PRO TIP: Status Updates
Have you ever felt like you spend more time updating your project plan than actually doing the work to get your project done? You are not alone, my friend. One of the biggest complaints I hear about project plans, and one of the biggest reasons why so many people are hesitant to use them is that they tend to be complicated and cumbersome. It can feel like all you’re ever doing is making updates, saving changes, and making more updates, while time slips by and no work actually gets done.
I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be this way! This week’s PRO TIP is all about how to update your project plan, specifically your status column, in a way that is comparatively effortless, and easy to do. It all starts with using a template that is designed in a streamlined fashion, like the tools available in my resource library (for FREE). Once you’ve got that, the PRO TIP (explained above) is to use a very simplified list of choices in you status column.
Why? Well, for starters, it keeps everything consistent. Nothing is more frustrating than seeing a project plan where one person writes “In Progress,” another writes, “In-Progress” and someone else says “In Process.” Those are the filtering errors that nightmares are made of. Using a list, where everyone picks from the same status options will cut down on all of these frustrations.
Additionally, with a smart list design, you can spell out the natural order or progression of work for your team. In my list, everything starts at zero, with “0- Not Started,” then progresses to “1- In Progress” and into “2- Waiting on Someone” and finally “3- Complete.” So, just by virtue of how everything is numbered, people have a rough idea of what the life cycle of a task is going to look like. I didn’t just make these up, either. These are the statuses that I’ve used for the past 18 years of my career, and they’ve served me well in the vast majority of projects I’ve managed. It seems very simplistic, but that is also the beauty of it.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Download a copy of my project plan template, and let me know what you think of the Status field. Is it perfectly simple? Too much? Too little? Leave me a comment here or send me a DM on social media- I’d love to hear how it’s working for you!