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Project Status CommunicationsProject Status CommunicationsNever gather status in the project meetings. People often will not address their problems openly. A better approach is to ask how their work is going. Then this will lead to any problems that they have. After doing all of this, you can infer the true status of their work. However, you should always ask about status. For tasks that are jointly assigned, try to get the status and information from the two people assigned to the tasks together. This may mean a meeting or conference call. In collecting status, you should always gather status from the people working on critical tasks first. This will give you more time to deal with issues and understand them. After this, you can use this information when you gather information from other team members. Remember that gathering status on a project is a cumulative, yet sequential activity. Take advantage of this by using the information gathered earlier in later conversations. How should you report on status to management? The major way is the informal communication method that was discussed. But there are also written reports on status. There are two types of status reports. The first is for the project overall. The second is for a part of the project. Use the form in Fig. 9.3 to report on status. It offers a number of advantages. First, you are stating and restating the business purpose and scope of the work. The GANTT chart gives management an overview of the work in the project. Also include in this chart the tasks that have significant issues. Thus, the GANTT chart includes summary tasks as well as those with issues. The cumulative budget versus actual chart may only be useful in the overall project status. It is an S-shaped curve. At the bottom of the chart there are a number of items. First, you are stating what milestones were achieved. These are stated in business terminology so that the managers can understand. The same is true for upcoming milestones. Another item is a list of critical outstanding issues. Do you provide more detail than this as to status, etc.? No. You want to use the status report politically so that managers will then contact you about the issues. You are using the status report to move ahead on the issues. This is why this template for status reporting is quite useful. 304
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