Project Status Report template

by Arizona State University

Easily update your teams on project status using Confluence and Jira

KEY FEATURES

Risk Assessment

Project Management

Reporting

CATEGORIES

Project Management

Finance & Ops

Page template

Arizona State University’s (ASU) Project Management Office (PMO) created this project status report template to standardize how they keep stakeholders up to date across all their projects. Utilizing customizable and shareable project status report templates, ASU has streamlined the process of tracking project progress, including universal sections that you can modify to fit specific project needs.

See how ASU uses it, then customize the template to meet your team's needs. Create Jira issue types or fields you deem appropriate for a status report. Once you’ve customized the template for your teams, save it as a new template. Then, your project managers just need to edit the JQL in the Confluence macro and replace the project key for their specific project.

Benefits
How to
Why Confluence?

Benefits of project status reporting

Project status reporting offers a multitude of benefits that contribute to project success and stakeholder satisfaction:

Transparency and visibility: By providing stakeholders with transparent and up-to-date information, project status reports foster trust and confidence in the team’s capabilities. Transparency also promotes accountability and encourages open communication among team members.
Alignment and focus: Status reports help align stakeholders and team members around common project objectives, priorities, and timelines. They highlight key milestones and deliverables and keep everyone focused on shared goals and expectations.
Risk management and mitigation: Project teams can identify potential risks and issues early through regular status reporting, allowing for the implementation of timely mitigation strategies. By proactively addressing risks, projects can avoid costly delays and setbacks.
Decision-making and course correction: With accurate and comprehensive project data, stakeholders can make informed decisions and adjust project plans. Whether reallocating resources, adjusting timelines, or revising strategies, status reports provide the necessary insights for effective decision-making.
Managing multiple projects: Utilizing project status report templates can significantly aid in managing multiple projects by offering centralized tracking and the ability to distinguish between different projects and project managers. This ensures that each project is monitored closely and managed effectively, aligning with the company's overarching goals.
Continuous improvement: By analyzing trends and patterns over time, project teams can identify areas for improvement and implement process enhancements. Status reporting is a feedback loop, enabling teams to learn from past experiences and optimize future project execution.

Project status reporting offers many benefits that are pivotal to project success and stakeholder satisfaction. From fostering transparency and alignment to enabling effective risk management and decision-making, status reports drive project excellence. They also serve as a catalyst for continuous improvement, empowering teams to learn from past experiences and refine their processes for future success.

How to use the project status template

Step 1. Set up Jira and Confluence to work together

The project status template works hand in hand with the university PMO’s Jira projects, which all share the same scheme. In that scheme, a specific issue type called the PMO Project collects metadata, including the project details such as the project's name, project manager and sponsor, report date, project health, constraints, and status.

That information is used to update the Jira macros embedded in the Confluence template, which will give your stakeholders an overview of the project's progress. There is only one PMO Project issue per project, and it’s all filled out by the project manager. This integration also ensures the project's status is continuously updated in real-time, allowing for immediate visibility into the project's current condition or progress.

Step 2. Add a project status summary to the update

ASU also automated filling out the Summary section of the template by creating two custom fields in the PMO Project issue: the Status note field and the Constraints field, effectively creating a project status summary. This summary provides key stakeholders and team members with a concise overview of the project's progress, including progress reports for completed work, upcoming tasks, and project milestones. Then, they employed the Jira macro in Confluence to pull only those fields into the Summary table.

To create this magic yourself, set the display only to show ‘Status note’ and ‘Constraints’ (or whatever you’ve set up as your status summary custom fields) in the corresponding columns. Once you’ve set this up, your project managers will only need to replace the project key in the macro JQL. This section reflects the project's progress through status notes and constraints, providing high-level updates to keep the team on track, proactively identifying risks, and ensuring stakeholders align with the project’s progress.

With all this data automatically in their view, it’s far easier for the project manager to assign project status – green, yellow, or red – after a quick glance.

Step 2. Add a project status summary to the update

Step 3. Embed your Jira report

Use the Jira report macro to display all the issues in the project, including tracking project progress and aligning it with the project schedule, and then have your project managers replace the project key with their own. You’ll see in the ASU example that the team set up its PMO project issue type, which displays the custom fields summary, status, start date, end date, and description.

Step 4. Show your project's progress, next steps, and any risks

Give your stakeholders an overview of your latest accomplishments, next steps, and risks or issues. Again, ASU uses issue types that exist in each PMO Project.

In the Accomplishments column, ASU adds their resolved tasks from the last 7 days using the JQL Project = “ATL” AND Resolution changed to Done during (-7d, now()). This includes progress reports for completed work, upcoming tasks, and project milestones, providing a clear snapshot of achieved goals.

The Next Steps column pulls in tasks that are still unresolved using the JQL: Project = “ATL” AND issuetype != “PMO Project” AND Resolution = unresolved.

Custom issue types also pull in Risks and Issues. Assessing project health is crucial in identifying potential risks, ensuring the project remains on track, and informing stakeholders about key metrics, risks, and budget status.

Step 4. Show your project's progress, next steps, and any risks

Step 5. Save this template as your own

Once you have set this up for your team, you can save the template as your own so that your project managers only need to update their project key to get started. Offer one place to send your stakeholders and teams to get an update across all projects in a standardized way.

Maximize project success with a Confluence project status report template

Project status reporting is a cornerstone of effective project management, providing stakeholders with timely insights into project progress, risks, and accomplishments. Businesses can streamline the reporting process by leveraging the integration between Confluence and Jira, ensuring that data is accurate, accessible, and actionable.

From Arizona State University's Project Management Office (PMO) to businesses worldwide, the benefits of standardized status reporting are clear: transparency, alignment, risk mitigation, informed decision-making, and continuous improvement. By adhering to best practices such as customization, automation, clarity, and regularity, teams can create robust status report templates that drive project success and stakeholder satisfaction.

The timing of status report delivery should be tailored to each project's specific needs and dynamics, balancing the frequency of updates with the level of project complexity and stakeholder expectations.

Effective project status reporting is not just about transmitting information; it's about fostering collaboration, accountability, and trust among project teams and stakeholders. By embracing a culture of transparency and proactive communication, companies can confidently navigate challenges, seize opportunities, and ultimately achieve their project goals.

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