The challenge of accurate software project status reporting: a two-stage model incorporating status errors and reporting bias

Project managers perceive and report project status. Recognizing that their status perceptions might be wrong and that they may not faithfully report what they believe, leads to a natural question – how different is true software project status from reported status? Here, we construct a two-stage model which accounts for project manager errors in perception and bias that might be applied before reporting status to executives. We call the combined effect of errors in perception and bias, project status distortion. The probabilistic model has roots in information theory and uses discrete project status from traffic light reporting. The true status of projects of varying risk were elicited from a panel of five experts, and formed the model input. Key findings suggest that executives should be skeptical of favorable status reports, and that for higher risk projects executives should concentrate on decreasing bias if they are to improve the accuracy of project reporting.