Truth 25
No One Reads Yesterday's News

Kevin was a new manager. He was learning how to track milestones, monitor risks and issues, and keep costs under control. He was a quick study and was learning the basics well. When it came to status reports, Kevin was thorough, concise, and relevant in what he reported. He spent a tremendous amount of time working on his status reports. He focused so much on producing perfect reports that he sent them a week after the "as-of" date. The content was great, the recipients were appropriate, and the e-mails were well written. But because the content was so out of date, the status reports were beyond action by the recipients and management.

He focused so much on producing perfect status reports that he sent them a week after the "as-of" date.

Imagine opening the newspaper to look at stock quotes, and the quotes you see are from a week ago. Or going to the sports section and seeing sports scores from last month. Or getting a status report that documents a significant management issue, only to find out that a project will miss its delivery date because the issue wasn't addressed in time. Getting information late is irritating and frustrating and can be costly to an organization. When it comes to status reports, late delivery of information is very avoidable. So if it is so avoidable, why is it a problem? There are several causes:

• People make writing a status report harder than it needs to be. As mentioned in Truth 23, a status report isn't about documenting an audit trail of activity within an organization; it is about an organization's results.
• Status report writing doesn't pay the bills or bring in revenue. Given the choice of getting "real" work done or writing a status report, most would choose getting real work done.
• People generally dislike writing status reports. Writing reports, particularly when report writing isn't your primary job responsibility, just isn't fun. Generally it gets done only because it absolutely needs to, not because someone wants to do it.

On a project I managed at Microsoft, we refined our status reporting process to where status reports were sent within 30 minutes of our weekly status meeting. Our status reports were relevant, fresh, and timely. There was no magic, just some discipline and cooperation. Here are some techniques you can apply:

• Adopt a simple, straightforward status report format. Use a format similar to the one shown in Truth 23, which focuses on milestones, risks, issues, and financial/business indicators. It's not about how much you write, but how effectively you get your point across in as few words as possible.
• Do your status report during your status meeting. Use the time in the status meeting to update milestones, risks, issues, and other indicators. You'll probably discuss these items anyway, so you might as well update your status report while you're discussing status as opposed to putting it off until later.
• Be ready to send it. If e-mail is your preferred distribution method, have a distribution list already set up with your recipients included.
• Block out 30 minutes after a status meeting to finalize the status report. While things are still fresh in your mind, take 30 minutes to tie up any loose ends, write an executive summary, and proofread it to make sure it looks good. Once it's ready to go, don't wait; send it. The longer you wait to send it, the more likely you'll forget about it and the greater the likelihood you'll send stale information.

You owe it to your recipients, your management, and your team to send timely status reports that don't contain stale or outdated information. Sending status reports that are not only clear and concise but timely will better ensure that your recipients understand the current project status and will help you with issues you may be experiencing.