How to create a project status report template.
Need to know how your team is doing on their latest assignment? Learn how to make a project status report template to keep up with business operations.
Stakeholders manage many employees and teams. It’s not always easy to keep track of who’s doing what and whether all your various projects are on track. A project status report is a document that tracks the progress of individual projects against the planned goals.
Since project statuses are regularly reviewed, creating a template that follows the same format and can be completed quickly is a great way to maximize the efficiency of weekly project check-ins. Here are some tips to help you make a status report template.
Information to include in a project status report template.
A good project status report template should include plenty of details to keep you up to date on the latest project happenings, but not so much that it becomes cumbersome to read.
To keep your template short and sweet — without leaving out any essential information — here are some suggestions about what to include in your project status report template:
- Date
- Action summary since last status report
- Overall project timeline completion
- Upcoming milestones and tasks
- Action item(s)
- Budget status
- Risks, issues, and mitigation plans
If you use the same template for each check-in, you’ll know exactly where to look for specific information, making your job that much easier every time you get a new project status report.
How often should you check in on projects?
There’s no set rule for how often you should get a new project status report, but most businesses review reports weekly. That’s typically enough time for projects to advance but not so long that stakeholders fall behind on the details.
How to make a weekly project status report template.
If you want to make your weekly status report template from scratch, the easiest place to start is with a spreadsheet. The table is already there, making it easy to label the rows in the left column with the information you want and let the project manager fill out the column to the right.
Once you have your rows labeled, save your template as a PDF. PDF documents maintain their formatting, which helps when you don’t know what kind of devices your team members will use to view the template. You can easily convert Excel to PDF right through your web browser. In the event you need to edit your template, you can simply convert the PDF back to Excel.
Project status reports are all about collaboration. If you want to collaborate with team members while building your weekly project status report template, you can edit the PDF online to add comments and sticky notes, plus make minor changes.
Additional resources.
- Ready to share your template with project managers? Learn how to create and share a link to your PDF document for real-time collaboration.
- Want to compile all your weekly project status reports into one document? Merge PDFs online to make your weekly reports more manageable.
- Some project status reports contain sensitive business information. Learn how to password protect your PDF to secure your data.
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Content as a Service v2 - acrobat-hub - Tuesday, October 24, 2023 at 10:18