About Performance Thresholds

To help you assess the relative performance, earned value, index, and other calculations for a WBS, project, or portfolio, P6 includes performance thresholds with visual indicators. These thresholds capture the current calculation, variance, or metric and re-routes it into one of four ranges or "buckets" as follows:

Exceptional: Indicates that the metric falls into a range your organization considers better than normal or exceeding expectations.
Acceptable: Indicates that the metric falls into a range your organization considers aligned with normal or within expectations.
Warning: Indicates that the metric falls into a range your organization considers below normal. The project may need attention.
Critical: Indicates that the metric falls into a range your organization considers far below normal. The project likely requires significant corrective action.

Instead of each project member assessing a variance of, say 2.9%, and wondering if that is good or bad, thresholds will assign an easily recognized visual indicator based on standards and business goals at your organization. With thresholds, everyone can agree what 2.9% under means.

As an example, if you consider falling 50 days behind schedule to be critical, set the critical thresholds setting to 50 days. For each performance metric, you can specify the values used to determine if the result is exceptional, acceptable, warning, or critical. Project health is calculated based on performance schedule thresholds described in this topic.

Note: The same metric result may be Acceptable for one project and a Warning for another.

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