Make Your Status Reports Useful (with Robyn Reynolds)

Summary

In this episode of the Digital Project Manager Podcast, Ben Aston chats with Robyn Reynolds about the significance of status reports in project management. Status reports, often seen as a tedious task, are vital in maintaining accountability, transparency, and control over a project. They help manage expectations, track progress, and serve as a communication tool between teams and clients. Robyn shares insights on making status reports efficient and useful, highlighting the importance of keeping them simple yet informative and ensuring that they reflect true professional standards. In a world where digital project management is evolving with remote work and diverse time zones, Robyn also touches on how to maintain rapport and communication with clients. It's more than just documentation; it's a strategic tool for project success.

Highlights

• Robyn Reynolds makes status reports fun while stressing their importance in project success! 📈
• Remote work at tenup involves creative handling of time zones and project management challenges. 🌍
• Mastering simplification in reports helps avoid them becoming a drag—make them concise! 📝
• Status reports are not just documents—they're tools to keep everyone aligned and informed. 🚀
• Building rapport with clients through regular updates and meetings can smooth over tough times. 💼

Key Takeaways

• Status reports might seem like a chore, but they're essential for project success. 🎯
• Keep reports simple yet informative; focus on the essentials to save time and effort. ⏱️
• Regular updates build trust with clients and create a positive paper trail for future reference. 📜
• Make sure your status meetings are engaging; it's about rapport and relationship-building too! 🤝
• Don't forget to ask your team and clients for feedback on the reports to improve their effectiveness. 📥

Overview

Status reports are often dreaded in the project management world, but as Robyn Reynolds highlights, they are far more than just a weekly task to tick off. Their real value lies in enhancing team accountability, revealing project progress transparently, and aligning all stakeholders with the project's objectives. When done right, they mitigate risks by ensuring everyone is prepared and informed and they provide the perfect paper trail if things start going off course.

Robyn provides handy tips for transforming status reports from a burdensome duty into an effective project management tool. The trick is to keep them simple and focused: just the project name, health, completed tasks, next steps, and potential roadblocks. By streamlining content, project managers can efficiently update everyone, from team members to clients, without sinking hours into it.

Furthermore, status meetings shouldn't just pass along information; they are a key opportunity to strengthen relationships. Through engaging presentations, remote teams can form closer bonds with their clients. Robyn shares her strategy of using video calls not just to convey the status report information but also to engage in friendly banter. This builds a level of trust and understanding, making it easier to weather any upcoming challenges.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Guest Introduction The podcast episode features Ben Ason hosting the Digital Project Manager Podcast, sponsored by Claris, a leader in Enterprise project and portfolio management software. The guest on this episode is Robin Reynolds, a resident DPM expert at the Digital Project Manager. Robin is also involved with Agony Art's 'Dear DPM' segment where digital project management questions are addressed. The segment begins with a warm welcome and an expression of excitement from Robin on rejoining the show.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Importance of Status Reports The chapter discusses the importance of status reports in project management. It begins by presenting a scenario where a person believes they have kept a client updated but realize, during a project disaster, that their communications were inadequate. This situation highlights the necessity of status reports. The chapter sets up a discussion on whether status reports are essential and, if they are, the reasons behind their necessity.
• 01:30 - 03:00: Guest's Background and Experience This chapter introduces Robin, a guest speaker in the context of a course. Robin is described as someone who enjoys emojis, lists, and puppies, and resides in Portland. She is also identified as a digital project management (DPM) expert, and will be featured in an upcoming course titled 'Master in Digital'. The chapter aims to delve into how tools and systems can be made more useful and less cumbersome.
• 03:00 - 05:30: Moving to a New Job and Remote Work The chapter discusses Robin's recent job change and touches upon the topic of remote work. It begins with a mention of a project management training course, which lasts seven weeks and includes video sessions, weekly lessons, assignments, group discussions, and optional coaching. The chapter then shifts focus to an interview or discussion with Robin about his new job.
• 05:30 - 10:00: Writing Effective Status Reports The chapter discusses the author's new job at a company called Tenup, which aims to improve the web by creating websites and tools for content creators. The exciting aspect of Tenup is its completely remote workforce, collaborating with high-profile clients like AMC, NBC Universal, and Time Inc. There is a mention of curiosity about the time zones in which the remote employees work.
• 10:00 - 15:30: Sharing and Presenting Status Reports The chapter titled 'Sharing and Presenting Status Reports' discusses how the organization is structured into different groups or pods based on geographical locations, such as a Pacific Coast pod and a European pod. This allows for more efficient sharing and presenting of status reports while considering time zone differences. Occasionally, there might be meetings outside the typical time for some members, but such instances are infrequent. Additionally, there seems to be an option for employees to switch pods if needed.
• 15:30 - 23:00: Client Customization and Feedback The chapter discusses the concept of client customization and the importance of feedback. A humorous anecdote is shared about a team lead who successfully managed to arrange a work exchange in Europe for the summer. The story highlights the possibilities of remote work where she is both traveling and effectively managing her team remotely. The chapter further delves into the challenges associated with remote project management, especially in environments where all team members are working remotely.
• 24:00 - 26:00: Dear DPM Section Discussion The section discusses the emphasis on remote working at the company 10up, where team members are encouraged to work within their own time zones. The company is a strong advocate for using Zoom for video communication, making video calls a standard expectation for client and team interactions, rather than relying on traditional phone calls.
• 27:00 - 27:30: Conclusion and Call to Action The chapter titled "Conclusion and Call to Action" discusses the challenges and approaches when transitioning into a new role. The speaker acknowledges being in the early stages of their position, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging their current limitations, focusing on learning, listening, and establishing relationships with teams and clients. This section highlights the speaker's commitment to growing and adapting to their new environment.

