Project management is a well known subject but the term project management usually conjures up images of reports and charts in your mind. These pictures often do not depict the reality of what happens in the project life cycle. There are so many things involved and a detailed description of each would take a great amount of space on its own. In order to simplify the description of the project life cycle, I have prepared a project management progress report template Excel file that can help project managers cut to the chase and focus on the most important aspects of each phase of the project.
At the top of the report the Project Manager will see the summary. This is where all the big details of the project come together in one place. This is a good time for the project manager to provide a detailed description of what has been done so far as well as a forecast of what is left to do. The summary represents the biggest accomplishments so far and the project manager uses this report to make decisions about any changes that may need to be made. He needs to know how much work is left to be done and what resources are available.
The next part of the project summary is what is called the goals and objectives section. In this section the project manager gives his goals and objectives for the phase. For each goal there is a time line and a timeline. Each objective must be written down so the project manager can refer back to them throughout the project.
Next he turns his attention to the activities and costs of the project. He wants to show his management team exactly what is happening in the project. The activities section lists the number of people and what they are doing. The cost section details out the money being spent on the project. This is where a project manager can really detail about an item and explain its function to his staff.
Now comes the most important part of the project management templates: the project management chapter. This is the meat and potatoes of the template. It details in detail what was discussed in the summary and the goals and objectives for the current phase. It also goes into what are expected for the next phase. This chapter will allow the project manager to step back and take a look at the project. It will give him a chance to reassess the current situation and see if he has done everything that he could.
The final part of the project management progress report template Excel file is the project manager himself. He is presented with three separate windows: the Project Management Center, the Dashboard, and the Personal Information Manager. He will need to check off items that are relevant to him and his team and highlight anything that are not in compliance with the project management policies. He then enters his name, his title, his company (if he is the project manager for a project), and the current status of the project.
There are some project management software packages that come with project management progress reports templates as part of the package. This makes things so much easier on the project manager. However, many people like to customize their templates and their reports _ and this is where the free Microsoft Office programs really shine. If you have Word installed, you can download one from the Microsoft website and use it straight away. If you don't, though, then here are a few tips that might help.
Firstly, if you can open a Word document and use it straight away, it makes life easier on you and the project management team. The program is very flexible and a project management progress report template can be easily embedded into it. If you are working on a Mac, though, you might want to try and find a.cue file extension instead of a Word document. This will allow your Mac to open the report without issues, and there is also another alternative _ the Portable Document Format (PDF) can be used for creating your report.