The Art of Simple Status Reports
Status Reports Suck -- Nobody likes to write them. Ever.
Could you imagine having to write this every week?
Why do they suck so much??
Because nobody remembers what they did last week.
The Answer is simple: Use Taskhopper (or any realtime recording tool)
Even if nobody else is involved, I could NEVER remember all this crap unless I recorded it AS I DID THE WORK.
If you're doing internet work, then use comments and timers! Why not??
Timers are MANDATORY if you're billing others for your time. They also are big help if you care about learning how long something really takes.
Use comments, but don't get too wordy.
Comments should be one or two sentences. Never paste in an entire email from someone else. If you have supporting docs (email, jpgs, pdfs) then attach those. Just use comments to summarize the actions/status at that moment. Also, never put user IDs or passwords in a comments.
What's the total? What did I do last week?
Click the My Timelogs menu option.
Select the date range you are reporting
If you only care about one project, then select that.
All of your timer entries will appear, grouped by task #
Totals are given for each. If you didn't use timers ... then why are you reading this?
Now to write the status report... It's really simple
(Or even easier... just print the above to PDF and you're done!)
Each status report should contain three sections: What's was completed that week, what's currently open and what items are scheduled for next week. If you need help with anything, it should be entered as a comment in the task. If a task is large, it should be broken into multiple tasks. This is especially true if multiple people are responsible for the delivery or completion.