Make Your Status Reports Useful (with Robyn Reynolds) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 thanks for tuning in I'm Ben ason and this is the digital project manager podcast this podcast is brought to you by Claris the leader in Enterprise project and portfolio management software visit clarin.com to learn more today I'm joined by Robin Reynolds one of our resident DPM experts at the digital project manager and Agony art for dear DPM are ask a digital PM whatever you like so Robin thanks so much for coming on the show again hi Ben I'm so excited to be back I always enjoy
• 00:30 - 01:00 chatting with you good stuff so I wonder have you ever found yourself in a pickle because you were pretty sure you were doing a really good job at keeping the client up to date with everything on the project but then one day disaster hits the project and all those emails the messages the text that you thought you'd sent the client about the project just seem to have magically disappeared that my friends is why you need a status report So today we're talking all about those dreaded status reports are they really necessary and if they are what
• 01:00 - 01:30 should we put in them how can we make them less of a pain and what can we do to actually make them useful but if you've not yet met Robin let me introduce her properly Robin lives just down the road for me that's kind of what I like to think and she lives in Portland and she likes emojis lists and puppies so uh we'll talk more about that in a minute but just to say as one of our DPM experts Robin is also going to be making an appearance on our upcoming call course which is Master in digital
• 01:30 - 02:00 project management and if you're not sure what I'm talking about and you need some PM training check it out it's a 7-week crash course that includes some interactive video sessions uh weekly lessons assignments group discussions and also there's the option of coaching sessions too so head to digital projectmanager school.com and get yourself signed up we've just got a few places left but Robin you've recently moved jobs so tell me about your new gig yeah um so I'm just wrapping up my first
• 02:00 - 02:30 couple weeks at the quotequote new gig and it's been absolutely fantastic I'm now working for tenup and essentially what we do is help to make the web better by finally crafting websites and tools for Content creators what's really fun about tenup is that everybody is remote 100% of us and we work with the likes of AMC NBC Universal time Inc Etc cool so if everyone if everyone's working remote what time zone are you
• 02:30 - 03:00 working in is it just is it North America or is it is it other countries too well luckily we have um such organization and that we're in different groups and pods so I'm technically in a pod that's all on Pacific Coast time and then there's a European pod and so on and so forth um some days I'll have a meeting maybe a little bit earlier than I'd like but those are pretty far view in between cool so and do you get the opportunity to to switch pods if you
• 03:00 - 03:30 think oh hold on I W to I'd like to go to Europe for the summer can you do a a pod trade what's so funny is one of our team leads just did that and so now she's over in Europe having the time of her life and traveling and also managing her team well there we go sounds pretty cool so how what are the kind of challenges that uh I mean you you've done remote project management before but have you worked in this kind of environment where everybody is remote
• 03:30 - 04:00 all of the time is there any kind of unique challenges that you found from that yeah so um you know I've been working remote in my previous gig but what's really fabulous about um 10 up is that they really encourage everybody to work within their own time zones and we're huge Advocates of using Zoom as a video uh tool so that's really great for working with clients and connecting with your team is that video is expectation it's not just the phone it's not just an
• 04:00 - 04:30 optional extra right you're expected to have the video on yeah and and people do that that actually works so far yeah definitely but you know it's also um I'm just in the beginning stages I'm the new girl so right now I'm just trying to own that I don't know it all and I'm really trying to learn and listen and get to know my teams and clients and build those relationships so yeah so what is there anything that you found like from in moving to a new role that you're like
• 04:30 - 05:00 oh I really need to get better at that um you know I think it's just being owning the fact that you've done this job before and there's always a little bit when you start a new role of impostor syndrome where you're like oh my gosh have I done this before and it's like yeah no D it's just a different environment and so I think um you know just trying to be more confident in and owning your projects yeah yeah I think that's so true when when you're when you're
• 05:00 - 05:30 starting out on a new place yeah suddenly you're like oh my gosh I don't know how to do anything here like how do you I'm the stupidest person yeah I don't know how to get any resources for my project I mean that that is an interesting one how how do they do like how is resourcing done and what's the toolkit that they use there sure um so we are using a combination of 10,000 feet and um also we have our own proprietary sort of project scheduling tool so between those two things every
