It’s time again to update the boss on that project. Here’s how to stand out as a star!
First, include three main sections: A Look Back, a Look Forward and Action Needed. The look back should be brief and tie to the look forward section of the last report. Spend most of your energy on the Look Forward and Action Needed sections, shoot for 20%-40%-40%. We include examples in blue font below.
Look Back:
- Project Completion metric: State how much more project was complete, compared to expectations given at the last update. “We expected to complete 5% of the project over the last week and we did that (or fell short/exceeded that). 43% of the project remains.”
- Buffer* Usage metric: Similarly, state how much buffer (see footnote below) was used since the last update. “We used 3 days out of the remaining 31 days of buffer.” Both of these quantitative status metrics should be presented on a buffer chart.
- Explain why 1 and 2 happened — in just a sentence or two.
Provide a clear crisp factual explanation. Don’t recite all the wonderful work that was done since the last update. Do that only if asked. You want the focus of this meeting to be looking forward.
Look Forward:
- State your completion target for the upcoming week. “We expect to complete 4% more next week.” Now list those tasks that may be at risk over the next 2-4 weeks AND why they risk running longer than the target. Be specific:
- “The task to approve specifications could take five days instead of two as the primary reviewer is out of the office. This is critical and will delay the project completion.”
- “The task to frame out the second floor could take seven days instead of the target of five because the arrival of framing lumber is currently two days behind. This will become critical if it delays two or more days.”
- “The painting task may not start as currently scheduled because the clients have not yet agreed on a paint color. This is not critical and will not be for three weeks.”
- List out the project’s current top risks. Include no fewer than three and no more than ten. Don’t repeat the timeline risks above, you covered that. Highlight changes in the risk characteristics of probability, impact, mitigations or contingencies since the last update. You must include all characteristics.
| Risk | Prob | Impact | Mitigation | Contingency | Action Due |
| Vendor A delivery will require rework | H | M | Send our expert to visit Vendor A | Prepare rework team if needed | Dec 06 |
| Quality may not approve code documentation | M | H | Expedite quality review task | To be provided next week. | Dec 20 |
| Testing could result in greater defects than expected. | M | M | Shift support resources to defect fixing. | Only fix “showstopper” defects. | Dec 11 |
Action needed:
- This section is MOST important. Don’t let the audience of this status report off the hook (typically bosses). Tell the boss (audience) explicitly the help they can provide. The actions should emerge from the Look Ahead section.
- Can we assign someone else to approving the specifications?
- Can we pay extra to expedite the delivering of the framing lumber?
- Our Vendor A expert has other priorities preventing a visit – can you negotiate this with her boss?
- Please explain to support why we need to have them shift energy to defect fixing for the next week.
* Buffer is an accumulation of safety time that’s typically included in task duration estimates — padding. A Project Management best practice is to extract this safety out of task estimates, accumulate it in a single “buffer” and place at the end of the critical path.
