Project Status: Reporting the Truth

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Communications Management   Stakeholder Management  

There are many different methods for reporting status on a project. You can tell people the project is going great right up until the day you have to re-baseline the schedule and delay it five months to the dismay of everyone waiting on the project. Or you can tell everyone the project is going horribly and will be late right up until the day you deliver on time to the amazement of everyone waiting on the project.

While neither of these methods is preferable, there are some project managers who will set high expectations or low expectations strategically depending upon their stakeholders. In reporting project status, as in all things, the truth will serve you best.

High-Level Expectations
The first part of reporting the project status is to set up high-level expectations. The people you are reporting to--the stakeholders, decision makers, clients and organization leaders--should have a good understanding of how you are reporting the project status and what expectations they should have from the project. If you are capturing task updates every week and verifying the quality of work product every month, then let them know that.

By setting the expectations early on in the project, the audience will understand how the project status is derived--and that will drive the decisions they make to support the project throughout the project lifecycle.

Err on Which Side?
In …

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