A status report helps to efficiently communicate the progress of a project at regular intervals to project stakeholders. This report documents where the project is at a given time. It lets the concerned individuals know how successful the project has been so far in terms of meeting the project’s scope, time and cost requirements. By reviewing a status report, all the concerned individuals can be informed about how the project has been shaping up. A status report helps to prevent unexpected surprises to sponsors and stakeholders.
Status reports are usually distributed in a weekly or bi-weekly basis. A weekly status report appears to be the most preferred frequency. Although the requirements and the frequency of status reports can vary from one project to another, it is usually advisable to not have a gap of more than two weeks between status reports. For a status report to be effective and to stay on top of all the project tasks, important updates should be made in a timely manner. These reports can be sent electronically or through hard copies. After receiving updates from the project team members, a status report is prepared and distributed by the project manager. A project manager can send a status report to specific teams or committees within a project or only to the project sponsors. It is a good idea to distribute the status report to everyone involved in the project after the report has been reviewed by the sponsors.
A status report may contain the following sections:
General project information
Project status summary
Project milestone status
Planned accomplishments
Applicable project issues or risks
Project metrics
Applicable Additional comments
Part 2
In this scenario, the Project Manager should call for a meeting to discuss the issues with the technical team. This might be the best solution. This meeting will allow the project manager to communicate the concerns of the business users in the most effective manner; also the technical team will be able to share their perspectives right away. The use of other communication tools such as emails or instant messaging might lengthen and complicate the resolutions. I would let the technical team know that a meeting will be taking place to address some concerns that the business users have. It is important to convey the message in a non-confrontational and non-accusatory manner that the difference in the arrival time between the two teams is decreasing the business team’s productivity and impacting the overall project. I will ask them to participate in the meeting and welcome their suggestion and ask if they have a solution in mind and start the resolution process.
In this scenario, the best way to make the announcement would be to make hard copies of the announcement and distribute them to the large group of people. Each recipient would receive 2 copies of the document so that each recipient keep one copy and return the 2nd copy after signing the document stating that they reviewed it.
It appears the method used to send status reports to the