Control Tower
Portfolio status at a glance
Six statuses across nine dimensions, so a programme in difficulty is visible before it becomes a crisis.
Status definitions
- PlanningPreparation continuing; delivery has not commenced.
- On TrackProgressing within schedule and cost tolerance.
- AttentionA tolerance has been breached; recovery action is defined.
- CriticalRecovery is not achievable without a decision at portfolio level.
- CompletedDelivered, commissioned and handed over.
- SuspendedWork stopped by decision; the reason is recorded.
Attention means a tolerance was breached and recovery is defined. Critical means recovery is not achievable without a portfolio-level decision. The distinction is what makes the status useful — a status that only ever reads amber tells nobody anything.
Dimensions monitored
Each programme carries a status against every dimension. An overall status is never better than its worst dimension.
How a status changes
Rules published before there is anything to report
A status is only worth reading if the rule that produced it was fixed in advance. Set out now, while every dimension reads “no data”, so that the first amber this board ever shows can be checked against a rule nobody wrote afterwards.
A status comes from a measurement, never from an opinion
Each dimension has a defined source — a contracted milestone date, a certified payment, an approvals register, a safety report. Where the source has produced nothing, the dimension reads no data. It does not read green.
No data is not good news
An unmeasured dimension is shown as unmeasured, in grey, and it holds the overall status down. The common failure of delivery dashboards is that absence of evidence renders identically to evidence of health, and the board goes green by neglect.
The overall status is the worst dimension, not the average
Averaging lets five comfortable dimensions bury one that is failing, which is precisely the dimension the board exists to surface. A programme is amber if anything about it is amber.
A tolerance is set before delivery, not after a breach
What counts as a breach on each dimension is recorded at contract signature. A tolerance widened in response to a breach is not a tolerance, and the change history is kept so that widening one is visible.
Attention and critical mean different things
Attention means a tolerance was breached and recovery is defined. Critical means recovery is not achievable without a portfolio-level decision — a re-scope, a re-phasing, or a stop. Collapsing the two is how everything becomes amber and the board stops being read.
A status that improves carries the reason it improved
Recovery is logged with what was done, by whom and when. Otherwise a programme can move from critical to green between two board meetings and nobody can say what changed except the colour.