Quick and Easy Status Reports

Some vendors and freelancers frustrate me. Their work is good, they are easy to get along with -- but their status reporting sucks. A good and regular status report is invaluable to a project -- and averts many headaches, so I figured I would post the format that we use for our weekly status reporting.

But first, here's the template I found from office.microsoft.com

YUCK!

Here's what we use, modify as appropriate, but you get the general gist..
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Status report for Project ABC, for week 8/1/2011 to 8/8/2011

*What we got done this week

1. Got deliverable1 done
2. Got deliverable2 done
3. deliverable3 is pending

*What we plan to do next week

1. Finish deliverable3
2. Do deliverable4
3. Start on deliverable5

*What we absolutely need from you this week

1. We ran into roadblock1 - the two options to overcome it are option1 and option2. Which would you prefer?
2. Do you want feature1 in pink or blue?

*How we are doing w.r.t. overall project

1. We are behind by 1 week
2. We have spent n hours, and the total billing to date is $m

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Simple. Easy. Effective.