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Question regarding industry standard target %s for overall portfolio health

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Melissa ONeil Pittsfield, Ma, United States
What have folks seen organizations use for target %s for portfolio health (ie: 90% of projects should be green, 5% red, 5% yellow).
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Keith Novak Tukwila, Wa, United States
You would first need to define green, yellow, and red. Some use on-plan, off-plan with recovery in place, off-plan w/o recovery or no plan. Others use a risk based approach, limits for schedule variance and cost variance, and I'm sure there are many others.
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Kiron Bondale Retired | Mentor| Retired Welland, Ontario, Canada
Melissa -

To add to Keith's feedback, percentage of portfolio can also be interpreted many ways - # of projects and relative portion of overall funding are two options.

I'm not a fan of such portfolio measures as they might incent PMs and sponsors to "green shift" their status reporting and hide true project health. Objective measures such as overall cost variance for the portfolio or benefits realized are more useful.

Kiron
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1 reply by Keith Novak
Dec 01, 2023 8:02 PM
Keith Novak
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I had never heard the term "green shift" before but I certainly recognize it.

I have heard the phrase "There is too much red and yellow on this chart." and then observing exactly that; rationalizing why we can improve the status color. Then later execs are surprised how some project could be green for so long and suddenly turn very red.
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Abolfazl Yousefi Darestani Manager, Quality and Continuous Improvement| Hörmann-TNR Industrial Doors Newmarket, Ontario, Canada
Keith and Kiron made valid points.
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Keith Novak Tukwila, Wa, United States
Dec 01, 2023 7:21 AM
Replying to Kiron Bondale
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Melissa -

To add to Keith's feedback, percentage of portfolio can also be interpreted many ways - # of projects and relative portion of overall funding are two options.

I'm not a fan of such portfolio measures as they might incent PMs and sponsors to "green shift" their status reporting and hide true project health. Objective measures such as overall cost variance for the portfolio or benefits realized are more useful.

Kiron
I had never heard the term "green shift" before but I certainly recognize it.

I have heard the phrase "There is too much red and yellow on this chart." and then observing exactly that; rationalizing why we can improve the status color. Then later execs are surprised how some project could be green for so long and suddenly turn very red.

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