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How to Write a Project Status Report

status report

A status report is a document that shows the progress of a project during its lifecycle. 
It typically includes information such as the current status of project milestones, budget updates, risks and issues encountered, and any changes to the project scope or schedule. Project status reports are essential tools for keeping stakeholders informed about the project’s health and ensuring transparency and accountability throughout its lifecycle. They help project managers and team members track progress, identify areas needing attention, and make informed decisions to keep the project on track toward its objectives.

Top content that should be included in a status report

Any organization may have their own requirements, but, regardless of the format used, all have similar content that can include:

  1. Overall project health:
    A typical Green/Yellow/Red representation of the project status to quickly identify if all is going according to plan or help is required.
  2. Status Summary:
    This is where the project manager briefly describes, in plain language, the progress for the past period.
  3. Planned for Next Period:
    This is where the project manager describes what the team will be focusing until the next report. This field is very useful as it is used as a baseline for future reports.
  4. Issues and Risks:
    Top 5 issues and risk the team is currently dealing with and pose a challenge.
  5. Schedule update :
    A comparison of the current timeline against the project schedule.
  6. Budget  update:
    A review of what the project has spent as well as the forecast against the project budget.
  7. Major milestones status:
    The status of the most important milestones that have been communicated to the stakeholders.
status report

Tips for writing a status report

The goal of a status report is to show the project’s progress quickly and clearly.

  • Keep it concise: Whenever writing any summary, keep it brief and to the point. The goal is to convey the message in just a few seconds. Don’t add to many details that can confuse a reader, unless it is specifically required by your stakeholders to do so.
  • Always have a baseline: it is important to be able to compare your schedule and budget against a baseline to fully gauge  its progress.
  • Limit Issues and Risks to 5 each: In a weekly status report, the goal is to make things “pop”. By limiting your issues and risk to the top 5, you can prioritize where help is required without overwhelming the stakeholders
  • Summarize: Keep the information simple and don’t be tempted to write everything broken down in every detail. If questions arise and details are required, follow up and address them in a separate venue. This is especially true for schedule and budget; for the budget show the rolled up totals and for the schedule focus on the end date only.

Every organization may require a different approach, but good project management should be consistent across the board. If specifics are required, they can always be address in a separate document.

To help your project management journey, consider Completix. It has been created with status reports as a cornerstones of its design and can guide you to automatically produce the best status report for your projects with minimal effort.

status report

Consider uniformity in project status reports

When dealing with multiple projects, one of the main challenge is the ability to quickly spot issues and deviations. To address this, all status reports should have the same look and feel, so a reader knows exactly where to look and what to expect.

Uniformity of delivery is a key part of a PMO process, along with templates and clear steps to follow.  Completix Project Governance is part of our platform and can help you define and follow the perfect process for your business.

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Weekly Status Report

Changelog

Apr 20, 2024

  • New – Document search is indexed and fully integrated with external drives (OD. GD. etc).
  • Improved – Schedule and RAID filters have been improved 
  • Improved – Milestones in gantt chart are placed in different level when colliding
  • Improved – CSV exports data improvement
  • Improved – Dashboards columns are also customizable “per user” and can be set directly in the dashboard.
  • Fix – Fixed bugs in schedule and RAID where resources couldn’t be copied via context menu

Mar 16, 2024

  • New – OneDrive Integration (2-way) 
  • New – Google Drive Integration (2-way)
  • New – Schedule Kanban view
  • New – Tracking and Operational initiatives have been simplified and add the ability to migrate to a full project
  • Improved – Document templates can now be organized into folders

Jan 29, 2024

  • Improved – Site Settings’ UI has a new look with explanation and guide
  • New – Portfolio status can now be exported unified 
  • New – Jira Integration (2-way)
  • New– MS Project Integration (2-way)
  • New– Simplified view – Record is committed automatically

Dec 22, 2023

  • New – Introduced a FREE plan
  • New – Introduced a new trigger-based Warning engine
  • New – Added charts for budget’s status
  • New– Added Portfolio Manager role
  • New– Added Portfolio view in My Dash for assigned Portfolio Managers
  • New – Project type can be hidden if not in use
  • Improved – Status reports now export in PDF landscape for better readability

Nov 25, 2023

  • Fix – Bugs and UI tune-ups
  • New – RAID Cards in Kanban mode have an updated look
  • New – Added 5 custom budget fields. You can track your own custom financial targets and display them in the various dashboards and status reports
  • New – Budget templates can now be created by importing directly from MS Excel
  • New– When, in a project, components are hidden, all related options are also hidden
  • New– Added a Resource view for Portfolios

Nov 5, 2023

  • Fix – Bugs and UI tune-ups
  • New – Introduced Operational and Task Tracking as type of initiatives
  • New – Project type tags are now colored differently for a better experience
  • New – Project types are now tracked in the Dashboards
  • New– Added ability to show/hide all details’ components separately in the Overview page 
  • New – Added a “Note” field in vendor expenses.

Oct 5, 2023

  • Fix – Bugs and UI tune-ups
  • New – Introduced Financials lock
  • New – Dashboards: added alert icons for values over the baseline 

Sep 6, 2023

  • Fix – Fixed FY calculation in PM Dashboard
  • New – Introduced a new Trial start Welcome guided setup
  • New – Table’s headers have a new and improved look
  • New – Added option to include/exclude any given project in the overall Budget and/or Financials calculations
  • New – Added option to enable/disable the budget fiscal on a per project basis

Aug 25, 2023

  • Fix – Bugs and UI tune-ups
  • Update – We updated all internal libraries to the latest version 
  • New – Introduced a Simplified project type to be used for task tracking type activities
  • New – Increased the number of components that can be turned off separately
  • New – Tasks can now be added directly from the dashboards
  • New – The Trial plan has been simplified by turning off, by default, all advanced components. All features can be turn back on in the Site settings
  • New – Individual users can now customize their dashboards by show/hide columns of data. Go to “My Account” to customize it.

Aug 10, 2023

  • Fix – Bugs and UI tune-ups
  • New – Grouping of resources in MyTeams
  • New – Pre-built budget “Estimates vs Actuals”
  • New – Status report now has a new widget: Summary bar
  • New – More components can be turned off separately
  • New – New tasks can be added directly from the dashboard

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