Why do programmes that look green still miss?

The programmes that frighten me are not the ones reporting red. A red programme has at least admitted it has a problem, and attention follows. The dangerous ones are those that glow green month after month and then miss anyway, because by the time the truth arrives there is no runway left to do anything about it.

The first reason green lies is that status colour often measures comfort, not reality. A team reports green because nothing has gone visibly wrong yet, not because they have evidence that everything is on track. Absence of bad news gets reported as good news, and those are not the same thing. Real green should be a claim backed by evidence, not a feeling that things seem fine.

The second reason is that the people closest to the work are often the most optimistic about it, and the most reluctant to be the bearer of bad news. Each layer rounds the status up a little, to stay positive, to avoid alarming the layer above, to buy time to fix it quietly. By the time the report reaches the board it has been gently rounded green several times over, and the small honest doubts at the bottom have been polished out.

The third reason is that green frequently describes activity rather than outcome. The tasks are being done, the burn-down looks healthy, everyone is busy. But busy is not the same as on course. A programme can be entirely on top of its task list and still be heading confidently toward a result that will not actually meet the need, and a status that tracks activity will never catch that.

What I look for underneath the colour is evidence and dissent. Can the team show me why they are green, with something more than assertion. And does anyone in the room ever disagree with the status. A programme where no one ever pushes back on green is not a healthy programme. It is one where it has become uncomfortable to tell the truth.

For a board, the single most useful habit is to ask how a green programme reports when the news is bad, and to reward the team that brings a problem early rather than punishing it. The behaviour you reward is the behaviour you will get, right up until the programme you trusted misses without warning.