work with the stateside team to identify the hardware requirements 2) Work with vendor management team to identify the vendor 3) Work with the supply chain management (SCM) team to place the order 4) work with customs authorities to procure the order into premises 5) Wok with the infrastructure team to setup the hardware.

Let’s say, you were to complete the second sub activity by 20^th of May and let’s assume that you, in fact, did meet that date. So, you were saying, since I was to complete two sub activities by 20^th of May and I did that, the status of procuring hardware activity is GREEN.

But, there are 3 more sub activities that are dependent on three different set of stakeholders. So, still lot of work needs to be done. Which means, although you are doing well from the perspective of what has been planned to complete, there is still uncertainty for the other three sub activities. So, you are GREEN only for 40% of the sub activities and NOT-GREEN, yet, for rest of the 60% of the sub activities. Then, how can the overall status of “Purchase the hardware” be GREEN? Shouldn’t the status of it be a combination of 40% GREEN and 60% NOT-GREEN?

“Man…you are actually making some sense to me now. I liked that 60% NOT-GREEN point! What should that NOT-GREEN be? AMBER or RED” he asked

“Well, it can be AMBER or RED or even GREEN based on your comfort/confidence level. As an example, if you have already spoken to SCM team and infrastructure team and set the expectations and shared some plan with them in terms of what to expect, then, you are more towards LIGHT AMBER or LIGHT GREEN, but if you haven’t spent any time with them and you are waiting for second sub activity to be completed, then, you might as well be RED for those 60% pending sub activities” I replied

“Sekhar, let me digest what you said. You are suggesting that we should not only look at the past performance of the project, but we also need to consider the pending activities of the project. And on the top if it, like I mentioned before, we should also consider issues/risk, right? So, essentially, we have to consider three parts to arrive at the status?” he asked

“Well, there is one more critical piece” I replied

“Really? What would that be?” he asked again

“Show stoppers…!” I was forcing him to think

“Show stoppers…!?? What are they?” curiously he asked

“In some senses, show stoppers are nothing but your most critical risks. Let’s say you identified 7 risks as part of your initial ground work. Some of them could be simple ones and some complex. For some of them, you may have mitigation plan and for some of them, you may chose to live with them. But if you just keep those 7 under the same bucket called Risks and treat them as one unit, you might run into trouble. Hence, you always need to call out those risks that could potentially bring your project to its knees and classify them separately under another bucket (show stoppers or any other name).

As an example, customs authorities not giving approval for the hardware is a show stopper. Prospect joiners not showing up on date of joining is a show stopper. SME quitting a week before the travel is a show stopper.” I concluded

“Buddy, I have been doing Risk Management for a while now even adhering to the PMBOK standards. But I haven’t come across this term Show Stoppers anywhere.” He said.

“That’s true. But end of the day, Project Management is common sense and you should tweak the guiding principles that PMBOK has published or for that matter anyone else published in such a way that it suits the real world. You don’t have to call them show stoppers, use another name. It doesn’t matter.” I replied

“Yeah...guess…you are right” Daniel was in acceptance mode.

“Okay. Here is the equation for a project status code that I often use” I continued.

Status =

performance of the planned activities against the plan

X

expected performance of the pending activities

X

impact of issues and risks

X

impact of show stoppers

"So, look at the equation one more time. All I am saying is, instead of just looking at what’s planned versus what’s completed, go little further. Think about your comfort level on the pending activities, consider all risks and issues at hand and more importantly, state the impact of show stoppers explicitly.” I concluded

“Think about it. Within the first few weeks of the project initiation, 1) you notify all key stakeholders about the approach you would take to publish the status report (such as above one), 2) identify and publish the critical show stoppers and 3) the impact they may have on the project deliverables, when actually things get delayed, it no longer is a surprise for anyone. So, naturally, people might be disappointed with the delays, but they won’t be upset or annoyed with the project manager. In fact, they would appreciate you for being detailed and proactive!” I concluded my funda of the week!

“Thank you, buddy. Let’s go for a cup of tea now. It’s on me!” he pushed me out of my space!

ఓం నమో ప్రాజెక్ట్ మనేజ్మెంతాయ నమః