Green is a report, not evidence
Weeks before go-live, leadership is asked to approve a decision on reports written by the people being judged on delivery. Testing reports a pass rate. Migration reports a reconciliation. Cutover has a plan. The system integrator has an opinion, and its final milestone depends on the date holding.
None of that means anyone is misleading you. It means a status colour summarises a judgement, and the judgement is only as good as the evidence behind it. The question to ask is not “is it Green?” but “what would I open to see that it is true?”
Five questions for every critical claim
List the claims the go-live depends on across testing, data migration, integration, cutover and governance. For each one, ask the same five questions.
| Element | The question | What counts as evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Is the status current and specific? | A dated status that says what is done and what is not, not “on track” |
| Owner | Is there a named owner with authority? | One person who can make it true, not a team or a vendor |
| Evidence | Is there an artefact you can open? | A test log, a reconciliation output, a signed approval |
| Date | When will it be true? | A calendar date, not “before go-live” or “soon” |
| Action | What happens if it slips? | An agreed fallback, workaround or change to the plan |
Score each element present, partial or missing. Count only what is present. A claim with two of five is an assumption, whatever colour it is reported in.
Ten warning signs
- A test pass rate quoted without the scope it was measured on.
- A data reconciliation reported as passed, with no signed output anyone can open.
- UAT described as complete, but not signed by every business area or entity.
- A cutover plan that has never been rehearsed end to end.
- No agreed rollback point, or a rollback plan that has never been tested.
- Owners who are teams or vendors, not named people.
- Dates such as “before go-live” or “in hypercare”.
- RAID log items with an owner but no action.
- Workstream statuses that do not add up to the headline status.
- A go-live date tied to a payment milestone, with no independent view of readiness.
Check the claims against each other
Each workstream can be right about its own piece while the programme is not ready. The risks that delay go-lives most often sit between workstreams:
- A test pass rate that is high because the scope was reduced.
- A data reconciliation reported as passed while a business entity has not signed UAT.
- A cutover plan approved with no agreed rollback point.
- A headline status that cannot be traced to the workstream statuses beneath it.
A contradiction rarely means one team is wrong. Usually two teams are measuring different things, or the same thing at different dates. Each one is a question for the go/no-go meeting: which statement is true today, who owns closing the gap, and by when.
Dates that add go-lives in the UAE and Saudi Arabia
In the UAE, e-invoicing becomes mandatory on 1 January 2027 for businesses with revenue of AED 50 million or more. In Saudi Arabia, taxpayers in ZATCA’s twenty-fifth integration wave connect to the Fatoora platform by 1 February 2027. For many programmes, that adds an integration go-live alongside the ERP one, and the same five questions apply to it.
What to ask for in the go/no-go pack
A go/no-go pack built from workstream status reports tells you how each team feels about its piece. Ask for a pack built from claims instead:
- The list of critical readiness claims, not only workstream statuses.
- For each claim, the artefact behind it, or a note that there is none.
- The open defects, data issues and risks being accepted, and who accepted each one.
- The rollback point, and the person who can call it.
- The conditions that must be met before go-live, each with an owner and a date.
If you are not sure
Start with the evidence, not a new plan. A short, independent review of the readiness documents shows which claims hold and which are assumptions, and leaves time to act on them. If the decision is close, a fuller review gives the steering committee a Go, Conditional Go or No-Go with the conditions, owners and dates behind it.
Either way, it takes days rather than weeks when the documents are shared on day one: five business days for a Readiness Evidence Check, ten for a Go-Live Decision Review, with interviews only where the evidence conflicts.