Project Status is the core of communication for a project. Up to date, accurate information is the key to continually assessing progress. Project Status can be broken down into two major groupings: Subjective and Objective.
Subjective is typically a project manager’s evaluation of project progress. It can provide a summarization for executives without the analysis of various data points on the project. The Project Network provides a few different status mechanisms.
First, the capability is available to create a standard questionnaire. These questionnaires or assessments are definable by your organization with responses as either free text or a standard set of answers. With these standard answers, indicators can be defined and tied to graphics and colors providing effective visual elements for assessing project status. The ability to also tie comments directly to the response provides an effective means of communication.
Here is a dashboard with assessments displayed. For more on dashboards click here.
Other capabilities include a more traditional status report. The Project Network uses definable sections ( ex. Summary, Completed This Week, Scheduled for Next Week, Major Issues) for consistency on information gathered across projects.
Subjective status reporting is very simple to implement and is usually one of the first elements we implement with organizations that have limited portfolio management capabilities.
The second approach is to use an objective status approach. Objective status can also be pulled out of the various data components in The Project Network. Evaluations of task completion, comparison against baselines, open issues, time vs projected work can be evaluated and displayed on Operations Dashboards or in independent analysis screens on Planning Performance.