• 05:30 - 06:00 Everybody Plays nicely and I tend to get the resources I need for my projects we also do a lot of you know future planning several months out so we can avoid conflicts pretty well in advance that sounds that sounds very grown up so and um what so what what are the kinds of projects that you're actually working on can you talk about any of those yeah well I can't tell you exactly what the client names are but I can tell you that it's a mix of web maintenance retainers
• 06:00 - 06:30 and full sight redesign and rebuild using Wordpress nice good stuff that's very sounds very general WordPress stuff cool so let's talk about status reports now at at tenup have you written your first status report yet I certainly have and we have our own format and approach for it just like every agency shop
• 06:30 - 07:00 can do it differently yeah so I mean what's your take I mean obviously you've just written a an article on status reports but but sell them to us why why do you think status reports are worth doing well Ben let's face it nobody likes status reports or creating them it's pretty it's like the worst part job at times right it's not very sexy um it's a lot of times viewed as like oh I have to do this but nobody's going to read it
• 07:00 - 07:30 but they are so important and the best project status reports create accountability and ownership with your team they uncover issues they mitigate risks and most of all they ensure that you're on track towards your project goals so with not only your internal teams but for clients especially it provides value it's giving your clients confidence that their money is delivering on the project and it can make them look good to their bosses because they can like forward it up to different stakeholders um finally status
• 07:30 - 08:00 reports can totally save your ass and that you have a paper trail in case things go off the rail so you can say yes we uplevel this risk to you here was our mitigation plan for it here's what we've done to correct it um and hopefully that way it's not like oh this was coming down the the shoot for a long time and we forgot to talk about it yeah yeah I think I think there's a I mean when we're doing status reports the Temptation can be just to be like ah
• 08:00 - 08:30 well I'll just let it slip this week because I don't think the client is actually reading this anyway because last week I sent it to them and I included a little Easter egg in there where I said I think we're going to go over budget and they didn't say anything so now that I said that last week I'm not gonna update them this week just in case they they needed I told them so now it's over yeah um and it's it's really about managing expectations on a regular basis um so what are the them yeah so
• 08:30 - 09:00 what are the kind of Essentials then I mean my kind of perspective on status reports is well let's make them as simple as possible uh because you don't want this thing to take two hours to update and if you you know working with four different clients that's going to take you like a whole day just to do your status report so for you what are the absolute Essentials that we've got to include within it absolutely so Ben I'm with you I think the simpler a status report support the better you can
• 09:00 - 09:30 really spend a lot of time on these things and turn them into project plans or just iterations of your project plan but I recommend you don't do that so the essentials would be your project name client name your project Vision or summary that should be like a one- sentence thing um project Health this is very very important as you mentioned there's a lot of different ways you can approach this on your status report that you can find out more about in the article um but it absolutely needs to
• 09:30 - 10:00 include hours or how you're tracking on the project if you're on track in terms of timeline in budget also what you need to include is what was recently completed on the project so typically what I like to do here is link out all of the recent tasks that I've completed and then direct them to the PM tool if that's shared with the client um below that you're going to want to include what you plan to complete next so between likely it's like in the next month or maybe in the
• 10:00 - 10:30 next week but it's giving the client a heads up that these are the upcoming priorities and this is what we're going to tackle and that way the client can come back and say actually this isn't a priority anymore or let's uplevel this one instead finally on your status report you want to include issues and roadblocks this is essentially um where you're going to be upleveling any potential risks that could happen and try to mitigate Solutions with the client during your status
• 10:30 - 11:00 review cool so that I mean if if th if those are the essentials that still sounds like a that still sounds like a lot of stuff so how how much I mean it's all it's all important stuff but obviously I don't know maybe a third of that is kind of static every week so there's something there's some things that aren't going to change but then how do you you know how much detail is enough detail and how much you know when you're it's I like what you're saying about task completion and task coming up
