Project Management:

Project Communication

Project Status Reports and Meetings

Why Status Reports?

Communicating about the status of your project is one of the most important components of project management. It will help you realistically allocate your time and resources, to strengthen control over the project, and free you up to manage.

Reviewing the current status allows you and your team members to track the progress of the project against the project plan and determining what you need to do if something is going wrong.

Keep It Short

Length of the status report depends on complexity and audience. When developing the report content, don't make the common mistake of trying to include in the status report everything about the project that anyone might want to know. You are targeting a busy audience, so keep it practical. Communicate the key information quickly so project team and supervisors had more time for solving problems and moving your project ahead.

Content of a Status Report

The content of each report should be specific to the audience receiving it. Use a fill-in-the-form approach as a document designed to present information in sections is far more useful to the reader. It will also help you to eliminate repetition and communicate more information in fewer words.

Project Status Meetings

Despite their value, e-communication tools such as virtual meetings, e-mails, and visibility rooms can not substitute for face-to-face status meetings or one-one-one communication. Communication happens in many ways - actually, the content itself makes only 7% of the message received by your prospect, while the way it looks and sounds makes the "remaining" 93%.

5 Factors that Make a Project a Success

By: Eric Verzuh, the author of The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management

To be successful, a project must have...:

3. Constant, effective communication among everyone involved in the project in order to coordinate action, recognize and solve problems, and react to changes... More

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