Top 10 Tips for Project Status Reports

It is not uncommon that certain members of the leadership team may want an update with a different amount of detail than the standard status report. Perhaps the sponsor wants information to be included on their "private" status report such as an assessment (qualitative or quantitative) of how well the project team is performing, working together, how committed they are to the project, who on the project is going above and beyond the call of duty, who is hard to work with, etc. By this I don't mean the standard kind of project documents such as the Individual Performance Report or the Team Performance Report, rather something else.

For example, a project in which unknown to everyone else, one of the project team members is going to be promoted into a new role, and over the course of the project the top executive(s) are just as concerned with seeing how the team worked together on this project as they are with the project outcome - or so it can seem. Typically, this kind of information is sensitive, need to know, and you could make a case that this is something else - not the status report. But, if the executive or client calls it a status report, it tends to be one. In this context, I would seek to take the view that this "extra" work is okay and not counterproductive or additional "make busy" work for the PM.

Regarding adoption, I would seek to welcome and be open to any ideas for improvement. I am always amazed at how different the real issues of things like adoption can be as compared to what I might have assumed these issues to be, so if there is an adoption issue I would try to get to the bottom of it. I am a big fan of, and try to foster, the mindset that you only have the right to be critical of something if you can offer a helpful alternative, ie, constructive criticism is always welcomed but complaining for the sake of complaining is not. Whether or not the constructive criticism is accepted and applied, either for the project at hand or later as part of ongoing improvement of the PMO content assets, can be a matter of PMO policy.

One technique that I like to use when the occasion suits it is to call a meeting to discuss and resolve an issue. Let's say the issue is adoption and effective usage of the PSR. Before fixing the problem, I like to start by asking "how can we make the problem worse, really bad, and make everyone upset and agitated too?" And then convene a short brainstorming session to share and list such ideas on all of the wrong things that we could do to really make a mess of it. This can also be helpful to relieve any tension that may exist. After this short bit of fun, then we turn our attention to discussing and solving the problem at hand and to spot check all of those "bad things" to ensure that they won't be able to creep back into the picture.