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How to Write a Project Status Report

status report

A status report is a document that shows the progress of a project during its lifecycle. 
It typically includes information such as the current status of project milestones, budget updates, risks and issues encountered, and any changes to the project scope or schedule. Project status reports are essential tools for keeping stakeholders informed about the project’s health and ensuring transparency and accountability throughout its lifecycle. They help project managers and team members track progress, identify areas needing attention, and make informed decisions to keep the project on track toward its objectives.

Top content that should be included in a status report

Any organization may have their own requirements, but, regardless of the format used, all have similar content that can include:

  1. Overall project health:
    A typical Green/Yellow/Red representation of the project status to quickly identify if all is going according to plan or help is required.
  2. Status Summary:
    This is where the project manager briefly describes, in plain language, the progress for the past period.
  3. Planned for Next Period:
    This is where the project manager describes what the team will be focusing until the next report. This field is very useful as it is used as a baseline for future reports.
  4. Issues and Risks:
    Top 5 issues and risk the team is currently dealing with and pose a challenge.
  5. Schedule update :
    A comparison of the current timeline against the project schedule.
  6. Budget  update:
    A review of what the project has spent as well as the forecast against the project budget.
  7. Major milestones status:
    The status of the most important milestones that have been communicated to the stakeholders.
status report

Tips for writing a status report

The goal of a status report is to show the project’s progress quickly and clearly.

  • Keep it concise: Whenever writing any summary, keep it brief and to the point. The goal is to convey the message in just a few seconds. Don’t add to many details that can confuse a reader, unless it is specifically required by your stakeholders to do so.
  • Always have a baseline: it is important to be able to compare your schedule and budget against a baseline to fully gauge  its progress.
  • Limit Issues and Risks to 5 each: In a weekly status report, the goal is to make things “pop”. By limiting your issues and risk to the top 5, you can prioritize where help is required without overwhelming the stakeholders
  • Summarize: Keep the information simple and don’t be tempted to write everything broken down in every detail. If questions arise and details are required, follow up and address them in a separate venue. This is especially true for schedule and budget; for the budget show the rolled up totals and for the schedule focus on the end date only.

Every organization may require a different approach, but good project management should be consistent across the board. If specifics are required, they can always be address in a separate document.

To help your project management journey, consider Completix. It has been created with status reports as a cornerstones of its design and can guide you to automatically produce the best status report for your projects with minimal effort.

status report

Consider uniformity in project status reports

When dealing with multiple projects, one of the main challenge is the ability to quickly spot issues and deviations. To address this, all status reports should have the same look and feel, so a reader knows exactly where to look and what to expect.

Uniformity of delivery is a key part of a PMO process, along with templates and clear steps to follow.  Completix Project Governance is part of our platform and can help you define and follow the perfect process for your business.

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