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Glossary
What is a RAG status?
A traffic-light health signal on delivery — on track, at risk, off track — that is a judgement by the person accountable, not a computation, and is only worth reading when the reasoning comes with it.
Computed status invites gaming and hides the interesting part: what changed, and what decision or help is needed. A RAG check-in that carries those two sentences is a governance signal; a bare green light is decoration.
Related terms
- Delivery outcome — The explicit close of a commitment: what actually shipped, and — when the result is not a clean delivery — what differed from the promise.
- Honest close — Ending a commitment by comparison rather than checkbox: delivered as committed, delivered with named differences, or not delivered — the difference recorded in words whenever the result was not clean.
This definition comes from building DeliverySheet — it takes a vague work request to a clear delivery decision, so the shape, owner, capacity, dependencies and open questions are on the table before anyone commits people or a date.