Project health review checklist
Portfolio reviews fail by reading status fields aloud. Everything is green, nobody asks why, and the project that collapses next month was green at every meeting until it was not. A useful review reads the things nobody has to remember to update.
Fortnightly, forty-five minutes for a portfolio of a dozen projects. Same people every time, and a decision recorded against every project that is not clearly fine.
The checklist
- 01Sort the portfolio by health score and start at the bottomOwner: Delivery lead
- 02Read the staleness warnings before reading any status fieldOwner: Delivery lead
- 03Check the setup score on every project started this quarterOwner: Project manager
- 04Compare milestones completed against time elapsed, project by projectOwner: Project manager
- 05Check allocated hours against logged hours for the last fortnightOwner: Delivery lead
- 06Look at who is over-allocated across several projects at onceOwner: Delivery lead
- 07Open the latest meeting signals on anything flaggedOwner: Delivery lead
- 08Decide one action per project that is not clearly fineOwner: Delivery lead
- 09Name the owner and the date for each actionOwner: Delivery lead
- 10Check the previous fortnight's actions actually happenedOwner: Delivery lead
What goes wrong
- Starting at the top. Healthy projects consume the time and the meeting ends before the difficult ones.
- Reading status instead of evidence. A status field is an opinion typed under mild social pressure.
- A low setup score ignored because the project is delivering anyway. Setup gaps surface later, usually at handover.
- No action recorded, so the same amber project is discussed identically at the next four reviews.
- Never checking last fortnight's actions, which teaches everyone that actions are optional.
Questions people ask
What does the setup score measure?
How completely a project was configured: the structure a project needs to be tracked properly. A low score on a live project usually means something was skipped at the start.
How long a meeting gap is too long?
It is a tenant setting, defaulting to fourteen days. Set it to match how your projects actually run, then treat a breach as a prompt rather than a verdict.
Should the review look at hours?
Yes, allocated against logged for the last fortnight. A project quietly absorbing more people than planned is visible there before it is visible anywhere else.