Page 294 - Project+

Progress or resolution to the action item

Closed date

Status Reports

Status reports are a written summary of the progress of the project and are much more
detailed than dashboards. Status reports should be distributed according to the
communications plan and a copy retained with the project records. Status reports
might take a couple of forms. For example, as the project manager, you might require
team members to send you a brief weekly status report that describes the following

items:

Progress since last reporting period

Progress expected this reporting period

Progress expected next reporting period

Obstacles preventing work from being completed

This sounds a lot like the daily standup meetings I talked about in the Agile process. In
my experience, I find a daily standup meeting to be more effective for small project
teams and more informative than a written status report. If you’re managing a large

project with several project managers or project assistants with their own teams, a
written status report is more efficient and will help you construct the stakeholder
status report.

The status report that’s distributed to stakeholders should cover several areas of the
project. Some of the elements of this status report might include the following:

Progress since last reporting period

Progress expected this reporting period

Progress expected next reporting period

Review of the project schedule including scheduled and actual completion dates

Budget review

Risk review

Schedule updates or changes

Resource updates or changes

Change requests

Review of issues with high or medium impact

Notes/comments/announcements

Leave time at the end of the meeting for questions. If you don’t know the answers,
don’t bluff. Let them know you’ll research the answer and get back to them and then

294