Last week, California’s CIO announced that state projects information would now be available on a web-based dashboard, for everyone to see. This is one gutsy move. It takes a lot of courage (and little fear of failure) to decide to put up a web page that shows whether projects are on time, and on budget, along with 15 more indicators. It takes even more guts to make this information clear and simple: the dashboard will display red/yellow/green visual indicators for each project. Anyone will be able to understand the dashboard.

How transparent are you?

News like this should resonate with every project manager. Project status is the one thing that everyone needs to know, and yet sometimes it’s the hardest piece of information to get. When a project’s status is unknown, people make up their own ideas of how well (or how bad) the project is going.

Furthermore, this news also highlights the importance of having higher management support a project. When the State’s Chief Information Officer makes transparency a priority, it becomes much easier for project managers to achieve good visibility for their projects, and to convince their teams to believe in the project.