Tracking Project Statuses using Rainbow colors – VIBGYOR
One of the key responsibilities of a TPM is to track program/project statuses. RAG (Red, Amber, Green) are the standard colors used to track project statuses. However, they are not enough to track all the statuses. Here is an alternative method to track statuses using Rainbow colors – VIBGYOR.
| Color | Status | Meaning | Industry Standard? | Mnemonic to help you remember |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Violet | Future / To do | Planned but not yet started | No | Violet –> Vision –> Future |
| Indigo | Dropped | Dropped because it does not make business sense | No | Indigo –> Ink blue –> Dropped a bottle of ink –> Dropped project |
| Blue | Done | Completed | Yes | Blue skies –> Evokes feeling of happiness –> Done projects = happiness |
| Green | On-track | Going as per plan | Yes | Green stop light –> Continue to drive |
| Yellow | Slight risk | Potential risks that might delay the project however mitigation plan in place to bring it back to Green | Mostly (Some use Amber instead of Yellow to represent this status) | Yellow stop light –> Slow down |
| Orange | On-hold | Awaiting a decision or partner dependencies and on-hold | No | Color and status starts with an “O” |
| Red | Off track | Significantly behind plan either in meeting the date or the scope | Yes | Red stop light –> Stop and re-evaluate |
Setting guidelines for changing project to Yellow / Red status
Depending on how stringent your project tracking needs to be, you can determine guidelines for changing project status to Yellow / Red. For ex: Status changes to Yellow if your project is going to be delayed by >2 weeks but less than a month. It changes to Red if the project timeline is going to be delayed by more than a month. Similarly you can set guidelines for scope tolerance as well.
It is important to get alignment on the status colors and their meaning with team members so that these colors mean the same across the organization. Once you set these guidelines, try not to change as it is going to be difficult to retrain everyone to understand the new guidelines. Use appropriate change management to change the statuses from one to another.
Hope this helps you track your project statuses better.
