Simplified weekly Project Status report (easy but effective)

First things first, a Project Status Report issued to an agreed set of stakeholders with a weekly rhythm is, in my view, an essential part of the role of Project Manager. I justified the reasons why in a post many years ago so won't repeat that here. Within your organisation, there may be an agreed format (hopefully with a set of guidelines) but if not, here is my suggested simplified content which I developed for an organisation where many projects were managed by people without Project Management as their primary skillset. It represents the essence of what you should report and hopefully it is simple to follow. Try and keep to a regular rhythm (e.g. My preference is to issue a report before the end of day on Friday) else some stakeholder may ask you where it is as per this cartoon!

RAG Status - Quick view whether project is going well or not

To give a quick view of the project status to the readers of the report, the traffic light system should be used (Red, Amber or Green) to indicate whether it is in good shape or not. To avoid this becoming a subjective judgement or be overly complex to determine, I like a simple approach as described below but first I need to step back to some Project Management fundamentals:

What does success represent for the Project Team?

Every project needs an Owner, often called the Sponsor but I prefer the term "Owner" as they own the project understanding why it is needed and agreeing what success represents for the Project Team. If you are asked to run a project with no owner defined you may need to go hunting for your Owner/Sponsor. Your absolute last resort is to use your line manager as a proxy for the Owner as they probably asked you to be the Project Manager for this project!

The classic definition of project success is "to Time, Cost and Quality" so let us delve into each dimension:

• Time is typically represented by a key milestone (or sometimes several) such as "go live date".
• Cost is an agreed budget to complete the project.
• Quality is really two dimensions combined, Quality (ultimately whether the final deliverable is fit for purpose) and Scope (some definition of what the final deliverable contains). Both are somewhat difficult to easily measure during project execution so I normally drop this dimension for RAG status reporting purposes.

When agreeing any targets for Project Team success, you also need to agree whether there is any wiggle room or tolerance as it is often referred to. So, for example, you might agree a target go live date of 2nd January 2023 or up to two weeks later and a budget of £100,000 plus 10%. 

In an ideal world these success measures should be agreed after some robust planning and estimating culminating in some sort of Project Definition document giving firm foundations for the project but even if the success targets are invented out of thin air, it really doesn't matter in terms of the RAG status reporting.

How to determine RAG status?

I like to have a RAG status for each agreed dimension of success. Then you need to assign the appropriate colour based on your honest forecast of whether the team will achieve the particular success measures as follows:

• Green - still on target for success.
• Amber - off target for success but with some remedial actions, can still achieve the success target (with any tolerance).
• Red - no longer believe that the target can be met (even with any tolerance).

If not Green there needs to be some commentary to augment the RAG status, in the case of Amber in particular, this should include specific actions (or maybe help requested) with the aim of returning to Green.

Remember that when driving your car, traffic lights move from Green to Amber and then to Red so in the vast majority of circumstances I would expect a project status report to move to Amber before becoming Red. There are always exceptions to the rule such as this Roman Construction Project Manager reporting Red "Mount Vesuvius has erupted destroying the Pompeii construction site". 

An example

In this example there are two time success measures and one cost one. The "Full go live" measure remains Green as it is anticipated that the "Pilot starts" measure will return to Green within a month. Note that the RAG is shown for the current report and previous report and that there is space for a short commentary which in the case of Amber in particular should detail the recovery actions to return the RAG status to Green.

Main commentary

The next mandatory element of the status report is some free form commentary. I like to see up to 3 different elements in this commentary:

1. If necessary, an expansion on the project status (more than can be provided in the RAG status box).
2. What has been undertaken / achieved this week.
3. What is happening next week (or weeks).

Point #3 is useful as a prompt for inexperienced Project Managers as it forces them to look ahead. Many project team members focus on the task in hand but it is essential that Project Managers look ahead in the plan (ideally a running 6 weeks minimum) as then you can guide / prompt the team appropriately e.g. "have you scheduled that review workshop which is planned for 3 weeks time remembering that it is difficult to get time from all the reviewers?".

Other elements of the report in an ideal world

Now I have covered the minimum I would expect in a simplified Project Status Report, let me cover some other elements I include in a template that are desirable. The more experienced the Project Manager, the more I expect in these sections.

Intermediate milestones

It is good to provide a table of a few key milestones along the journey towards the success milestone in the RAG status. For each milestone, it is good to show:

• baseline date from the plan.
• forecast date if the milestone has yet to be reached.
• actual date if the milestone has been reached.

Top 3 Issues

Stakeholders don't want to see every minor issue so I like to force the Project Manager to prioritise by insisting on only 3. I request inclusion of actions to resolve (maybe in italics). See this article for more on Issue Management.

Top 3 Risks

Again, Stakeholders don't want to see every risk to project success so I like to force the Project Manager to prioritise by insisting on only 3. I request inclusion of the Risk Management response. See this article for more on Risk Management.

Conclusion

Whether you are an experienced Project Manager or not, creation of a weekly Project Status Report is an important discipline to keep to. The key elements are a good objective (and honest) RAG status and some more detailed commentary on what has happened and what is due to happen. This can be augmented by a table of intermediate milestones and the inclusion of top 3 Issue and Risks. In terms of format, I particular like PowerPoint as it constrains the space available. Excel is also a reasonable tool. Good luck with your reporting!