A status report with every project marked green looks like good news. Sometimes it is. Often it's a portfolio that's perfectly on schedule and quietly pointed at the wrong outcome.
RAG status answers one question well: is this individual project on track against its own plan? It's a useful question. It is also, on its own, an incomplete one — because a project can hit every milestone and still not matter.
The question a board actually needs answered is different: is what we're executing still the thing we agreed to execute?
Why RAG status hides drift
RAG was built for delivery risk, not strategic risk. A project manager marks green because the tasks are on schedule, the budget is broadly in line, and nothing's on fire this week. None of that measures whether the objective the project was meant to serve has shifted, been deprioritised, or quietly disappeared from the strategy altogether.
This is how a portfolio drifts without anyone lying about it. Every individual status is honest. The aggregate picture is still wrong.
What it costs
Operational directors hit every deadline and still get asked why nothing moved. PMOs file detailed, accurate, green-lit reports that nobody references in a strategic review — because the report answers a question the board stopped asking a year ago.
What closes the gap
- Objective health, tracked separately from project health — not started, in progress, complete, with a target date that means something.
- The two shown on the same screen. Not a project report here and a strategy deck there, reconciled twice a year by hand.
- A KPI layer underneath both — the measurable proof that a "complete" objective actually moved the number it was meant to move.
Project Director's Home dashboard puts Objectives Health and Project RAG Status side by side, deliberately, because a board should never have to hold two separate reports in their head to answer one question.
The reframe
Green doesn't mean right. It means on schedule. Those used to be close enough to the same thing. They aren't anymore, and the tools built for the old question haven't caught up.
See your objective health and your project status on one screen.
