Integration progress: when red is good and green is bad

Integration programmes never go according to plan. They will have many significant issues that cannot be resolved by the integration team alone. So a key activity for the team is to foster an on going dialogue with the business that informs, captures issues, and secures timely decisions.

A popular way of communicating programme progress is by using traffic light reporting. The visual representation of all programme activities onto a few pages can highlight exceptional items that might otherwise be missed and the overall frosting of colour gives a good sense of progress, areas for attention and so on.

Usually the traffic light colours represent the following:

• Red - there is a significant problem and urgent and decisive action is needed
• Amber - there are problems and action is needed, though the project team has this in hand
• Green - implementation is progressing to plan and there are no serious issues

with White denoting "not yet started" and Black showing "completed".

As the integration team, if you’re not reporting (often large) areas of amber and red, then ask yourself if you are managing everyone’s expectations appropriately (remember, forewarned is forearmed and the business can take mitigating action if it gets enough notice).

As the business, if you’re not seeing areas of amber and red, then challenge your integration team about the issues and the decisions that they need you to make. It could be a sign that one of the merging businesses, unbeknownst to the other, has a “no bad news culture”. And the result of this was, for one acquisition, an additional £3m of cost and a four month delay to what should have been a nine month integration.