Dear Anon,
The request of your boss is actually quite reasonable. And, a good Project Status Report can be a work of art. That is, too often such reports are either too high level or too detailed. Typically, management is looking for the summary information they need at a glance and if desired they can access or login to the project management or PPM tool for further details. Developing a good Project Status Report is a balancing act and you certainly do not want to re-key data or commit yourself to a half day per week to prepare. You might consider showing the following kinds of information:
- Overall Assessment of the Project Status (Green, Yellow, Red, etc.)
- Schedule Status
- Budget Status
- Key accomplishments of the Week (just the key ones)
- Accomplishments Expected (not activities) of the Next Week
- Issues Requiring Stakeholder Attention
- And a link to or attachment of your project schedule
This kind of Project Status Report should take no more then 15 to 30 minutes to prepare. Many organizations have their project managers do this kind of Project Status Report right within their PPM tool such as ITG, Clarity, etc, others make us of their collaboration platform such as SharePoint, Lotus, etc, and others simply prepare the Project Status Report in Word or Excel.
Of course, there is no one best Project Status Report or one best approach for going about it. And, as the organization evolves, changes, and improves vis a vis project management tooling, training, and best practices, etc, the Project Status Report is likely to change to reflect these things.
Keep it simple. A Project Status report is about the "Project Status" not the "Project Detail". Too often, a Project Status Report can become overly detailed. And sometimes, not only does the overly detailed Project Status Report not meet the needs of its recipients, but it can also take too much time and effort of the Project Manager to manually produce vis a vis re-keying from other project documents and tools. Project Status Reports can be easy to maintain and a useful tool for all those involved or they can be bothersome and a waste of time. Therein lies the art. Good luck..!