• 11:00 - 11:30 and linking out to your tool so it's just a it's just kind of like a snapshot where they can deep dive if they want to but in all these kind of descriptions of what's going on and risks how much how much detail are you including to make it useful but uh also making it so it doesn't take you hours to complete yeah I'd like to make sure that my project status reports don't take more than about 20 minutes definitely they're going to take a little bit longer up front when you make that first one um but also as project managers I
• 11:30 - 12:00 use this time to really sort of um meditate on the project and make sure that I am understanding where everything's at so a lot of times I may put in uh I may do a first draft earlier in the morning or maybe the day before I want to issue it and just kind of dump all of my ideas and thoughts and notes and then I'll come back to it and edit all that fluff out to make it super concise so can you say it's simpler can you just just link to the task right and
• 12:00 - 12:30 then discuss it over a call um you want to make sure that you're not trying to solve all the issues in your status report only identify and then direct and discuss yeah yeah I think I think that's a really good point because I think there's the one way of looking at status reports is well we have to do them because you know they're documentation that the client asks for but never reads but the flip side of that and the other way of looking at it is actually this is a really important tool for us as we're trying to keep our kind of finger on the
• 12:30 - 13:00 pulse of the project and having that rigor of actually taking the time out each week to really do a deep dive into what's happening uh to kind of reassess the risks reassess your kind of uh your mitigation strategy against those risks to think about okay what have we done this week what do we need to do next week and kind of get one step ahead of the team it's actually a really useful exercise in that kind of ongoing project planning that's that we need to do to keep our projects on track and to really
• 13:00 - 13:30 know where a project is at I think otherwise we can sometimes just be tempted just to you know a project can just kind of bumble along and we can kind of forget to see the bigger picture of of where our project is heading do you find that too absolutely and you know for thinking in terms of Ry right it's like project managers are responsible for creating that status report but our team and our clients are accountable for being informed and reading and upleveling any questions or asking for clarification
• 13:30 - 14:00 based upon that status report yeah definitely and I think I mean does uh what's your kind of methodology at tenup is it more waterfall or is it are you running are you running Sprints and going more agile uh we do a combination of both so it depends on the project we're not married to to one or the other because I think one of the things that I've seen as well is that um a Temptation on more agile projects where there's where there's Sprints um you know where there's a a
• 14:00 - 14:30 huddle or a scrum every day and you know you're working in Sprints and there's a a Sprint review and then the Sprint retrospective uh the Temptation can be to be like oh well we don't need to do status reports because everyone kind of knows what's going on right but I think there's one thing there's one thing of people kind of being engaged in the project and and kind of well and knowing what's going on on a kind of day-to-day level but then it's that taking a step back
• 14:30 - 15:00 and saying okay guys do you realize how many hours we've got left um do you know do you realize where the budget's at do you real do you realize kind of how much more there is to do and the scrum is great at providing if you're reviewing like the burndown chart it's great for kind of taking a kind of quick look at that but actually giving the client all the information and having all that all those project details on condensed into a page or two is is a is a really helpful exercise even if you're running
• 15:00 - 15:30 aob projects absolutely I can totally agree with that and also as I mentioned earlier your client may share it with their boss or some other important Executives or stakeholders that could potentially bring in more money to your to your business so yeah yeah always useful do your status reports but so after you've done your status report then what's your kind of uh what do you do with it do you do uh stick it in an email I think this is what the
• 15:30 - 16:00 Temptation can be you uh you finish your status report and it's you know Friday at 4:00 and you're like okay well I just stick this in an email and um disappear and send it off to the client and uh like hope for the best but uh how do you what what do you do with your status reports after after you've made them um well number one I try not to send them on Friday afternoons because that's pretty much guaranteeing nobody's going to read it um I know I'm not very
