Project Status Reports Are Broken. Here's How to Fix Them.

If you’re involved in any major “projects” at work – whether they’re technology projects, post-merger integration efforts, or some other kind of strategic initiative – you probably get an email in your inbox every week with a status report. It likely includes a combination of color-coded boxes, completion percentages, nifty charts, and of course, a list of risks and issues.

If you’re a really good teammate and leader, you might read every line, assess the differences since the last update, and respond with a few targeted questions and brilliant insights. But if you’re like most folks, you probably just glance at it and quickly move on.

Having both prepared and consumed thousands of status reports in my career, I’d like to think I know a thing or two about them. And if there’s one thing I’m certain about when it comes to status reports, it’s this: most of them are completely worthless.

Why? They’re focused on the wrong things (past performance vs. future probability of success) and they’re usually over-indexing on outdated, lagging indicators.

Most status reports focus on the golden triangle of scope, schedule, and budget. And while these are all “tried and true” KPIs for measuring the ultimate outcome of the project, they’re not terribly informative about the health of the effort while it’s still in flight and they certainly don’t give you much insight into go-forward outlook for the project.

Shifting scope usually doesn’t happen organically; it’s typically the result of poor planning, poor engagement and communication, or an incomplete understanding of your customer’s needs. Being over budget isn’t a root cause; it’s a symptom of deeper challenges. And being behind schedule isn’t the source of your project’s challenges; it’s the result of other issues.

The dissonance between these traditional project management metrics and the reality of project health is even more pronounced in today’s digital economy. Most of the projects we are doing aren’t “industrial” construction or engineering projects where a clear architecture, detailed plan, and exact budget were defined on Day 1. They are complex, cross-functional, human-centered, often technology-enabled initiatives where the “soft tissue” factors like team collaboration, customer engagement, and an intimate understanding of non-functional requirements usually make or break project success. And while critics may call these things “fluffy” or overly subjective, the fact of the matter is that they are critical measures of project health.

So what if you threw out your old status report and built a new one based on the things that actually predict project success? What if, instead of spending all your time and energy cobbling together metrics and information on imperfect lagging indicators, you reported out to your stakeholders and leadership on a few qualitative leading indicators of project success?

I think you should! In that spirit, here are four things I’d suggest you start including in your status report:

1.????Team Dynamic & Collaboration

Have you ever been on a dream team? One that just “clicks” and always finds a way to solve the most challenging problems? I’ve been fortunate to be a part of several of these teams and look back in awe at what we accomplished together. In each case, those teams delivered an outsized value for the size of the team and overcame every obstacle that popped up. When you find yourself on one of those teams – with the right collection of talent, the right leadership, the right clarity on roles and responsibilities, and the right motivation and purpose – you start to feel like the sky is the limit. No matter what type of problem comes your way or how challenging a given situation is, you have the confidence in one another, the clarity in approach, and the stellar communication and collaboration skills need to win.

But most status reports don’t reflect the health of the team. They should. If your team is still actively “storming” and lacks clear direction, roles, and responsibilities, it is highly likely that your project might end up in trouble. If, on the other hand, you’ve assembled the right mix of talent and personalities, clearly identified roles and responsibilities, aligned to an operating cadence and structure, and are communicating with one another exceptionally well, I’d bet money on the fact that your team is going to be successful.?

So what KPI should you use for this? Even a subject assessment by a project leader is a good starting point, but I’d encourage the team to collaboratively assess its health every week. You could use a simple red/yellow/green framework or a 1-10 scale and have team members vote. The goal here isn’t to make a science project out of it, but rather to get a quick pulse check and reflect that in your reporting.

2.????Customer Engagement & Alignment

Even if your team is performing at a high level, if you’re not in touch with the customer’s needs, your effort is likely doomed to fail. Your “customer” might be an external consumer of products or services or, more often than not, an internal business user or set of stakeholders for whom the project is intended to introduce change and deliver value. But how often are our status reports reflecting the “voice of the customer” on how things are going? Not often enough!

