CommonProcess Helpproject managementstatus reporttraffic light systemproject scopeproject scheduleproject budgetproject risksproject issueschange requestsproject trackingred amber greenRAG statusproject healthproject monitoring
Project Status Reporting: Using Traffic Light Indicators for Effective Project Monitoring
Learn how to effectively use red, amber, and green traffic light indicators to monitor your project's health across scope, schedule, costs, risks, and issues for clear stakeholder communication and proactive management.
Our Recommendations to help assess project status.
When setting traffic light indicators (green, yellow, or red) for your project status report, critical assessment questions must be asked to determine colours for the indicators in Agilebars, Timebars and Costbars products.
Green indicates on-track performance, yellow signals caution with manageable challenges, and red alerts to significant problems requiring immediate intervention.
Use these questions when writing up the Executive Summary for the Status Report.
1. Scope
- Has the scope of the project changed?
- Have the assumptions changed?
- Have the outputs (deliverables and other direct results) in the Phase changed?
- Are there unresolved issues impacting upon the project scope?
- Is the project influenced by unexpected external factors?
2. Schedule
- Are there unresolved issues impacting upon the project schedule?
- Is the estimated schedule about to be missed?
- Project milestones with significant (>10%) variance from the project action plan
- Completion dates (Originally Planned, Already Revised, Actual)
- Reasons for variance
3. Cost
- Are there unresolved issues impacting upon the project budget?
- Will the approved budget be overrun?
- Does the actual time expended to date vary significantly (>10%) from the project plan?
4. Hours
- Are there unresolved issues impacting upon the project budget?
- Will the approved budget be overrun?
- Does the actual time expended to date vary significantly (>10%) from the project plan?
5. Risks
- Risk analysis section
- Identified risks and their contingency plans
- Percentage of risks that have escalated into issues
- Effectiveness of risk management practices
6. Issues
- Issues analysis section
- Identified issues and their consequences
- Issue resolution responsibility
- Issue trends (increasing/decreasing, critical nature)
7. Overall
- Are there significant changes requested?
- Change request analysis section
- Major changes requested and their impacts
- Change request trends (increasing/decreasing)
- Whether changes can continue at the same rate and stay within the 30% limit
Published: March 23, 2025
Last updated: March 25, 2025