Challenges and pitfalls of Traffic Status Reporting

This report focuses on the challenges and pitfalls of traffic status reporting. The accuracy of project managers in giving genuine feedback to project status is the main challenge that RAG reporting face. The challenges and pitfalls that are identified can be solved by following few steps. The steps are following RAG status template that would include schedule and budget performance. Additionally, project managers and senior managers should mention the behavior that is expected from a project that reports via RAG reporting.

Running Head: PROJECT STATUS REPORTING
Challenges and pitfalls of Traffic Status Reporting
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Introduction:
This report will mainly focus on project status reporting that provides status of project,
portfolio and programs to various stakeholders of the project including team members, sponsors
and steering committee. Traffic status report is one of the method adopted by the project and
portfolio managers to rate project status (Kerzner, 2017). The three colors of traffic light
including red, yellow and green act as an indicator for various actions. The importance of traffic
status reporting lies in accumulating all status reports of the project into a single spreadsheet.
This enables senior management in an organization to identify projects that are in problem and
take quick actions to support them. However, challenges arises with respect to accuracy of
project managers to give genuine reports on project status. The following paragraphs will
enlighten more on the challenges and pitfalls that traffic light reporting experience.
Challenges and pitfalls of traffic status reporting:
The main challenge that RAG reporting face as discussed earlier is the accuracy of
project managers in giving genuine feedback to project status. This is due to lack of trust on
project managers. Lack of trust might happen because of two reasons. First, project managers
might not have required experience, knowledge, confidence and understanding of project status
to identify which project is heading towards red (Creasy & Anantatmula, 2013). The information
gap is either due to miscommunication between managers and contractors or lack of information
on project control systems. The project managers can adopt two reviewing methods to ensure
that information provided to project managers are accurate and fair. The two reviewing methods
are surveillance review and assurance review that might help to build confidence in project
managers. Project managers due to lack of proper information might mark a project green when
it needs to be marked amber or red (Hornstein, 2015). They might fear senior management’s

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reaction on hearing that a project has gone out of control. As a result, to play safe, project
managers might not mark project status as red. They feel that it is better to mark the status as
green and deal with the problems themselves rather than highlighting the project red that would
invite a lot of attention and questions on the project. Therefore, accurate marking of the status
reports is not being done that might lead to chaos in the future.
Marking a status report red means the project has gone out of control and requires
immediate attention. Amber color indicates that delays are mild and everything is okay while
green indicates that the progress of the project is good and is doing well (Heldman, 2013). If
project managers due to fear of senior management marks a project status green that has gone out
of control, immediate action might not be taken to support it and the project will not be able to
meet predefined goals.
Solving issues related to traffic status reporting:
The challenges and pitfalls that are identified can be solved by following few steps. The
steps are following RAG status template that would include schedule and budget performance
(Wysocki, 2012). Additionally, project managers and senior managers should mention the
behavior that is expected from a project that reports via RAG reporting.
Difference between status reports provided to various project stakeholders:
Status reports can be divided into several individual reports that are presented before
various stakeholders. They are risk report, budget report and resource report. The risk report
conveys the existing risk whereas resource and budget report conveys resources used and project
costing to various stakeholders including internal and external stakeholders (Hornstein, 2015).
Project team members require two reports that is resource report and risk report. This is due to

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the fact they are the main builder of the project. They will accomplish any changes that are
required. Budget report is provided to the sponsors, as they need to know total cost of the project
and the amount that they have to invest. Status report as well as budget report is given to steering
committee. Risk report is shared with project team to help them analyze the project once again
and identify the pitfalls (Project Management Institute, 2013). After gathering all the mentioned
reports in spreadsheet, the final report is produced before senior managers. The report will
provide information about the budget, delays and existing risks in the project.
Conclusion:
From the above discussions, it can be concluded that, project status reports are used to
communicate progress of the project to project managers, senior managers and other internal and
external stakeholders. They convey progress of the project, budget estimated and resource
required to them. This will keep the project stakeholders updated about the present scenario of
the project. The status reports are rated according to their present situation. If the project has
gone out of control then it is marked red, while yellow indicates that everything is okay and
green indicating that all is going well. However, this rating system faces various pitfalls. Project
managers who are marking the status reports might not have the knowledge of project control
systems and rate projects wrongly. However, it can be eliminated by properly mentioning the
behavior that is expected of a project.

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