Red Light, Green Light

From inception, each and every project is tracked and ratedmonthly on four dashboard criteria: performance to budget,performance to schedule, delivery of business results andrisk. The individual measures and triggers used to track thestatus of those four criteria are determined at the outsetof the project by the project manager, a planning managerand other relevant executives.

Each of the four categories is then assigned a color statuseach month by the project manager after he reviews thatcategory's relevant measures. Finally, the overall projectis assigned a color for the month. By design, the technologyitself is as simple to use as possible: an Excel spreadsheetand PowerPoint presentation template.

Four-Way Intersection

A few years ago GM North America's midsize and luxury carunit, or Mid/Lux unit, upgraded from Windows 3.1 to 95. Forthat particular project, the four dashboard criteria weremeasured as follows.

PERFORMANCE TO BUDGET was determined bycomparing the budgeted per-seat cost of the rollout againstthe actual costs, which included charges for the contractorsto physically install the program, the per-seat cost of thesoftware itself and the cost of training. GM North Americahad determined previously that it would be cheaper tomaintain and support Windows 95 than it had been to maintainWindows 3.1, which meant that the cost of the rollout wasexpected to go down each month as the savings realized bythe new installations accrued. This dividend was built intothe budget; therefore, in order to gauge its performance tobudget, the Mid/Lux unit needed to track how many seats weredeployed each month.