Project Management Status Report Template

Project Management Status Report Template

Project Management Status Report Template Free Download

A project Management Status Report Template is a document that summarizes a project’s overall progress against the projected project plan. The goal of a project status report is to keep all stakeholders informed of progress, to mitigate issues before they arise, and to ensure that the project will land within the designated time frame.

A project status report helps to improve communication across an organization, as everyone is kept in the loop on how the project is progressing. It also helps to simplify the communication process with a single, formalized report that everyone can refer to to stay up to date. Additionally, a project status report improves the organizational support for your project by maintaining tight communication among team members to ensure all goals and objectives are met.

The Purposes of Project Status Reports

One of the many benefits of using a project status report is that it forces an organization to agree to certain project milestones and measures of progress at the very beginning of that project. A project manager gathers those important criteria and creates a project status report that will prove useful to everyone who needs to see it.

Project status reports also facilitate the following:

• Create and enable buy-in from stakeholders 
• Provide transparency into the progress toward milestones 
• Help identify issues and risks, so course correction can happen quickly 
• Pinpoint the progress of work done by individuals, teams, and resources, so you can rotate out and bring in staff in a timely manner. 
• For example, UX designers start early in a web design project by mapping out the site architecture and wireframes. 
• The work of copywriters and designers follows, and so on. 
• Provide a high-level gauge of project health 
• Prevent unpleasant surprises (to team members, clients, and stakeholders) 
• Furnish a method for keeping project members and 
• leaders accountable 
• Provide a paper trail 
• Prevent scope creep 
• Present the right information to the intended audience(s)

Project Management Status Report Template Guidelines

1-Distribution

• The status report is addressed to the project's sponsor. 
• The project's steering committee is copied 
• Other project stakeholders are copied as directed by the project sponsor 
• The report is produced at least bi-weekly 
• Meetings are scheduled on at least a monthly basis with the sponsor and other appropriate individuals to review report contents

2-Variance Analysis

• Project performance is measured against a baseline budget, schedule and quality. 
• Baseline budget, schedule and quality are derived from an executed contract plus those changes approved through the contractually defined change order process.  
• Unapproved changes are excluded from the baseline. 
• Performance measurement is displayed in a summary form so as to clearly communicate variance without the need for significant investigation Performance measurement uses 
• Earned Value techniques 
• Underlying causes of any negative variance are identified;  corrective action and responsibility are prescribed 
• Corrective action needing approved change orders are separately identified 
• Future status and progress are quantitatively forecasted in terms of budget, schedule and quality.

3-Issue Reporting

• Issues with potential impact on baseline budget, schedule and quality targets are identified 
• Other issues of possible interest to status report recipients are identified 
• The location of the project's official issue log is referenced should the reader desire further information 
• Issues are described, and identify named responsibility, priority, date open, date close, current status, and resolution 
• The historical trend of open issues is display in such a way that the ready can easily determine whether the trend is consistent with the project's end date (that number of open issues is decreasing and trending to zero toward the project's end.

4-Major Activities

• Any events, tasks, milestones, or other items of potential interest to the Status 
• Report's audience from the last reporting are identified 
• Any planned or anticipated events, tasks, milestones, or other items of potential interest to the 
• Status Report's audience for the upcoming reporting period are identified Any areas requiring the reader's participation are highlighted

Project Status Report Metrics Template

Project Status Report Metrics Template

Baseline vs. Actual Earned Value

Baseline vs. Actual Earned Value

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Reference: smartsheet