Actio Help

Action Management vs. Project Management

Both Action Management(AM) and Project Management(PM) have significant roles in any business. It is not a matter of one vs. the other as they both have their place.

Project Management: Is the best tool to use when the sequence of events is well known. C follows B follows A. Project Management includes a wide range of constructs to enable your project to be delivered on time, in budget. Good examples are building properties, rolling out new products or infrastructure, or any large multi-disciplined project.

Action Management: Is the best tool to use when the sequence of events is not well known, or the task in hand does not justify the large scale investment in time required to structure it in Project Management. Good examples are the escalation of issues from project management, managing actions from meetings, or simply organising your own tasks to ensure you get stuff done.

RAG Colors and Meanings

A fundamental difference between Action Management and Project Management is the way in which we treat RAG colors. In simple terms, Action Management focuses on ensuring we meet expected dates for agreed actions - effectively “looking after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves”.

Conversely Project Management uses much more complex concepts such as dependencies, lead and lag times etc to generate critical paths through a project so that you can predict whether or not the overall project will meet its planned timescales. 

Both are valid approaches to managing actions and projects - you apply which ever is appropriate to your application.

The following table summarises the differences in the color schemes used by two tools:

ColorAM MeaningPM Meaning
Distant Future More than one year away.
Future Within the next year. Activity to start in the future.
Plan This action should be in progress. Activity is Complete.
Due This action is due imminently. Activity is in progress, either ahead of schedule or on time.
Due Now This action is due today. Activity was started, but is behind schedule.
Overdue This action is overdue. Activity is late and hasn't started yet.
Dwell This action has just been closed/completed.
Closed This action is closed.
Closed over 1 year ago. This action was closed over 1 year ago.
Undated This action has no due date.


At the simplest level we define something going Red as something that is overdue. Note, this is different to the common usage in Project Management where red would indicate something that is likely to become overdue.


Action Management and Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson's Law is “Work expands to fill the time available”. This is a fundamental part of human nature and is closely related to the following human traits:

Action Management exploits many of these behaviours: