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86 • Green Project Management

“green,” the project manager should take additional time and thought
when communicating information about the greenality of a project. One
simple example is to use the words climate change rather than the words
global warming.
The physical medium of communications is a matter of “walking the
walk.” If the project manager intends to convey a high sense of greenality
in the project, then one of the key processes, communications, should be
green. For instance, instead of generating paper reports, use an internal
shared drive to hold and update data. Allow access to that drive to all
project team members. For the most part, it will be on a read-only basis,
but those who need to keep the files updated can have special permis-
sion to do so. Those changes must be tracked, however. Another example
would be to supply all key team members with an e-reader, allowing them
to download and view the latest files without carrying a lot of paper. For
more examples of greenality in communications, see Chapter 13, “Tips,
Tools, and Techniques to Green.”

jeoPardy and esCalation ProCesses
We are including a brief section on these two processes because we feel
that while they are important to any project, they will be critical to the
green project manager. Because green project management is so new, and
at times controversial, these processes may be used more frequently. Both
of these processes are related, so we have included them under the same
heading. A jeopardy process is a process that is put in place at the ide-
ation phase that allows everyone associated with the project to know how
a project jeopardy is communicated. A very simple one that we have used
before requires three colors to be used for your electronic alert: red, yel-
low, and green. When an issue arises that will directly affect the project’s
timeline, costs, quality, or greenality, an alert in red type is used to convey
the jeopardy information to upper management. The information in the
alert includes: the description of the jeopardy, what area of the project is
affected, and possible solutions (if known). The reason for it to be in red
is because that alerts upper management that it is an issue that requires
immediate attention, usually within 24 hours. An alert in yellow type has
the same information as the red alert, except that the issue defined is not
immediately affecting the project constraints, but rather is a potential