RAG status report template
Clear RAG criteria, workstream-level RAG breakdown, trend tracking and escalation triggers.
Most RAG status reports are subjective. One PM's amber is another's red. This template gives you defensible RAG criteria so that "amber" means the same thing every week, across every workstream, and across every PM in your portfolio.
RAG is set per workstream against four dimensions: scope, schedule, cost, quality. Each dimension is scored against explicit criteria (e.g. amber on cost = forecast 5–10% over budget; red = forecast 10%+ over). The overall RAG is the worst dimension, not an average.
In Pocket PMO, RAG is calculated automatically from live data (milestone slippage, budget variance, RAID severity) and the PM can override with a documented reason, the AI Project Team will challenge unjustified overrides.
What's inside
- •Defensible RAG criteria for scope, schedule, cost, quality
- •Per-workstream RAG with overall rollup
- •4-week trend column (improving / static / worsening)
- •Escalation triggers (when red, what happens automatically)
- •PM override block (if data-derived RAG is wrong, why?)
When to use it
- •Weekly steering committee pack
- •Portfolio dashboards (rolled up across projects)
- •PMO health-check reviews
Template structure
Every section below appears in the downloadable PDF as a ready-to-fill table.
RAG criteria
Workstream RAG
Red items
PM overrides
Use it live in Pocket PMO
The PDF is fine. The live version is better: auto-fill from your project, full audit trail on every change, AI Project Team drafts the tricky sections, and steering committees see one canonical version, not a stale spreadsheet copy.