• 16:00 - 16:30 enthusiastic to get an important email on Friday afternoon and then I'm kind of checked out for the weekend and then Monday morning I don't know that's seems kind of bothersome to start my day with that so um typically I like to issue my status reports midweek right so maybe I'll have my internal on a Tuesday I'll draft up the client facing status report and issue that on a Wednesday and when I issue that status report um typically I like to deliver during a status meeting
• 16:30 - 17:00 with the client or the team and so I will not potentially I'll send the status um report through prior to the call or maybe during the call and I'll screen share and just kind of walk them through everything and then follow up um with that send and action items following that report but it's really you're not there with the client to sort of like read it out loud to them it's more like um a a dial a framework for that dialogue right where you can say okay here's what we did that was really
• 17:00 - 17:30 great and then here's what we're going to do and are we here's where we're at on timeline let's talk about this it looks like we're ahead of schedule so that's happened to you no I'm theoretically nice so yeah I think that I think that's really sound advice I like the idea of um doing a screen share um and uh and controlling what what the client gets to see rather rather than just sending it over to them and kind of
• 17:30 - 18:00 hoping that they're looking at the part of the status report that you want them to look at but um yeah from from my perspective I mean you're obviously doing more remote project management uh typically I'm doing not remote project management so for me what's really important is actually the status meeting is a chance to actually get to hang out with the clients and develop that Rapport develop the relationship so as much as it is sharing information and level setting on where the project to that it's also you know a chance to have
• 18:00 - 18:30 some you know banter about the about stuff outside of the project so that you're beginning to develop more level of trust and friendship so that when the when you do have bad news to share it's not like you've got nothing to fall back on so I I think that's probably harder when you're remote but I don't know how do you how do you make that how do you develop rapport with clients when you're remote well I mean if you have your on you can see each other there's a lot of
• 18:30 - 19:00 body language that happens and you still talk about the same things we still you know ask what they did on the weekends and and whatnot so I think it's still um just as effective but you know you reminded me too in that I used to host an internal status report meeting with my team and I would literally print out the status report for them and now in hindsight that seems pretty extreme but I just learned from my team that that was the only way that I could get them to read it was by like putting it in
• 19:00 - 19:30 front of their faces and then we would walk through it yeah so there's no right perfect way to do it there's a few wrong ways you can do it um but it's really important to understand what your client prefers and adapt to that as well as your internal team so how have you got any tips from for making making sure your client uh actually reads your status reports have you have you found Ed thing that works um well definitely that status call
• 19:30 - 20:00 right and then the other thing I've learned is as you mentioned earlier never miss a status report because once you do that it's sort of like um a bad restaurant review like you can have one bad review but you need to have like seven more positive reviews to get it right um and they will always hold that against you that you miss that one week yeah so just make sure that you're always on time that you're prepared and that that status report is of substance um it reflects you know the work that you guys do as well so don't hustle to
• 20:00 - 20:30 get it done make sure that it's clear of um errors make sure that you're not uh calling anybody out for poor work on that thing and uh that it's of substance yeah so one of the one thing you mentioned just now was um you know making it kind of tailoring it for the client so you know making it useful to them giving them the information that they need but I've had some pretty I've had some ended up in some situations
• 20:30 - 21:00 where you know the client just goes nuts in terms of asking for all kinds of different pieces of detail in their status report so um like particularly when you're working on a more of a time and materials based project and you know the client wants a breakdown of every hour of every person that worked on the project and how they spent every moment of time uh and that was a pain in the ass to produce because then you have to edit everyone's comments as well so uh what
• 21:00 - 21:30 what kind what's kind of your take on you know how much tailoring for the client is too much detail versus how where do you sit on that spectrum of too much detail and tailoring versus not yeah I'm just sitting over here nodding my head because I have been there too B um I think I think a lot of times you got to follow your intuition right so say for example it's a small time and materials contract and um it's just not very efficient for you to
