{"id":6811,"date":"2011-07-12T08:37:27","date_gmt":"2011-07-12T15:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=6811"},"modified":"2011-07-07T20:41:07","modified_gmt":"2011-07-08T03:41:07","slug":"the-project-managers-multitool-the-status-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=6811","title":{"rendered":"The Project Manager’s Multitool: The Status Report"},"content":{"rendered":"
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via Flickr by Joel Penner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Status reports (or whatever your particular methodological school calls them) are frequently maligned \u2013 c.f. \u201cTPS Reports\u201d in the movie Office Space \u2013 <\/em>and misused.<\/p>\n

They are the weekly report that you just have to grind out for your project or program that shows you have been doing something, that you suspect no one reads and you suspect everyone just sends to the recycle bin; no one is really sure what their purpose is for but no one is willing to kill either.<\/p>\n

However, experts elevate the commonplace status report to a powerful, multitasking, time saving tool. In fact, it can be an integration point for several of the more heavyweight PMBOK tools that you use as a project manager.<\/p>\n

What can you do with a status report? What should go into a status report, and why?<\/p>\n

One point of view is that it is strictly a \u201creport\u201d you are keeping it very short to just a set of variances with a couple of comments about what got done last week, what will get done next week, and what your concerns are.<\/p>\n

This is frankly not very informative \u2013 it doesn’t convey much visibility into the overall roadmap and where you are on it, and if the news is bad, doesn’t say anything about what the plan for remediation of the issues might be. Project managers who have been around the block know that if the status report is read, it will provoke questions (to put it mildly) and if it is not read, why produce it and distribute it?<\/p>\n

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via Flickr by richardmasoner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You can produce the variance metrics for yourself privately, but the power of the status report as a report is as a communication, coordination, and integration tool \u2013 a multitool<\/strong> that you can literally carry with you and use in different contexts. Here are a few of the elements you can include:<\/p>\n