Weekly project progress tracking

The best weekly status report format I’ve ever used was one I learned twenty years ago from a former manager. It was a simple Microsoft Word outline, with top-level bullets for projects and 2nd-level bullets for days of the week that you did actual work on the project, along with details about what you did. It looked a lot like what I have in 2019-03-11 this week’s projects. It was like this:

Phil’s projects, week of 3/18/2019

• Database enhancements
  • 3/18: Requirements call with vendor.
  • 3/20: Vendor visited and fixed things.
  • Next: Get Graphics team to test fixes.
• Intern on-boarding
  • 3/20: Compiled possible projects for intern; to David for review.
  • Next: Schedule welcome lunch w/team.
• Mutual Funds video
  • 3/19: Shot raw video; finished editing 1st segment.
  • 3/20: 2nd segment edits; rendered; to Julie for review.
  • 3/21: Published video to intranet.

Etc., etc.

It was good at these things:

• Seeing progress on a project felt good and tangible. You could see actual stuff you had done under the major headings.
• You could see at a glance which projects were being neglected for others.
• If you were realistic about your time and capabilities, you most likely had enough projects to fill one page, but not more than that.
• You didn’t list every single action completed—only the major outcomes from each day.
• You always knew what was next.
• It was simple enough to update in real time, and to share with anyone, and they’d be able to understand it. No weird status codes or traffic lights or math. If your manager (or their manager) asked you mid-way through the week, “What are you working on?”, you could print this and they’d know what you were doing.
• Even if no-one asked you for it early, you knew that you had to send it to your manager at the end of the week. It pushed you to make progress on things that you might otherwise be lazy about. You didn’t want to have a project stall out. You wanted to always show that you were worth keeping around.

I’ve been trying to bring this format back, at least just for myself, even if no-one asks to see it. The one thing that it’s not great at is giving me a quick visual of what I’ve done today. If it’s 11:00 am on 3/21 and all I’ve done is published the Mutual Funds video to the intranet, it would be great to see this, where I get still technically get credit for all the stuff I’ve done this week, the Next things are medium grey to show me the way forward, and there are no illusions about what little has gotten done so far today, because it’s the only task in black:

Phil’s projects, week of 3/18/2019

• Database enhancements
  • 3/18: Requirements call with vendor;
  • 3/20: Vendor visited and fixed things.
  • Next: Get Graphics team to test fixes.
• Intern on-boarding
  • 3/20: Compiled possible projects for intern; to David for review.
  • Next: Schedule welcome lunch w/team.
• Mutual Funds video - done
  • 3/19: Shot raw video; finished editing 1st segment.
  • 3/20: 2nd segment edits; rendered; to Julie for review.
  • 3/21: Published video to intranet.

So, there it is. The lack of a properly auto-formatting outlined list of my weekly progress and next actions is clearly what is holding me back.