Project Report Tips

Creating a project status report is essential to the success of your project. Even more so than project schedules, they drive the project. Moreover, project status reports drive communication on the project. They make sure everyone is on the same page. Some people can't read their way out of a paper bag with a project schedule in hand, but with a good project status report, they can be brought up to speed in 5 minutes or less. Forget about customizing your status report to your different reader groups – create a great one-size-fits-all status report and satisfy all key stakeholders without driving yourself crazy in the process.

5 Steps to a Great Project Status Report

1. Create a one-size-fits-all report

First, examine the landscape of who will be receiving and reviewing your project status report. The project team and project customer are sure recipients; beyond that, think about other key stakeholders and senior management.

Find a one-size-fits-all solution so that you can avoid spending hours each week putting together a variety of project status reports for each project you manage in hopes of satisfying the individual wants and needs of each recipient. Your team and customer need to know:

• The details of what recently happened on the project
• What is in progress
• What's coming up in the next 1-2 weeks
• What's coming up a little further off that is very critical and requires additional planning and preparation

For your customer, consider providing financial health info. Your senior management will definitely want that, too. Finally, for your senior management and CEO, be sure to include a project health dashboard. This allows them to see how your project is doing each week in less than 10 seconds.

2. Dashboards

As I mentioned, senior management – especially C-level individuals in the organization – are all about dashboards. And you want those C-levels to know about your project because they can quickly knock down project barriers to success. Getting your project noticed by executives is a critical step to success. As mentioned above, when creating a “project dashboard” think high-level project health.

Consider a red-yellow-green stoplight approach to resource status, financial status, issue status, etc. Include the detail for these, but know that these individuals will likely only access the details if there are problems that need to be resolved by them personally.

3. What Happened, What's Happening, What Will Happen

Grabbing some custom reporting views of the project and adding them to the status report is a great way to show the detail of what just finished, what's in progress, and what's due to start. If your project is behind, this is also a great way to show which tasks are slipping and need special attention.

There also needs to be the usual narrative section, of course, that states what just finished, what's in progress, and what starts next week - usually with bullets that outline major tasks that fit into these categories.

4. Don't Forget the Money

Next, don't forget the financial aspect. I've mentioned this already, but since the good project manager is updating the financial forecast every week with actuals, this information will be at your fingertips to add to the status report. A simple status to show overall budget, costs-to-date plus planned costs the rest of the way resulting in an expected profit and profit margin. You may need to consult with management to determine how much of this the customer should see or if they should see any of it – resulting in probably the only customized section of the report.

5. Issues, change orders and risks.

Finally, list all major issues with who they are assigned to and what the current status is – and do the exact same for change orders and risks.

Keep the closed issues, change orders and risks on there – it's always good to show where a project has been in case the project manager or team has to change personnel or leadership quickly. The status report is usually the fastest way to get new project resources up-to-date fast.

6. Summary / call for input

How your project status reports look may be up to a standard that has been set forth in your organization as part of your project management policies and methodology. However, nearly every project client I've had has had requests of their own about how and what they want to see on the project status report. As project managers, we are going to accommodate those requests because ultimately high customer satisfaction and understanding is what we are after, right?

Priority Matrix and Project Status Reports

The screenshots in the article above come from Priority Matrix. Priority Matrix is a lightweight project management solution that provides managers and executives with both high-leveled and detailed project oversight capabilities.

Teams working in Priority Matrix not only reap the benefits of having one collective project management space in which they can prioritize, delegate, and communicate, but also, gain access to actionable and insightful reports that are based on the information entered into the system. Priority Matrix works for you while you work for yourself. Sign up for a trial below to unleash your full potential and get started today! Author: The above is a post from Brad Egeland. Brad is a business solution designer and an information technology / project management consultant and author with over 25 years of  experience. Brad is married, a father of 11 and lives in sunny Las Vegas, NV. You can learn more about Brad, or contact him through the following: