how to give a project update presentation

13 Tips To Deliver A Great Presentation For Project Status Update

Editorial Team

Giving a presentation could be one of the most nerve-wracking tasks ever.  No matter how well-prepared you are, having to present to your boss or to a meeting is always stressful. If you somehow get it right though, one 5-minute presentation could be enough to make you ‘the man’ in the room.

Presentation skills are becoming more and more important in today’s world, especially with the rapid developments in technology. You may need to give briefings to the directors, suppliers, a team leader, or to your organization as a whole. Presentations provide the means to help stakeholders understand the company’s ongoing projects.  In a prospering career, there’s no way to avoid giving them forever. Hence, we’ve gathered 13 of the most important points to keep in mind before your next presentation. 

1. Arrive Early

A presentation is useless without functional supporting equipment. Gone are the days of giving presentations through flipping over paper charts; technology has taken over. Due to this, it’s always advisable to arrive early! Make sure you have enough time to test out everything. Check and ensure that everything has been arranged and placed where you want it. You’ll need a perfectly functioning mic, laptop (for the PowerPoint file), projector and remote. Checking it all yourself also has an added benefit of inspiring confidence within you; sending messages to your mind that you’re all set and ready.

People with stage fright could also make great use of arriving at the venue earlier. Just the thought of getting up to a stage in front of hundreds of people, and being flooded in lights, could absolutely petrify some people. You could help this situation by getting up to the stage a few times before the actual presentation so that you create a comfort zone around it. If you arrive early, you’ll get a chance to hold the mic, climb up that stage and greet the non-existent crowd to gain familiarity beforehand. Remember, familiarity is a direct counter to nervousness.

2. Plan Your Presentation

An effective presentation is well-structured and designed carefully from start to finish. The goal is to fit chunks of easily digestible knowledge in a concise manner. The entire presentation must have a ‘flow’ that connects one dot to another naturally, as this makes it much easier for the recipients to comprehend and understand information. A preemptively thought-out structure would also help you address every point without forgetting anything in between. Achieving all of this only becomes possible only through precisely planning out vital aspects of your presentation.

From a broader perspective, the following is an example of what most presentation structures look like;

• Introduction – Make recipients aware of the context and put forward your ideas. Urge your audience to get involved and start thinking about the subject you have in mind.
• Body – Draft a few effective steps that work well towards achieving the ‘ideas’ discussed above.  Communicate these to the audience and address any challenges to be faced with proposed solutions.
• Summary – Signify the crux of your entire presentation to the audience. Reiterate the main concept of your presentation and the steps needed to work towards it.

Make sure the structure you end up finalizing isn’t too complex. Put yourself in a recipient’s shoes and deeply analyze the parts of the presentation that could be improved.

3. Practice The Presentation

Giving a presentation brings a unique set of fears, and we’ve all thought about them just before it starts. However, the way you plan out and do things ahead of time could literally change the entire game. As a starting point, identify which thoughts scare you the most about the presentation. Really question yourself what it is you can do to eliminate these fears? Amazingly, you’ll find that there’s a common one-word answer to this question for most of your presentation related worries; practice. For example, your mind may be imagining scenarios like these;

• “What if I stutter and just can’t get the words out properly?”
• “What if I forget where I’m getting at?”
• “What if a certain question totally throws me off?”

To address these issues, give yourself time to walk through the entire thing several times. Talk the whole presentation out and get super familiar with the delivery. Actively consider the tone of your voice, your speed and other parts that you may want to work on.

Way too many presentations fail to hit home simply because of a lack of practice on the presenter’s end. You could have the most informative and immersive presentation planned out, but it could all be in vain without practice. Just because you’ve done your research, created an outline, and prepared all your slides, doesn’t mean you’re foolproof. Practice, practice, and practice! Even if you know  how to write a TED Talk script  perfectly, without ample practice, the potential impact of your presentation might still fall short. Remember, having a well-crafted script is just one aspect; the true effectiveness lies in rigorous practice and delivery.

4. Prepare For Any Questions In Advance And Standby Backup Slides

You must expect various questions during or at the end of your presentation.

In fact, rising questions will help you gauge your audience’s concentration

Before the presentation:

• List all possible questions and practice how to answer them. You want to consider practicing the toughest questions possible.
• You may also gather all the stakeholder’s questions beforehand and include the right feedbacks in your presentation. More so, if you’re presenting to large room or remotely based audience.
• Prepare your own staged question. Entice your audience by picking an individual with a predetermined question, to encourage other stakeholders to present their questions.

Prepare backup slides:

When structuring your PowerPoint slides, you’ll have your opening slide, in-between, final, then summary. It’s advisable to add back up slides below the summary slide.

Things to include in your slide;

• Those unreadable graphs or charts in small print.
• The presentation is unrelated to other slides.
• You’ll stretch your short presentation further.
• Display those graphs that wouldn’t fit in your main presentation.

Most importantly,

• you’ll have impressed your viewers who will notice your shear effort on what you are saying.

5. Interact With The Audience

Don’t let your audience get bored.

• Ask them questions and listen to theirs too.
• Laughter is the best medicine. Make your presentation appropriately hilarious. You could open the presentation with funny notation. Connect with audience.
• Share your slides with the audience- allow them to save it on their devices during the presentation.
• Connect with their emotions. Use videos or short clips to drive your points.

It is important to engage your audience as they will keep focusing on your presentation and enjoy the presentation from start to the end. Remember your focus is the audience so whatever presentation you do should be gear towards attracting the attention of the audience at large.

6. Control The Meeting Flow And Show You Are Well Prepared

You need to know what you’re saying, don’t just follow the slides. Moreover, take control of the meeting. Set;

This will enable you to control every aspect of the meeting  and ensure that you deliver the best presentation to your audience.

7. Present Project Status With Facts and Figures

Spent time on project status

Show a chart of each project phase in the percentage of each project phase on a milestone.

You could present a table of the milestone with;

• Planned dates.
• Actual completion
• Percentage Progress.
• Tasks remaining to complete the milestone and specific members assigned the task.

You’ll have to convey a bar graph with a cost variable on the y-axis.

• Actual cost
• Planned cost
• Budgeted cost

Use a different color for different variables bars.

Work Schedule

Show the percentage completed, to know the exact progress of the project.

Present a graph of created versus completed tasks.

Chart representation of tasks completed, not started and on-going.

Show the workload completed, remaining and overdue.

8. Present Project Issues And Risks With Detailed Explanations And Proposed Recommendation

There are Predetermined risks and unexpected risks.

Present your heading

• Have a heading for every risk or issue.

Subheadings

• Give a detailed update on early and newly identified issues/risks.
• Present bullet lists or tables:
• Talk of the project risks and issue elements under the subheadings.
• Tell the audience how you’ve agreed to deal with the issues.

Give a short update on the way forward

• Any recommendation on the project must be approved by everyone.
• Present your approved possible action or any request for change.

9. Make Eye Contact

A conversational technique of presenting works wonders to keep the recipients immersed. The more you interact with the people you’re talking to, the more they’ll want to listen to your words. Many successful presenters like to incorporate a Q &A style to allow the audience to personally clear out their queries.

Luckily though, interaction isn’t just achieved through words. Even by looking straight at a certain person for a few moments, you’d have grabbed his attention for at least the next fifteen seconds. As you’re speaking your mind in a presentation, make confident and direct eye contact different from people. Surveys suggest that 3 to 5 seconds is the most appropriate span for these glances to work effectively. Directly seeing your audience nod to your ideas is a confidence booster in itself! Build this habit, you’ll make leaps of progress just by this little improvement.     

10. Use Visuals

If used effectively, visuals could literally increase the impact of your presentation tenfold. A book could be written about this section and it still wouldn’t do justice to the importance of visual aids. A presentation isn’t just mean because of the words you choose. Your recipients aren’t going to remember and retain all of it anyway. However, their pictorial memory (visual recognition) enables them to retain much of what they see, rather than what they hear.

Using visual aid as a support to your speech, your message could travel way further! Be careful though, misuse of visual aids could actually work against you too, e.g. forgetting to switch slides while you move on to the next point, or an over-filled slide. Some commonly used visual aids include flip charts (slightly outdated), whiteboards, the use of projectors and sliders, or some props! One of the most effective ways to create interesting and informative presentations is by using ready-to-use PowerPoint templates.

The following are a few benefits of using visuals;

Improved Understanding

The catchier your presentation is, the easier will it be for listeners to digest the information. Visuals help a great deal in making a presentation more interesting, leading to a better comprehension of your words.

Stronger Retention

Surveys and studies suggest that humans only retain 10% through their auditory recognition (listening), as compared to a 66% retention rate of visual recognition. If a presenter considers information retention to be vital, visual aids are a must.

Supports the Presenter

Through the use of visual aids, you’re basically protected against the possibility of forgetting stuff. Visuals create a sequential flow of the presentation, and the speaker could refer to them at any time. If you suffer from nervousness, a visual aid may prove to be a reliable friend!

11. Keep Your Slides Simple

As mentioned above, a cluttered slide could actually play an adverse role in your presentation. Instead of improving the presentation, it might drive the attention of the audience away from the speaker. You never want your audience to be too busy working out all the arrows and jumbled up words in your slide. They wouldn’t be listening to you while they figure that mess out. Instead, split the information over more slides to display them and talk over them peacefully.

In presentations, it’s the little things that count. Even the choice of colors in some slides could throw off a few particular recipients, so it’s best to exercise simplicity when it comes to slides. After all, the slides are there to supplement what you’ve got to say, instead of the other way around.

12. Use Stories And Analogies

Understandably, drowning anyone in stats and numbers is the quickest way to lose their interest. No one comes to the presentation excited to hear about statistical data, right? Alternatively, the use of stories has proven to be incredibly effective as a means to gain the audience’s complete attention. We naturally look to relate ourselves to a story someone tells, and there’s an intrinsic desire to know what happens next. This constitutes a strong, impeccable focus.

Apart from this, it works wonders for the retention rate as well. We’ve discussed the importance of this factor above, and many presenters would love for their message to be retained by listeners. Stories help us create a context to the underlying message, and we associate characters along with it. This helps us recall information in a much more effective manner. Remember those childhood stories that had a moral at the end? Of course, you do, that’s the power of stories.

13. Provide A Copy Of Your Presentation

At the end of your presentation, you could always announce that copies containing key points would be handed out to recipients. This helps the interested parties refer to it later on when they need to recall a certain point. Anything that aids their memory for remembering the crux of the presentation is a win-win for the presenter, so why not?

Planning and practice are arguably two of the most important aspects of delivering an extraordinary presentation. Planning tells you what to do, and practice teaches you how to carry it out. With experience, you’ll also learn new ways to maintain the immersion of your audience, which has also been discussed in detail above. Some tips to keep in mind are to find ways to interact with your audience more and more. You could achieve that through eye contact and a conversational style, where the speaker asks and welcomes questions.

Many stressful scenarios could be transformed into positive occurrences just by changing the way we perceive them. If you’ve got a presentation coming up, there’s no need to be nervous. Alternatively, look at it as an opportunity to grow yourself and to expand your comfort zone. Once you’re ready to take this challenge on, you’ll need guidance to get it right. This article has introduced you to ten of the most important presentation tips and techniques to absolutely nail it. All the best!

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Project update presentation: A comprehensive guide

Learn how to create and deliver effective presentations that inform, impress, and inspire your audience.

Raja Bothra

Building presentations

Hey there, folks!

If you're a professional who's ever been involved in a project, you understand the importance of keeping everyone on the same page.

That's where project update presentations come into play.

In this comprehensive guide, we're diving deep into the art of creating effective project update presentations. Whether you're a seasoned project manager or a newbie navigating the world of presentations, this guide will equip you with the knowledge and skills to nail your next project update.

What is a project update?

Before we delve into the intricacies of creating a project update presentation, let's clarify the essence of a project update. In its simplest form, a project update is akin to a progress report card for your project. It provides a snapshot of your project's current state, helping you and your stakeholders understand where you stand in your project journey.

Why project updates matter

You might be wondering why you should dedicate time and effort to crafting an effective project update presentation. Let's break it down:

• Alignment : A project update presentation serves as the North Star, guiding your team in the right direction. It aligns everyone involved with the project, ensuring they comprehend its current status and objectives.
• Transparency : Transparency is the cornerstone of trust. When stakeholders are well-informed about the project's highs and lows, they're more likely to trust your project management.
• Problem-solving : Project updates provide a real-time opportunity to identify and address challenges. A well-structured update helps teams find solutions before issues escalate.
• Documentation : Your project update serves as invaluable documentation of your project's journey. This documentation can be essential for future reference and post-project analysis.

What should be included in the project update presentation?

Now, let's dive into the nitty-gritty details of what should be included in your project update presentation:

Project status report: Think of this as the beating heart of your project update. It offers a comprehensive view of your project's overall health, shedding light on its progress, challenges, and potential risks.

Milestones: These are the shining stars of your project journey. Milestones mark significant achievements and targets met along the way. They're the milestones of your project's success.

Project progress: Here, you're diving deep into the nitty-gritty of your project's advancement. This is where you articulate the actual progress made compared to the initial plan, showcasing what's been achieved and what's yet to come.

Financial status: In this section, you provide clarity on the budget and financial aspects of your project. This includes budgets, cost projections, and actual expenditures. Transparency in financial matters builds trust and reassures your stakeholders.

Challenges and solutions: Don't shy away from sharing the challenges your project is facing. Equally important is presenting the well-thought-out solutions you've devised to overcome these challenges.

How to structure an effective project update presentation

Creating an effective project update presentation is an art that combines clarity, conciseness, and informativeness. It should provide your audience with a clear understanding of the project's progress, key achievements, challenges, and next steps. Let's dive into a well-structured framework:

1. Introduction: Begin your presentation by setting the stage:

• Introduce yourself : Start by introducing yourself. Your audience should know who you are and your role in the project.
• Project overview : Provide a brief summary of the project. What are its goals, objectives, and scope? Give your audience context about what they're about to hear.
• Progress overview : Offer a high-level overview of the project's progress since the last update. Mention any significant changes or decisions that have occurred.

2. Key achievements: Now, let's highlight the key accomplishments:

• Deliverables and milestones : Showcase the major deliverables and milestones that have been achieved or are currently in progress. Emphasize how these milestones align with the project's objectives and benefits. Visual aids, like charts and graphs, can help illustrate your points effectively.

3. Challenges and risks: It's essential to be candid about challenges and risks:

• Challenges : Discuss any challenges the project is currently facing. Be transparent about their impact on the project's progress.
• Risk mitigation : Explain your strategies for mitigating these challenges and risks. Your audience should understand how you plan to overcome these obstacles.

4. Next steps: What's on the horizon? Outline the project's future:

• Upcoming milestones : Detail the next steps for the project, including upcoming deadlines and milestones.
• Resource needs : If there are specific resources or support required from your audience, make it clear.
• Positive outlook : Conclude on a positive note, expressing your confidence in the project's success. It's an opportunity to inspire your team and stakeholders.

By following this structured approach, your project update presentation will be a powerful tool for keeping your audience informed, engaged, and aligned with the project's goals and objectives. Remember, simplicity and clarity are your allies in delivering an effective presentation.

Do's and don'ts on a project update presentation

To ensure your project update presentation is top-notch, consider these do's and don'ts:

• Practice : Rehearse your presentation. It boosts your confidence and ensures a smoother delivery.
• Keep it visual : Use infographics, charts, and graphs to make complex data more digestible.
• Engage your audience : Encourage questions and interactions.

Don'ts:

• Overload with data : Keep it concise and focused. Avoid overwhelming your audience.
• Read slides word for word : Your presentation should complement your words, not duplicate them.
• Lose sight of key messages : Always keep your project's key takeaways in mind.

Summarizing key takeaways

• A project update is a progress report for your project, including progress, milestones, financial status, and challenges with solutions.
• Project updates are crucial for alignment, transparency, problem-solving, and documentation.
• Structure your presentation with an introduction, key achievements, challenges, and next steps.
• Do rehearse, use visuals, and engage your audience; don't overload with data or read slides verbatim.

1. How can I create an effective project status update presentation using a powerpoint template?

Creating an effective project status update presentation ppt is crucial for conveying the progress of your project. To get started, you can use a powerpoint template that provides a complete deck with slides specifically designed for project status updates. These templates often include various graphic elements, making it easier for you to refine the results and select the number of stages that categorize your content. By using a well-crafted template, you can ensure your status updates are visually appealing and informative.

2. Can I use google slides for my construction project status updates, or is powerpoint more suitable?

Both are suitable platforms for project report / status presentations. Whether you choose google slides or powerpoint templates, it's essential to select the one that aligns with your needs. You can also find free project status powerpoint templates that cater to construction projects. These templates enable you to showcase the progress of the project, including milestones, project goals, and the project schedule in a professional manner.

3. How can I make my weekly project status update summary document more engaging and informative?

To make your weekly project status update summary document more engaging and informative, consider incorporating infographic elements into your presentation. These graphic elements can be found in various PowerPoint presentation templates, and they help break down complex data into visual, easy-to-understand formats. This will ensure that your stakeholders grasp the project's progress more effectively. Additionally, you can use PMO-approved design elements to maintain consistency and professionalism in your reports.

4. What are the key stages to include in a monthly project progress report presentation?

When preparing a monthly project progress report presentation, it's essential to select four key stages that represent the most significant developments during that month. This "4 piece puzzle" approach ensures that your presentation is concise and focused on the most critical updates. By categorizing all your content according to the number of divisions or graphic elements that best represent the progress, you'll have a clear and organized presentation that your audience will find valuable.

5. Where can I find free presentation templates to showcase the progress of a digital marketing project?

You can find free presentation templates designed for showcasing the progress of digital marketing projects online. Many websites offer free templates that you can download in PDF or PowerPoint format. These templates often come with various design styles and ideas to suit your specific project management needs. Utilizing these templates will save you time and help you create a successful project status report presentation without the need to design elements from scratch.

Create your project update presentation with prezent

Prezent, the communication success platform for enterprise teams, offers a range of features and tools to elevate your project update presentations. With its AI presentation tool, you can achieve full brand compliance and save valuable time. Here's how Prezent can be beneficial for your project updates:

• Brand-approved design: Prezent provides brand-approved design templates, ensuring that your project update presentation aligns with your company's branding guidelines. This guarantees a consistent and professional look.
• Presentation builder: Prezent's presentation builder simplifies the process of creating compelling slides. You can easily structure your content for maximum impact.
• Business storytelling: Prezent offers guides and e-courses that can help you master structured storytelling. Effective storytelling can make your project updates more engaging and memorable.
• Crush communication costs: By using Prezent, you can significantly reduce communication costs. It enables you to replace expensive agencies with software and services, saving your organization money.
• Enterprise-grade security: Your data's security is a top priority for Prezent. The platform is committed to protecting your data with independent third-party assurance.
• Professional services: If you're looking for a personal touch, Prezent offers professional services such as overnight services and presentation specialists who can convert notes to presentations and brainstorm design ideas.

In summary, Prezent empowers you to create project update presentations that are on-brand, engaging, and highly efficient. Whether you're looking to save time, reduce costs, or enhance the quality of your presentations, Prezent is a comprehensive solution for your communication needs.

Looking to make your project update presentations a breeze? Try our free trial or book a demo today with Prezent!

Happy presenting!

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• Project management |
• 8 steps to write an effective project s ...

8 steps to write an effective project status report

Effective project status reports are the best way to keep your stakeholders aligned and in the loop during your project progress. These high-level updates proactively let your team know if a project is on track, at risk, or off track—so you can course correct if necessary to hit your deadlines every time. Learn how to create project status reports in a few easy steps, plus check out a template you can use right away.

It’s the end of the week and here you are again: having to dig through a variety of spreadsheets, emails, and tools to patch together an update of how your project is doing. 

Instead of manually assembling this information, use a project status report template to streamline this process for you. That way, you spend less time on unnecessary data gathering and more time on work that matters. 

Whether you’re gearing up for your first ever project status report or you’re looking for a better system than the one you currently use, this article will walk you through what a progress report is, how you can build one, and how to use project status reports to hit your project deadlines on time, every time. Here’s how.

What is a project status report?

Project status reports are timely updates on the progress of your projects. Written concisely, project reports offer high-level information about project progress, so team members get at-a-glance insight into what’s happening within the project. With a timely status report, you can ensure your entire project team and cross-functional stakeholders understand what’s on track, what’s blocked, and what’s coming next. 

Regularly sharing project status reports is important because they help you keep all project stakeholders in the loop and aligned on how your project is progressing. They answer the questions everyone has before team members even have a chance to ask them. They show and tell your team that you’re on track, making you (and everyone else) feel confident.

How often you share project status reports depends on your project’s timeline. Some projects benefit from weekly reporting, while others only need to be updated once a month. Schedule your project reports as frequently as is helpful for your stakeholders. These shouldn’t be reactive reports on things going poorly—rather, effective reports keep your team updated on the project’s progress, whether the project is on track, at risk, or off track.

