Your Project Status Reports, like all communications, will vary with the audience. For large projects, your two main audiences are the Executive Steering Committee and the Project Sponsors. All status reports should have heading level information such as the Project Name and Number, a brief description, and the date and author(s) of the report.

Listed here are the elements I recommend including on the status report, with the designation “ESC” if you should include this item on the Executive Steering Committee report and “PS” for inclusion on the Project Sponsor report.

• The Project Health Scorecard (defined in the posts preceding this one) – ESC, PS
• High Impact Issues – ESC, PS
• High Exposure Risks – ESC, PS
• Upcoming Major Milestones and dates – ESC, PS
• Key activities completed since the last report – PS
• Upcoming key activities – PS
• Upcoming dates where key project team members have a planned absence – PS
• Call-outs (comments of significance you want to include in the report but don’t fit into the other categories) – ESC, PS

You can use MS Word, Excel or PowerPoint to format the report. Make it pleasing to the eye and uncluttered. In a future post, I will show you how to design a status report page on your SharePoint Project Site.