Project Status Reporting: Weekly, Overall, and Agile Approaches

This report analyzes project status reporting in the corporate world, focusing on weekly and overall project status reports. The weekly report provides a snapshot of events, milestones, and recommendations, aiding in information flow and problem identification. However, it can be time-consuming and repetitive. The overall project status report offers a concise overview of the entire project, assisting management in investment decisions, but can be affected by misreporting due to team dynamics. The report also discusses the challenges and pitfalls of traffic light reports and the differences between reports for teams, sponsors, and steering committees, as well as the differences between Agile and traditional management approaches. The author concludes by suggesting the need for further research to expand on the topic.

Running head: PROJECT STATUS REPORTING 1
Project Status Reporting
Student’s name
Student’s ID NO
City
Date

2
PROJECT STATUS REPORTING
Project Status Reporting
Project status reporting is a large array of discussion in the contemporary corporate
world. In this paper, I mainly focus on the weekly project status report and the report of
overall project status. The weekly project status report gives an overview of the events that
have taken place during the seven days of the week. The matters arising from the project are
milestones achieved and recommendations. The advantage of using the weekly project
reports is that it helps control the flow of information within a team and also helps the team
or organization to identify problems that could hinder the success of the project at an earlier
stage. (SampleTemplates, 2013).
It also helps quantify the work done by the team or the organization within the whole
week. Its disadvantages of using the weekly status report are that it is time-consuming. While
the management can just make a single whole project report status, they have to make weekly
updates rather than investing the time in other disciplines. The other one is that there might
be repeating the same information on a weekly basis. Another one is that some of the staff do
note put down some of the accomplishments and problems encountered within the week
which makes it hard for sourcing. (TeamReporter, 2016)
On the other hand, the report of overall project status is a timely and concise report
that gives the details about of the whole project the company has done. It gives a glimpse at
the milestones achieved, problems encountered and the goals that were set for the project.
From the data provided by the project report, it is easy for the management or executive to
decide whether to continue investing in the project or to give it up. It also gives the problems
that were implied during the project which can be used to benchmark other footer projects the
management of an organization may wish to invest into. However, there are some pitfalls in
the use of report of overall project status. One of them is that the existence of a divide

3
PROJECT STATUS REPORTING
between the management and the staff may cause misreporting which may pin down the
organization. The other one is that if there is a lack of trust between the workers and the
executives can also cause misreporting. (Keil, 2014). For improvements to be made there
needs to come up a team of experts who will choose one of the status reports and align it with
the goals of the most project thus making it more effective and efficient rather than using all
of them in the corporate world.
The main challenge and pitfall of the traffic lights report are that there are usual
mistakes in reporting due to mismanagement of information. Lack of keen understanding of
the traffic light rules also may cause misreporting. (Chegg, 2015). There exists some
difference between the status reports given to teams, sponsors and the steering committee.
The project report prepared for the team is usually inclusive and accommodating. (Sample,
2008) On the other hand, the one for sponsors needs to be made to meet the expectation of
the sponsors and is usually made according to the instructions of the sponsor.
(SponseredProjectServise, 2008) The one for steering committee is usually subjective to help
the committee come up with a well-planned project proposal. The reporting in Agile
management approach always gives focus to consumer satisfaction and consumer well-being
and is also not reliable to complex information while in traditional approach the report is
always cantered on the meeting of timelines and relies on complex definitive information.
(Layton, 2016)
Conclusion
There is a need for a more future study to make more expansive outlook on the topic since
much has been left out because of summarization.

4
PROJECT STATUS REPORTING
References
Chegg. (2015, July 14). Question: A)Discuss the challenges and pitfalls of traffic l...
Retrieved May 5, 2017, from Chegg website: http://www.chegg.com/homework-
help/questions-and-answers/discuss-challenges-pitfalls-traffic-light-reports-b-explain-
difference-status-reports-prov-q16771229
Keil, M. (2014, March 18). The Pitfalls of Project Status Reporting. Retrieved May 5, 2017,
from MITSloan: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-pitfalls-of-project-status-
reporting/
Layton, M. C. (2016, September 21). Comparing Agile Project Management and the
Traditional Waterfall Method. Retrieved May 5, 2017, from Dummies web site:
http://www.dummies.com/careers/project-management/timed-release-product-road-
maps/
Sample, J. (2008, April 18). Team report. Retrieved May 5, 2017, from cpp web site:
https://www.cpp.com/Pdfs/smp261148.pdf
SampleTemplates. (2013, June 23). 10 Sample Weekly Status Report Templates to Download.
Retrieved May 5, 2017, from Sample, templates web site:
https://www.sampletemplates.com/business-templates/weekly-status-report-
template.html
SponseredProjectServise. (2008, August 20). Reporting to the Sponsor. Retrieved May 5,
2017, from UOregon Web site: https://orsa.uoregon.edu/index.cfm?
toplevcat=awards&page=AW_22_Reporting_to_Sponsor

5
PROJECT STATUS REPORTING
TeamReporter. (2016, April 24). Weekly Status Reports. Retrieved May 5, 2017, from Team
Reporter web site: http://www.teamreporterapp.com/weekly-status-reports/