Project status reports take various
forms and shapes and their contents vary depending on their recipients and
their expectations from the reports. The contents of status reports can be
divided into two categories:
Hard data
This includes the project core data
that measures the progress and performance of the project. Some examples of the
hard data are:
Schedule data: Completed activities, completed
milestones, scheduled activities, missed milestones, actual start and end dates
of activities, etc.
Resource data: Cost data, actual resources utilised
or consumed data, inventory data, procurement data, missing or damaged
resources data etc.
Issue and problems data: Defects, issues, change requests or amendments
etc.
Soft data
Soft data can be considered
as metadata or additional information about the data. It consists of
qualitative data, observations or apparent changes. Some of the examples are:
·
Conflicts and moral issues within the team
·
Apparent changes in the project environment
·
Bottlenecks in issue resolution and escalations
·
Issues that need senior management’s intervention or guidance