Tuesday 8 October 2013

Weekly Reports

Part of being a good Project Manager is being a good communicator.  A good communicator can convey information both orally and in writing.  One of the key communications is a weekly status report.  This report can become an historic archive of the way that the project is progressing and can allow all stakeholders to see where you are against your schedule and budget and see what the major risks and issues are.

I have a template that I use each week, so that the stake holders can see the progress easily.  This report is produced on Friday afternoon and distributed to the required stakeholders.  I then place this report into a folder within my project site on SharePoint so that anyone can see the report.  The target of this report is to be a single printed page, as any more may take too long for a senior stakeholder to read.  I try to make the report graphical, so at a glance you can see which areas require attention.