So, consider adding a “Customer Engagement & Alignment” score to your status report. Again, no need to over-engineer it – it could be as simple red/yellow/green indicator or even a letter grade (A, B, C, etc.). While a quick vote of the project team on how things are going with the customer is a good place to start, the right answer here is to ASK YOUR CUSTOMER. I guarantee you’ll learn something and get some valuable feedback on the state of the project if you ask your customer to grade the current engagement and alignment between the project team and the customer/impacted user group.

If the customer gives the project an “F”, then you obviously have a lot of work to do. But if they routinely give the project an “A” and you’re firing on all cylinders with the other project health measures, you’re likely on the right path to successfully deliver the project.

3.????Solution Clarity

This one seems so obvious, but it’s rarely communicated effectively in status reports. Often we have a clear and crisp understanding of the business requirements, a decent working relationship with the customer, and a high-performing team, but the exact “how” of the proposed solution is blurry at best.

Maybe it’s a technology project and you know the out-of-the-box platform won’t work exactly as you need it to, so you’ve decided you’ll have to do some customizations or integrate with another tool. But if you’re still fuzzy on exactly how all the Lego pieces will fit together, you almost certainly have blind spots on future project issues and risks. If it’s an operational efficiency program, and you know intuitively that there’s waste in the system but haven’t taken the time to do a root cause analysis and understand the specific drivers of waste and determine corresponding solutions, you’re probably not making very good progress on your improvement efforts. Or maybe it’s expanding into a new market or launching a new line of business where you know the opportunity is real, but you haven’t quite figured out how you’ll attack it.

In any of these cases, even if your big picture vision is crystal clear, the lack of clarity on how you will actually deliver that vision will no doubt lead to project challenges. If you’re early on in a project effort, it’s probably okay to mark Solution Clarity as Red or Yellow. You shouldn’t be expected to know everything on Week 1! But if you’re 75% of the way through your project and still have Solution Clarity in a Red or Yellow status, your project is probably in trouble, even if scope, schedule, and budget are technically on target. So, start assessing your solution clarity and reporting out on it – it will give your team and stakeholders a simple yet valuable look into how clear the path forward is or is not.

4.????WKMAAN

A few years ago, one of my clients sent an email out to the entire project team with the subject line “WKMAAN.” I was totally perplexed. I opened the email and read the first line, which explained that his obscure acronym stood for “What’s Keeping Me Awake At Night.” He went on to ask each of us to identify one thing about the project that was keeping us up at night. I had been asked dozens of times about project issues and risks, but no one had ever framed the question that way before. It was so direct and to the point: what’s keeping you up at night about the project?

Any of us who have worked on large operational, organizational, or technology transformation projects have no doubt lost some sleep along the way thinking about project problems in the middle of the night. And while a stray thought about the project here and there at night isn’t a bad thing, actually losing significant sleep (or doing it on a consistent basis) is a pretty good indicator that the project isn’t on the right track.?

Given that, I’ve found it incredibly useful to ask my team members to give me a “WKMAAN” score (it could be as simple as a 1-5 ranking on how much they’re worried about the project outside of working hours) along with a few bullet points of context. If you collect the team’s scores and aggregate that into a simple metric, it will be a far more practical measure of project risk and challenges than a standard risk and issue list. Plus, you’ll have a punch list of key items you need to dive deeper on in order to get the project on a better trajectory.

Conclusion

Big projects are hard. There’s no denying it. But there are some great tools and tactics you can use to de-risk your project and increase its probability of success. Tweaking your status report to emphasize the often-overlooked “soft tissue” factors instead of dwelling on “old news” and outdated project measures is one simple example. If you want to chat more about other tips and tricks for envisioning, planning, and successfully delivering transformative projects – or if you want to see the worst status report I’ve ever received – reach out to me. I’d love to talk!