Every operating partner has sat through the meeting where a programme that was green for months turns red in a single slide. The system was always going to be late. What changed was the report.
The trade has a word for it. A watermelon project is green on the outside and red inside, and it is the most common way an ERP or platform rollout surprises a board.
What the status said, and what was happening
Why the colour lags
Nobody sets out to hide a problem. Status is usually written by the people doing the work, for a committee that cannot test it, in an organisation where amber invites scrutiny and red invites blame. So green stays green until it cannot, and the decline arrives all at once.
The drop is never sudden. It is only reported suddenly.
The signals that arrive before the colour
A programme in trouble leaves evidence long before the status changes, and none of it needs a specialist to read.
Five signs it is already amber
- The baseline has moved more than once Every re-plan is a slip with a new name.
- Change requests queue rather than close Scope is growing faster than it is being decided.
- The same risks, word for word, every week Nobody is working them; they are being copied forward.
- Testing got shorter and go-live did not move The time came out of the part that finds problems.
- One person holds the cutover plan If they are away that weekend, so is the plan.
If two or more of these are true, the colour on the report is out of date, whatever it says.
Listen to the language
Steering packs have their own dialect, and most of it is honest people describing a hard situation as gently as they can. It still pays to translate.
What the steering pack says, and what it means
- “We are re-baselining.”
- We were late. Now we are on time again, by definition.
- “There is a dependency on another team.”
- When this slips, it will be somebody else's fault.
- “We have de-scoped to protect the date.”
- The missing parts are coming back as phase two.
- “We are amber.”
- It is worse than that. Please do not ask how much worse.
Three questions that get a real answer
- How many times has the baseline moved, and what moved it?
- Which decision is waiting on this committee, and since when?
- Who would run cutover weekend if the person running it were ill?
The first tells you whether the plan is a plan. The second tells you whether the committee is governing or watching. The third tells you whether go-live depends on a single name.
What good looks like
A healthy programme reports amber early and often, because somebody is allowed to. The status is written by somebody with nothing to protect, change requests are priced from the fund's side of the table, and the baseline only moves for a reason the board agreed.
That is what an independent programme office is for. Not more reporting. A report that is true in the week it is written.