• 21:30 - 22:00 track all of the hours and tasks and then regroup them and do all sorts of crazy spreadsheet work and then you just need to educate and inform the client as to why if they're still very insistent like for example maybe there's business reasons why they need to track that way you need to work um with them potentially to increase your funding or it means that we won might not be able to get as many tasks done because we have to be spending our time on this report versus uh the actual Project work
• 22:00 - 22:30 yeah I think I think that's really sound advice we obviously if the client wants wants something to be done like producing status reports is work and clients might not like to see it as work and in fact I have worked for clients before and somehow in the contracts I made it so that they didn't pay for the production of status reports which is which is crazy but um I think clients need to understand that if we are going to produ uced lots of uh detail in the
• 22:30 - 23:00 status reports and all this extraneous reporting which isn't really necessary to delivering the project well then they should pay for it and that should be a change request if they if they start asking for more detail in the status reports or we need to say yeah like you said something else has to drop out the scope it's uh otherwise it will very quickly eat away our budget but absolutely and I just want to jump in and say too that you know always ask your client in your team for feedback though on these status reports because I
• 23:00 - 23:30 know sometimes I may put something out there in my template format and I think it makes total sense but to them maybe my Engineers are like I have no idea why you phrase it this way or why do you this section or can you include this instead so you should be tailoring but not like you know in a very inefficient way trust your G yeah cool well that I think that's really helpful thanks Robin and I think we've uh if you go to the uh Robins post
• 23:30 - 24:00 uh on the digital projectmanager.com you will see not only a status report example for a it is a fictitious client I believe killer Kucha uh it well a great brand name though if someone's looking to uh procure that domain name um there is a sample status report which you can take a look at and also we've included a template for you to download as well uh so go and check it out and start doing
• 24:00 - 24:30 some status reports so there we have status reports covered off before we go Robin I just wanted to chat to you quickly about um our dear DPM section of the digital project manager which now we've been running for what nearly nearly six months wow that long it is it is nearly that long and we just actually released a new uh a new question um and Robin you
• 24:30 - 25:00 told someone to leave their job was that wise I did it sounds very extreme when you phrase it that way but this person who wrote in I mean they so eloquently wrote about a pretty distressing situation where they were just struggling at work um they didn't seem to be getting the support or the leadership and mentorship that they needed to grow in the role so I think if you if anybody reads this question it's going to be pretty obvious that they should um seek a new opportunity right
• 25:00 - 25:30 um that's immediately where my gut was going but um you know you can't just like quit your job and like peace out I don't know in my positions usually I can't do that um I have a family but you know I gave her some tips about what to do in the meantime he or she so it's about like channeling your energy and frustration elsewhere hitting the gym it's about not engaging um and trying try to fix the situation with this certain person in the office like stop
• 25:30 - 26:00 trying to make them cooperate when they're not going to and then um obviously giving some pointers about HR right so in the meantime while you're looking for your next opportunity make sure to um write down when these instances happen in case there needs to be some escalation to HR Seria stuff it wasn't you that wrote in was it Robin Rec you've recently got a new job
• 26:00 - 26:30 that's suspicious I no no I I feel like I can identify with every question that comes in so yeah um I don't know I can sorry they're all me secret yeah this is all you but if you have a question that you're dying to ask and you want to ask it anonymously um head to the resources section of the digital project manager uh and you will find a section there called DP just in the uh near the top of the page
• 26:30 - 27:00 and you'll find that you'll be able to ask whatever questions you like and your question might just get selected to be answered so ask us a question tell us what you're struggling with or what you need help with and we would love uh to give you some advice um and Robin's great at dispensing that but uh Robin thanks so much for joining us it's been great having you with us ah thanks Ben this has been fun and if you'd like to contribute to the conversation about status report thoughts if you'd like to ask a question on DPM uh head over to
• 27:00 - 27:30 the digital projectmanager.com and make sure that you join our slack team too head to the resources section and you'll find more than a thousand other PMS talking about this kind of stuff and there's lots of interesting conversations going on there that you should be a part of but until next time thanks for listening