James PayneDirector, EPMO| Chapters Health SystemPlant City, Fl, United States
I've recently been pulled into a debate regarding a monthly dashboard that displays project health. When a project milestone is Red or Amber, a Path to Green update is required to be completed by the PM. Some team members suggest that the risk mitigation plan meets this need. Other team members say it does not because the mitigation is about the impact that should be mitigated. They also say that you may have multiple risks affecting a single milestone which you could address in the Path to Green update. Need some calm advice to sort this out for the team. Saving Changes...
There are a number of ways to approach this, and the answer depends on how your review cycle is structured.
I prefer to use a dashboard that shows the whole project with risks being one view since there is more to the projects than just the risks and I am managing the whole project. A typical one-page "4-square" project status report will often include some other basic categories like deliverables, progress, next steps, and a high level schedule. That puts the risks into context. Recovery plans would be detailed on a separate slide(s). More details on risks would likewise have a dedicated detail view.
If you are just honing in on what's yellow and red, you run the risk that parts of the project that are healthy can go off-track. Programs however might have dedicated risk reviews that cover just the risks and mitigation plans of many projects.
As a rule, unless I am given a specific format, I always start by evaluating the best way to tell the important parts of the story, and then tailor the format to support that message, rather than start with a generic format, and then figuring out how to use it effectively.
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1 reply by James Payne
Apr 10, 2023 1:46 PM
James Payne
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Thank you Keith! I appreciate you reviewing and responding to my question. Just for fun I downloaded the latest PMBOK and did a search for Path to Green. There isn't a definition, so your response is spot on, "the answer depends on how your review cycle is structured." Funny how team members think there's a definition for everything.
Saving Changes...
James PayneDirector, EPMO| Chapters Health SystemPlant City, Fl, United States
Apr 10, 2023 1:16 PM
Replying to Keith Novak
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There are a number of ways to approach this, and the answer depends on how your review cycle is structured.
I prefer to use a dashboard that shows the whole project with risks being one view since there is more to the projects than just the risks and I am managing the whole project. A typical one-page "4-square" project status report will often include some other basic categories like deliverables, progress, next steps, and a high level schedule. That puts the risks into context. Recovery plans would be detailed on a separate slide(s). More details on risks would likewise have a dedicated detail view.
If you are just honing in on what's yellow and red, you run the risk that parts of the project that are healthy can go off-track. Programs however might have dedicated risk reviews that cover just the risks and mitigation plans of many projects.
As a rule, unless I am given a specific format, I always start by evaluating the best way to tell the important parts of the story, and then tailor the format to support that message, rather than start with a generic format, and then figuring out how to use it effectively.
Thank you Keith! I appreciate you reviewing and responding to my question. Just for fun I downloaded the latest PMBOK and did a search for Path to Green. There isn't a definition, so your response is spot on, "the answer depends on how your review cycle is structured." Funny how team members think there's a definition for everything. Saving Changes...
Can everybody be right, to some degree? Let's look at milestones, risk, and stoplights, in terms of probability and impact.
The way I use stoplights, if a milestone is red, there is no longer a risk of it slipping. It's slipped and something about it is unrecoverable (schedule, cost...) - it's now an issue and an action plan may be needed. But there could be more to it than that.
Probability - it happened. Impact - TBD. With regards to the schedule, if the milestone is not on the critical path and can be finished without impacting the critical path, the impact can be minimal. There may be no further risk.
If the red milestone is on the critical path, while it is an issue to resolve, you also have the risk of not completing the project on time because every task on the critical path is affected.
Going over budget may not be so simple.
If the milestone is yellow, you're dealing with risks instead of issues. You may not need an action plan to resolve an issue, but there may still be downstream impact (risk) to worry about beyond the yellow milestone. Even if the milestone is not on the critical path, the resources needed to complete the milestone may be needed for other tasks that are.
So, for a red milestone, you can have a path to green that involves action plans to resolve issues AND mitigation plans for one or more risks. The risk mitigation plan MIGHT suffice if things are yellow.
We had a similar requirement in my last full time employer (a large bank) except it was called a Return to Green.
The key with it was that it was used when a variance was sufficiently high to surpass a threshold - this could be related to schedule, cost, expected benefits, stakeholder satisfaction or some other measure. At its most basic, an RTG plan is a corrective action to address an identified issue (or realized risk).
The RTG itself was a corrective plan to deal with the issue of having exceeded that threshold. In some cases, it might have required a formal change to be reviewed and accepted - for example, if project scope had to be reduced in order to get back within expected cost or schedule constraints.
Risk plays into it, but from the perspective of what might happen which would prevent us from returning to green and how do we address those conditions to increase our odds of a successful return to green.
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