The benefits of effective project reporting

Reporting isn’t just something you should do for the sake of doing it. Effective reporting has a variety of benefits. When you correctly report on project status, you effectively: 

Keep track of project health

The worst thing for a project is when you arrive at the end of the timeline and realize you were off track the whole time. No one likes being blindsided—and as the project manager, you’re empowered to make sure your team is aware of your project health at all times. 

Progress reports are a way to do that without too much manual work. Because these reports mix high-level summaries with some important metrics, everyone has a sense of the project's health. And if the project is off track? You can quickly and proactively fix it—so you still hit your project deadline on time and on budget.

Summarize project progress

Project status reports are not real-time reports. These reports are summaries of what happened during the past week, two weeks, or month of project work. They’re an opportunity for your stakeholders to stay informed on how well you’re sticking to the project plan . 

If you’re looking for tips on how to report on projects in real time, check out our article on universal reporting tools for every team . 

Reduce manual work

As the project manager, you already have enough on your plate. You don’t need to also spend hours every week or month grabbing data from different places. Project reporting tools make it easy to find all of this information in one place, and create a project status report with the click of a button. 

Share next steps and action items

Project status reports should go out to your project team, project sponsor, important stakeholders, and cross-functional team members. Because these are high-level reports, they’re appropriate for anyone who wants to stay informed about project progress. 

This is the optimal way to let everyone know what’s happening without getting into the details. If there are important project next steps or action items, share them here so everyone knows what to expect. 

Proactively identify blockers

If your project isn’t on track, your status report lets others know what the delay is and what you’re doing to resolve any blockers, allowing you to show off your proactive approach to getting things back to where they should be. Similar to the project risk management process , proactive status reporting helps you identify and overcome issues before they impact your project timeline.

Say goodbye to status meetings

The day of the status meeting is over. We now know these aren’t effective ways to spend your time. Unlike face-to-face meetings, project status reports are shared in a central tool that team members can check asynchronously when they want to. They can refer back to the information, or dig deeper into the project if necessary. Save your face-to-face meeting time for valuable meetings like brainstormings or all hands. 

Before you report: Combine reporting with effective project management

The biggest benefit of project status reporting is that it reduces your manual work, centralizes information, and makes it easy to keep everyone up to date. If your information is scattered across multiple tools, you can’t effectively use project reporting templates—you still need to manually open this Excel spreadsheet and that team email to gather your information. 

Instead, make sure you’re using project management software as your central source of truth. With project management software you:

Have a central source of truth so team members can see who’s doing what by when. 

Can easily visualize project information in a Gantt chart , Kanban board , calendar, or spreadsheet-style list view. 

Create status reports with the click of a button. 

Offer a place for team members who read the status report and want more details to look and find the information they need. 

Have access to additional project information, like your project plan, communication plan , project goals, milestones, deliverables , and more.

Naturally, we think Asana is a great option. Asana is a work management tool your entire team can use. Your cross-functional collaborators need a way to view past status reports. Your key stakeholders need a bird’s eye view of the entire program or project portfolio management progress. And your team members need a way to track individual work throughout the project lifecycle.

8 steps to write a great project status report

So, how do you go about doing project status reports? Be sure to create a clear structure you can use consistently for all future status reports. You should also make sure it matches with your project brief to keep your report on topic.

Follow this guide to understand what to include in your project status report, and watch as we put each step into practice with an example of an Employee Satisfaction project.

1. Build your report where work lives

Before you build your report, make sure you’re already tracking your work information in a project management tool. That way, you don’t have to manually grab information from a host of sources—instead, you can reduce manual work and create a report with a few clicks. 

Starting off with a project management tool makes it easy to capture dependencies and note upcoming tasks so you’re never blindsided about your project health.

2. Name your report

A great option is to simply use the project name for clarity. If you’re reporting on this project regularly, you should also include a date or timestamp.

Example project report title: February 2020 - Employee satisfaction initiative

3. Indicate project health

The project health is the current status of the project. Project health may change from report to report, especially if you run into blockers or unblock big project risks. Look for a project management tool that allows you to communicate the project’s status and whether or not it’s on track. One way to do this is to use a color coding system (green = on track, yellow = at risk, red = off track).

Example project health update: Project status is on track.

4. Quickly summarize the status report

Your project status report summary should be brief—about 2-3 sentences. The goal here is to give readers who may not have time to read the entire report a quick TL;DR of the most important facts. 

