Best practices for status reporting

Effective reports are created with good presentation skills. Effective reports communicate better to the stakeholder and make project management much easier. Here are some simple aspects of an effective report:

• Keep it simple. Start with an executive summary for busy stakeholders.
• Understand your audience. Create different reports for different meetings, as necessary. For example, your CEO will not be interested in the task-level issues of the project, which is used for your team meetings.
• Timing is everything. Status reports are like newspapers and should be delivered promptly. Even the best reports lose value when delayed.
• Set proper expectations on all project parameters. Do not be tempted to promise more than what is baselined for your project.
• Brevity is valued. If you are presenting the report, practice to get the timing right. Keep spare some of the available time for questions and clarifications.
• Create a...