RAG area chart

A RAG chart shows how well something is doing with traffic-light colours: red for problems, amber for "at risk", green for "going well". A RAG area chart fills the area under the line in the colour of the band its values fall into. Sintel BI also has a RAG line chart, which colours just the line.

You can use a single traffic-light colour to show the overall status of a project, or follow it over time. The RAG system is common in projects, for budget, quality, resources, performance and timelines, and tells senior management at a glance whether help or intervention is needed.

What each colour means

• Red: significant issues. One area such as budget, scope or time has gone beyond the tolerance agreed at the start. The matter needs to be escalated to senior management straight away.
• Amber: a problem is affecting performance, or the project is at risk. The project team and project manager can usually deal with it, although it can be worth making senior management aware.
• Green: everything is working as expected and performance is as planned. No action is needed.

Add a RAG area chart

1. In the designer, open the Charts tab of the Widgets pane and drag RAG Area Chart onto the dashboard. Resize it as required.
2. On the Assign Data tab, pick the Data source, add the number to track to Values and the time field to Category.
3. On the Properties tab, scroll to RAG Settings and enter the thresholds.
4. Name the chart and adjust its look, then save the dashboard.

The other settings are described in Common chart settings.

RAG Settings

Setting	What it does
Amber Threshold	Where amber starts. Values up to this number are red.
Green Threshold	Where green starts. Values between the two thresholds are amber, values above this number are green.
Amber Threshold Field / Green Threshold Field	Take the threshold from an aggregated field of the data source instead of a fixed number. Shown only when the data source has aggregated fields.
Invert RAG	For measures where lower is better. Low values become green and high values red, and Green Threshold is renamed Red Threshold.

The area is coloured only when both thresholds are set. See the RAG line chart for a worked example.