"The plan or report does not look right." Check in this order. One. Which planning structure is assigned to this plan type? Two. Is the resource format the planner needs enabled? Three. Does the actual cost map to a node in the reporting structure? Four. Is the reporting structure assigned to this project or project type? Five. Has summarization run since the change? Six. Was the structure changed after plans were built against it?
Then eight cases.
One. "The report has a large 'other' bucket." Actual costs not mapping to reporting nodes. The most common RBS symptom — and it grows.
Two. "Project managers will not use the plan." THEY PLAN IN A SPREADSHEET INSTEAD. The structure is too complex. And you find out at the first forecast cycle — weeks later, from a number that does not reconcile, rather than from anybody telling you.
Three. "We restructured the RBS and existing plans broke." The failure this module exists to prevent.
Four. "I cannot plan a lump sum." The financial resource class is not enabled. Lesson 3.
Five. "I cannot plan by named person." The person format is not enabled on the structure.
Six. "Every project has its own one-off resources." Project-level maintenance enabled with no governance. Lesson 9.
Seven. "The report changed and the executive noticed." Reporting structure altered and resummarized without communicating.
Eight. "Plan and actual cannot be compared." The planning and reporting structures do not map cleanly to each other.
Three of eight are design failures from the first five lessons. AND THE SECOND ONE IS THE MOST DAMAGING, BECAUSE NOBODY REPORTS IT. A project manager who finds the structure unusable does not raise a ticket. They open a spreadsheet, and everything downstream — forecasts, portfolio reporting, the CFO's monthly review — quietly stops being about what is really happening. That is why Lesson 5's usability test is a ten-minute exercise with an actual project manager, before anything is configured.