Project Management

Include Information of Value in the Status Reports - Not the Mundane

Let’s face it: Status Reports are typically not as effective as they should be. This is true for team members that submit Status Reports to the project manager, as well as project managers that are submitting Status Reports to their major stakeholders. One of the major reasons is that the people completing the reports look upon them as a chore and not as a way to communicate valuable information. You typically get a Status Report that is very brief and says nothing, or else you get a Status Report that contains all the mundane activities that a person did.

The person creating the Status Reports needs to write it so that the reader can use the information in them in the decision-making process. The information needs to be of value. The writer should ask himself whether the information on the Status Report is there to really communicate something valuable or is it just taking up space.

Typically the Status Report should focus on the following:

• Accomplishments against the assigned activities on the schedule

• Comments on work that should be completed but is behind schedule

• Problems (issues) encountered, the impact to the project, and what is being done to resolve them

• Scope change requests

• Newly identified risks

• Observations that will be useful to the reader

If you focus on this type of information in your Status Report, you will find that the information is meaningful and can be used to help manage the project and keep the stakeholders informed. People will stop paying attention if you report on the trivial events of the reporting period.

Use Appendices for the Details

You want to focus on meaningful information in the status report. However, you may find that some of your audience finds meaning in the exceptions while others find meaning in the details.

Does that mean you need to create two status reports? You should not need to. One of the ways to satisfy both audiences is to write the formal Status Report as an exception-based document and include the details as appendices (attachments). For instance, most readers want to know the accomplishments from the prior period and the planned accomplishments for the next period. However, your manager might want to see the entire schedule. To satisfy both, just include the schedule as an appendix. If you are emailing the information, you could email the current schedule as a separate document from the basic Status Report.

A similar example is a situation where you note an accomplishment about completing a significant amount of training. Your client might want to see the names of the people trained. Again, do not include this level of detail in the body of the report. Include the information in an appendix instead.

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Wideman Glossary Term of the Week - Risk Quantification

• Process of applying values to the various aspects of a risk.

• Evaluating the probability of risk event, effect and occurrence.

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