Joseph Baniak Project Management Contingencies

Writing a good status report

Good, timely Information is the life blood of most projects. Regular, timely, accurate status reporting is critical. Different projects have different information needs, but all of them share the basic need for timely, complete status updates on a regular basis. Best way:  face-to-face contact with project team members. But this doesn’t eliminate the need for a solid paper trail. It is important to produce clear  written status reports on a regular basis.

Click to learn more about Joseph Baniak.

Report Information you need from all team members:
What have you done since your last status report?
Provide full detail.
What are you going to do next?

Additional questions: , “Problems and how you dealt with them. What do you need to get better results?

When it comes to reports from people on the project team, the general rule of thumb for frequency is once a week. In some cases, once every two weeks may be enough. Two weeks is generally too long. Too much can happen in that time. You reports should also be the foundation of reports to management. If the status reports from your team are complete, developing a status report for the whole project should be relatively easy  just cut and paste.