Last week we talked about a simple presentation slide on your current project that would assist management in summarizing its current status.

We want to emphasize simple.

As gather-ers of information, facts, figures, scenarios, risks, exceptions, etc., at some point, we know more about the entire project than anyone else.

We must avoid putting everything we know on paper because in all cases, the audience only wants to know a small part of the project:

• Finance is interested in costs and timeline
  • Will you run out of time and cost more money?
• C-Level is interested in risk and completion of goal
  • They already approved the cost, on track means they don’t have to spend more
• Program Management is interested in completion and resources
  • If you are late, what other projects are impacted?

Unless called to give an overview of the project, for a weekly status, no one wants a 10-slide presentation to fish through what is important to them.

In fact, the higher up you go the more surprised you will be by how little information is asked of you.

So start with the basics, and add/delete information as requested.  Sometimes company’s will have their own template for you to update or you may need to come up with your own with the help of some online template examples.

Bottom-line, make it simple and ensure you have answered the basic questions:

• How’s the project doing overall?
• What have we done so far?
• What’s left to do?
• How’s the budget/costs, resources, doing, on track?
• Will we finish on time?