Dashboards are funny things (as we’ve talked about before).
On the one hand, they can make an incredibly complicated and overwhelming set of variables look pretty simple and easy-to-digest. A whole project at a glance!
On the other hand, project dashboards might simplify complexity, but they can also hide critical red flags – and can encourage something that we might call… a lazy review.
If all the colors are green, then it must be green!
… Right? …
Green Doesn’t Always Mean Go
Sometimes it’s not the isolated information, but how they work together.
A few years ago, we reviewed a two-year project of around $100 million. They had the standing oversight committee, and they reported on the classic project management triangle elements: timelines, scope, and budget. (Of course they also had more detailed metrics, but they rolled all of them up into the main categories.)
Overall – according to the dashboards and the committee updates – the project looked pretty healthy.
Both the scope and the budget were green. The timelines were flagged as orange, due to a few scheduling hiccups. But the project management team told the oversight group that these bumps were easily overcome, and the project would be back on track in no time.
All projects have bumps, right?
A closer review of the information suggested otherwise.
The Most Common Project Dashboard Red Flags
First of all, if a two-year project is eight months old and is already 4-5 months behind, that’s not a “delay” – that’s a red flag.
In the early days of a project, there are absolutely lots of unforeseen delays, and a heck of a lot of them can be remediated. I would never say it’s an unsurmountable scheduling death trap.
But it ain’t minor, either. (I would also question how the scope of activities is fine, if it’s behind? But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say that that was somehow closer to the mark.)
Looking at the bigger picture, there wasn’t a lot of runway to make up the lost time. A four-month delay in a five-year project could be just a blip.
But with only 16 months of supposedly full-capacity work planned, where were they going to squeeze in another 4-5 months’ worth of work?
Again, not impossible, but…
At this point, we were looking at the early stages of a project budget overrun — not because they’d overspent, but because their delivery pace didn’t match their burn rate.
And that was actually the lesser of two big problems.
What Salary-Heavy Projects Hide
Before we get into the bigger problem, let’s talk about the shark under the surface of many internal services projects.
One common element of a lot of internal services projects – in both public and private sectors – is that their expenses are heavily lop-sided toward salaries.
Unless you’re pulling in lots of consultants – and maybe your project involves constructing a new space – there’s a good chance that you’re going to be relying mostly on in-house employees to deliver.
Is that a project problem?
Absolutely not!
But it does add nuance to our straightforward dashboard.
Predictable Spending Isn’t the Same as Progress
The thing about salaries is that they’re paid out on a fixed schedule. Whether that’s every week, every two weeks, or every month, they’re meant to be pumped out on a predictable cycle.
Which means that the “spending” portion of the project is kind of on autopilot.
How does raise the alarm bells even further on the project we’re talking about now?
The budget looked fine, because all of the expenses were paid at exactly the right cadence: “By the end of Month 8, we were expecting to spend (for example) $30 million, and look! We’ve spent $30.6.”
Success!
But according to their timelines, they were only about halfway through where they should have been.
Which means that whatever they’ve delivered has cost them about double what they had originally projected.
The Budget Was Spent — But the Work Wasn’t Done
Many project dashboard red flags stem from performance metrics that track spend — but not pace or scope.
With salaries, there is no clearer 1:1 ratio of “time is money.” If your project relies heavily on salaries, you will most likely “achieve” your budget goal at the end whether you deliver or not.
All you have to do is wait out the clock. As long as the employees are paid, the budget will be dispersed.
But what are they doing with that time? If you’ve reached the end of the project timeline and you’ve spent your budget – and you haven’t delivered – what do you do?
Chances are, you’ll either have to de-scope, or you’ll have to ask for more money.
Unfortunately, with this project, they had to do both.
It became a monster whose costs went way over $200 million, and had less functionality to show for it.
But hey, their spending was on schedule, right?
Lesson: we can’t just look at the overall metrics – we have to look at the relationships between them to really know how the project is doing.
👇 Want to avoid being this story?
If you’re leading a complex public sector initiative — and want a fast, honest scan of how your project’s tracking — try the free Project Health Check. It takes five minutes, and it might catch the exact project dashboard red flags that tripped up this $100M failure.
You can also learn more about my services here, or explore more real-world insights in the Insights section.
