There are many benefits of providing a regular Project Status Report not only to give an overall update but also to get the Project Team to focus on ensuing all data is up to date. The content of the Status Report will vary from Organization to Organization so there is no right answer, it will depend on some of the following:

• Size of the project
• Lifecycle
• Budget
• Overall Organization

The key is that the Report should be Automatically Generated so that Project Stakeholders can focus on managing the Project, rather than spending hours generating the Report on a regular (weekly/monthly) basis. Here is an example of a Project Status Report that was built where is pulls data from various areas in a Project and renders the data automatically on a Dashboard. Once the Report is defined and built, it can be baked into a Template thereby it will automatically start rendering data when the Project starts.

The main components of a Status Report are:

• Schedule – progress compared to original Plan
• Budget
• Issues / Risks
• General Commentary

The report can then easily be saved as a PDF and archived thereby providing the ability to track the Project over time.