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Traditional status meetings 
are ineffective

One of the many inefficient tasks in managing complex projects is getting status updates. The traditional method is to have a status meeting every two weeks where the PM spends time tracking down team members and asking them for the status of their tasks. This takes a lot of time for both parties and they usually update the meaningless, misleading, and harmful “percent complete” metric. 
So why do we do it? Until now there hasn’t been a better way.

A line graph showing project buffer usage over time. The x-axis is labeled "Reporting Date" and the y-axis "Days of Buffer Used." The graph includes a blue line labeled "Expected Delivery" and a black dot labeled "Finish Line." The background is color-coded to represent risk zones: green (low), yellow (medium), orange (high), and red (critical). The blue line trends upward into the red zone, indicating increasing buffer usage and approaching or exceeding risk thresholds as the milestone date nears.

What’s the most important metric?

Our customers’ number one goal is to achieve predictable end dates. So the most important status information consists of four data points:

  • The current end date
  • If and when it moves
  • By how much
  • What caused it

Playbook was designed to provide this information 24/7 in real-time without any extra effort from the PM or team members.

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FAQs and notes about real-time status reports

How does Playbook know the current end date?
Playbook facilitates Decentralized and Rolling Wave Planning, which results in a very accurate near-term plan. That means the critical path is accurate for all the currently active tasks, and therefore the current end date is accurate as well.
When do we find out about a delay?
Playbook also facilitates daily standup meetings very similar to the ones used by software teams following Scrum methodologies. But it goes a step further. Rather than everyone verbally sharing their updates during the meeting, they simply update their tasks in a 2-minute ritual before they go home each day. This makes the standup meeting much more efficient since all these updates are visible on the standup board in the morning.

And it has an additional benefit. If anyone makes an update that moves the end date of the milestone, they are instantly notified and asked to capture the reason for the impact. Playbook records the number of days it moved and the date it occurred, so this important information is captured accurately right when it happens.
How does everyone else find out about the change?
Anyone who is on the notification list will receive a notice that the end date moved, by how much, and why. If you’re not on the notification list, you will hear about it in the next standup meeting. Since the team does not need to verbally share all their updates every morning, they have time to talk about important things like how to mitigate delays that have just occurred and how to prevent future ones.
How do I know the reported status is accurate?
Playbook has many KPIs. One of them tells you how out-of-date the plan is, which essentially tells you how confident you should be in the reported status. The team members also have several indicators that show them where their out-of-date tasks are and tools to easily update them. They don’t want to be the person causing the out-of-date warning for the project so they naturally keep their own tasks up to date.
Where do I find this Information?

There are many reports available within Playbook. One of them shows the real-time status of every milestone, every delay that impacted it, when it happened, and how much delay it caused. It also shows what the team did to get back on track. This information can be shown for each individual milestone or every milestone in the entire company on one chart.

Status Reports Buffer Chart

 

Every delay is captured and categorized for future process improvement

Learning from past mistakes is key to improving future performance. With Playbook, every delay is captured and categorized so you can gain insight into everything that impacted the end date. Whether it was resource bottlenecks, miscommunication, or unforeseen external factors, you can implement targeted improvements and reduce the risk of delays in future projects. This focus on continuous process improvement ensures that each project runs smoother than the last.

Status Reports Impact Reasons

 

This seems too good to be true. Is it a lot of work for the team members?
Team members and project managers actually prefer this process over the traditional method. Most systems require the PM to track down each team member before the status meeting and ask them for their interpretation of “progress” on the list of tasks they discussed two weeks ago. And then this information is interpreted into a colored box on a slide somewhere. It’s slow, inaccurate, and frustrating.

And worse, the traditional metrics drive behavior that delays the project. With Playbook, the team members simply update their tasks at the end of the day, and that’s it.

We believe people want to do the right thing. They just need accurate information and tools that allow them to make correct decisions and perform their jobs most effectively.
Why are my current status metrics misleading?

It’s too detailed to go into here, but tracking “percent complete” encourages people to multitask. That makes everything take longer and prevents people from working on tasks in the right order. It’s also a very misleading metric that is the root cause of a lot of late surprises. There’s a detailed overview here: Your Favorite Report is Delaying Your Project.

Ready to transform your project management?

Let Playbook show you how Critical Chain Project Management can transform the way your team works.

 

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