Overview
Regular project status — progress, issues, risks — and financial updates are essential to avoid project failure and ensure accurate project status reporting is available to management.
Details
Regular status updates — and their frequency — include the following:
- Ideally, the task owners should be updating their own tasks in Smartsheet directly. You can use update request functionality and/or reminders in Smartsheet to prompt them if needed.
- Check the UIT Project Dashboard to ensure updates have been brought in from your Smartsheet project plan correctly.
- Update project plan dashboard "stoplight" status, i.e. green-yellow-red, on the first and fifteenth of each month on your Smartsheet project plan. UIT Project Managers, refer to the detailed instructions for preparing and maintaining separate status reports.
- Projects can travel the spectrum from in-control (green) to out-of-control (red). When updating your project status for visible display on the UIT Project Dashboard, be sure you apply the correct color to indicate current status.
- Project Managers, please emphasize to your team, project sponsor(s), and executive sponsor(s) that Amber/Yellow or Red statuses are not intended to embarrass, stigmatize, or penalize. The intent is to warn management that we are tracking a significant risk (Amber/Yellow) or to get management's help to devise a solution to a project risk or issue that is putting the project on a failing trajectory (Red).
- Update project tracker — weekly; add action items, decisions, risks, and issues to the Project Tracker (opens in a new window) and follow up on action items and issues as needed until they are closed. For more details on how to use the Project Tracker, see Project Tracker Detailed Usage Instructions.
- Monitor project actual costs to budget — monthly; check to be sure the Project Financial Management Process steps are being followed for the project. Perform basic validation of data; complete reconciliation (e.g., non invoiced, unpaid invoices, etc.) is not required. The Shared Services Financial Analyst provides the Project Manager with access to the appropriate CER dashboards in OBIEE (opens in a new window) and routes the project spreadsheet report to the Project Manager. Note any erroneous charges against the project PTA.
