Project Status Reporting: Templates, Traffic Light Reports, and Differences in Approaches

This article discusses project status report templates, their advantages and disadvantages, challenges and pitfalls of traffic light reports, differences between status reports for teams, sponsors, and steering committees, and differences between traditional and agile project management approaches. It also includes a reference list.

Running head: PROJECT EXECUTION AND CONTROL
Project status reporting
Assessment 3,part A
Name of the Student: Shiva karki, Mohammad Asfaq

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PROJECT EXECUTION AND CONTROL
Table of Contents
Explaining two project status report template and discussing its advantages and disadvantages...3
Discuss the challenges and pitfalls of traffic light reports...............................................................6
Differences between the status reports as rendered for teams, sponsor and steering committee....7
Difference between traditional project management approaches and agile project management
approaches.......................................................................................................................................8
Reference List..................................................................................................................................9

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PROJECT EXECUTION AND CONTROL
Explaining two project status report template and discussing its advantages and
disadvantages
The two status report template is mentioned below with proper justification and
discussing its benefits and limitations individually.
Figure: Project status report

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PROJECT EXECUTION AND CONTROL
(Source: Serra &Kunc, 2015)
The above project status report elaborates each of the components in detail where it is
categorized as project summary, project key parameters, project schedule and project risks and
issues. This project status report is prepared by the project manager in order to note down the
status of the specific project they are working upon. Each project status report is unique and
differs largely. In this report, name of the project, name of the project manager code of project
and status date is mentioned to give detailed analysis of this specific project carried by the
project manager (Braglia & Frosolini, 2014).
To explain in detail about the above project status report, it is important to look at the
strengths and weakness of these reports. The strength of this project report is to understand the
status of the project and it gives clear presentation in the form of template where each of the
aspects is mentioned in detail. This project status report helps in monitoring as well as tracking
project costs and budget utilization (Hausdorf, Risavy & Hunter, 2014). The weakness of this
project status report is that the report does not talk about any qualitative characteristics about the
project status such as personality traits of individual, work climate and cultural norms that plays
major role.

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PROJECT EXECUTION AND CONTROL
Figure: Project status report
(Source: Marcelino-Sádaba et al., 2014)
The above project status report is prepared by the project manager as it help them in
decision-making process, monitoring the level of progress of a given project and communicating
with stakeholders and maintaining performing organization capability. Disadvantage, on the
other hand, there are situationwhen project manager tend to load the report with too much of
information.

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PROJECT EXECUTION AND CONTROL
Discuss the challenges and pitfalls of traffic light reports
Challenges of traffic light reports
Liability- One of the challenges of traffic light reports is liability. The reason behind this
can be a simple malfunction of the control system and that can result in road accident.
This issue needs to be solved and ensure optimum functionality of the software that
should reduce any malfunction of traffic light reports.
Privacy- One of the challenge of traffic light reports if privacy. On analysis, it is noted
that issue of privacy had become one of the major hindrance to its adoption or
commercialization (Marcelino-Sádaba et al., 2014).
Costs- One of the challenge of traffic light reports is costs. Huge costs need to be borne
while adopting any new technology for optimizing traffic status control and act as a
hindrance towards its adoption.
Pitfalls of traffic light reports
Rules used for allocating traffic light colors for measuring purpose are mostly
inconsistently defined as well as used
The second pitfall of traffic light report is that interpretation of these traffic lights are
rarely consistent with performance improvement
The third pitfall of traffic light report is that the rules of traffic lights are statistically
invalid assessment that is used for assessing current performance.

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PROJECT EXECUTION AND CONTROL
Differences between the status reports as rendered for teams, sponsor and steering
committee
Project status reports useful to teams
Within the project management lifecycle, the project manager prepares project status
reports and it is helpful for the team to acknowledge individual as well as team accomplishments
in a timely and organized way.
Project status reports useful to sponsor
Mostly, the Senior Manager who is representative of the business area gets the greatest
benefit from the project status report. The project sponsor has the responsibility to ensure that the
project status reports are received as well as reviewed on regular basis. This Project Sponsor
have to address the issue when the issue cannot be resolved by the Project Team.
Project status reports useful to committee
The Steering Committee should consist of key stakeholders that include the project
sponsor and the project owner. This Committee is responsible to provide executive level support
as well as guidance and direction. The Committee properly reviews the progress of the projects.
The Committee has the responsibility to address the issues that relates to scope, resources,
schedule as well as budget when escalated and in case the issue cannot be resolved by project
manager or project sponsor (Serra & Kunc, 2015).

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Difference between traditional project management approaches and agile project
management approaches
There are different project management approaches that are considered by the project
manager. In this section, two project management approaches are discussed named as traditional
project management approach and agile project management approaches. Using two of these
approaches together on the same project can be counter-productive as well as highly explosive
by nature. Using both of these approaches together can cause disorder in the overall company
systems that make the productivity lower.
To compare between these two approaches (traditional project management approaches
and agile project management approaches, it is found that Agile focus on adapting changes into
its core plan and still can be quite responsive but traditional one need manager to control the
changes.
By comparing both the project management approaches, it is advisable to use agile
project management approach by the project manager. By using agile management approach,
customer engagement will be given utmost priority and this approach is clearly the winner
among all the other management systems. After comparing the features with traditional
approaches, it is noted that features of Agile come to the fore and it is considered as one of the
top software used by companies in and across the world.

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Reference List
Braglia, M., &Frosolini, M. (2014). An integrated approach to implement project management
information systems within the extended enterprise. International Journal of Project
Management, 32(1), 18-29.
Hausdorf, P. A., Risavy, S. D., & Hunter, P. E. (2014). Effective HR Project
Execution. Advancing Human Resource Project Management, 206-237.
Marcelino-Sádaba, S., Pérez-Ezcurdia, A., Lazcano, A. M. E., & Villanueva, P. (2014). Project
risk management methodology for small firms. International Journal of Project
Management, 32(2), 327-340.
Serra, C. E. M., &Kunc, M. (2015). Benefits realisation management and its influence on project
success and on the execution of business strategies. International Journal of Project
Management, 33(1), 53-66.