Since 1998 we have sold enterprise (and now SaaS) resource, portfolio, and project management software.  One of the most popular features has always been our weekly project and program status reporting tool where the project manager can set the Red/Yellow/Green health status of schedule, scope, resources, budget, and overall project.

What is scary (to me) is that many of our customers want to “over-ride” the Red, Yellow, Green indicators and take health status reporting away from the project managers.

I agree with setting some threshold guidelines around the dimensions of resources, scope, budget, and schedule.  I don't believe they should be cut and dry rules that automatically place the project status.  Let me explain. 

For example they look at our issue logs for aging issues, the number of scope change requests, the deliverables & tasks for late starts, milestone slippage, and resource availability to calculate the Red, Yellow, or Green status, regardless of the opinion of the PM. 

Although some of this can be a good thing (like setting the project to Yellow automatically if no status report was entered in the last 2 weeks) overall I see this as a dangerous trend in project management.

I would much rather have a qualified and experienced project manager "tell" me the project is in Yellow then a computer calculating it and over-riding the project manager (and I am the guy advocating the software).

The software tools like ours keep a full account of the quantitative measures of the project and they are visible in the project dashboard.  The status report should be the qualitative analysis of the project manager based on guidelines and experience.  It is their "State of the Union" if you will and as good as our software is, I would much rather have an experienced human at the wheel of the project then a computer algorithm IMO.

Warm Regards,

Nick Matteucci, Co-Founder www.VCSonline.com
VPMi = Simple + Sensible + Supportable SaaS Project Management

About the Author: Nick Matteucci is a co-founder of VCSonline.com a web 2.0 project management software company headquartered in St. Louis Missouri. Mr. Matteucci is also an active board member and the Chief Technology Officer for the PMI ISSIG. When not obsessing over virtual project management best practices Mr. Matteucci enjoys spending time with his wife and three small children. He also enjoys travel, running, and all things automotive.

 

 

 

 

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