Your project success relies on you communicating project status. Use these tips and templates to help
Summary
- Keep your update short – aim for 5 minutes or less.
- If you have project objectives, compare progress with these objectives.
- Provide a 1-page document so that people can take away the key messages.
- Provide easy-to-understand status indicators – “Red / Amber / Green” (RAG) status for each update item.
By Jeff Armstrong . Published: 2009/11/03 12:14:00 PM, Last Updated: 2016/05/01 8:56:26 AM Answer URL
More detail
Project updates are a crucial part of project and product management.
- Keep your update short – aim for 5 minutes or less.
- Provide some introductory context – remember that everyone’s mind is elsewhere.
- Avoid going into detail – just give the headlines!
- If there are any issues, provide some suggested solutions.
- If you have project objectives, compare progress with these objectives.
- Show this side-by-side: Targets vs Actual Progress.
- RAG Status is a good way of highlighting good and bad progress.
- If you bear bad news, it always pays to have some suggested solutions.
- Provide a 1-page document so that people can take away the key messages.
- Once again – keep it simple.
- Use a Status Report or Dashboard template (see below).
- Provide easy-to-understand status indicators – “Red / Amber / Green” (RAG) status for each update item.
- RAG Status: this can be achieved with traffic lights, or dials, or just simply the Red, Amber, Green colours.
- Dials: While it may seem a bit of a gimmick, dials can be very popular with corporate stakeholders.
Short on time?
try one of these templates:
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