Status that is green at every level of summary and red in the underlying work, because each layer softens what it passes up.
Project management folklore. It is the reporting-chain mechanism behind Campbell's law: each layer rounds toward the acceptable, and the aggregate is green until the deadline arrives.
In practice
- A programme reports green for eleven months and slips a year in the twelfth, and every status report was defensible on the day it was written.
- A team lead marks a workstream amber, the portfolio office records it as green with a watch note, and the board sees a clean page.
- Standing
- The reporting-chain mechanism behind Campbell's law.
- Subject
- Organizations & Bureaucracy
- Essay
- The folklore of office life