This is the first section of your report, so it’s the best place to: 

Include highlights

Flag major blockers

Note unexpected project risks

Example status report summary: Our survey results are in and being reviewed. At first glance, we’re seeing 80% employee satisfaction, up 3 points from the last survey. The Engagement Committee is working with the Executive team on what new engagement initiatives to implement in our key target areas, which include career growth and transparency.

5. Add a high-level overview of each key area

Depending on your project, your key areas may vary from report to report, or they may stay consistent. For example, in an Agile project that’s continuously improving, you’d likely use dynamic key areas that cover the things your team worked on during the last sprint. Alternatively, for an event planning project, there are a set number of key areas that you always want to touch on, like promotion, signups, and speakers. 

For each key area in the status report, add a few bullet points that give an update on progress, accomplishments, and upcoming work.

Example high-level overview of a key area: Survey results

70% of employees took the satisfaction survey.

Our overall satisfaction rating is 80%.

Only 57% of employees report having a clear path towards career advancement, down 5% since the last survey. 

41% of employees listed transparency as the number one improvement they’d like to see.

6. Add links to other documents or resources

While you shouldn’t include every little detail about how your project is going, some people will want to know more. For stakeholders who are looking for more in-depth information, provide links to documents or resources. This can include more specific project information, like links to specific project milestones , or the broader impacts of the project, like a reference to the business goals the project is contributing to.

Example: Include a link to the employee satisfaction survey , as well as to the larger company OKR around increasing employee engagement over the course of the fiscal year.

7. Flag any blockers the project has run into

All projects run into roadblocks. These can come in the form of project risks , unexpected increases to the budget , or delays that impact the project timeline . Keeping stakeholders in the loop when issues arise will help everyone adjust accordingly to stay on track. 

Example roadblock: The executive team wants to look at results before the engagement committee meets again, but won’t be able to do so for another three weeks. This will delay our overall project timeline.

8. Highlight next steps

These could include a list of next steps, kudos you want to give someone, or anything else you want to highlight.

Example: Thank you Sarah A. for sending out multiple communications to employees encouraging them to participate in the survey!

Template for creating your project status report

To quickly put everything you learned in the previous section to use, write your next project status report using this easy-to-fill-out template:

Report name:

Name your report. This can be as simple as the project name and the date of the report.

Project health:

Is the project on track, at risk, or delayed?

Include a short description of the most important takeaways from your project status report here. Keep in mind that busy stakeholders may only look at this section, so include any highlights or blockers the entire team needs to know about

Key area 1: High-level overview

Specific details about progress, accomplishments, and upcoming work.

Key area 2: High-level overview

Key area 3: High-level overview

Additional information and links: 

Link to relevant project details or higher-level project information that stakeholders might be curious about. This section is a chance for team members to dig deeper on specifics, or understand how the project initiative fits into your larger strategic goals . 

Are there any challenges you’re facing? How will you resolve them?

Additional notes or highlights:

Are there any additional things your team needs to know? What are the main next steps? 

Example project status report

While a how-to guide on writing project status reports is helpful, sometimes seeing a real-life example allows you to really see what your own update could look like, right? We thought you might agree, so here’s an example you may find useful:

Report name: Ebook launch

Project status: On track

Great progress this week! We are still in the concept phase, but Avery Lomax will be choosing a topic this week. Content and Design teams are standing by and ready to get started once we give the go ahead.

Planning team met to discuss an overall topic

We have three final ideas and will choose one on Friday

A brief is due to the Content team the following Thursday

The Content team is ready to start writing copy as soon as our idea is finalized

They are gathering pertinent company information that should be included

Design reviewed five ebook examples to determine the style they liked

They will be choosing a template by next Tuesday

Jen is out of the office all next week so please direct any content questions to Joy

Thank you to Henry for curating a huge list of topics for us to choose from!

Issues/challenges:

The e-book’s deadline is tight, as we all know. It’s critical that we’re all working in our project management tool to keep everyone organized and on track. Thanks!

Streamline reporting with a work management tool

The above report is clear and easy to follow. By building this report in a work management tool like Asana, you can automatically fill each section but the summary. Here’s what the above report looks like in Asana:

Project status reporting best practices

Now you know what to include in your project status report, but you may still have a few additional questions. As you’re creating status reports for your project, these best practices will help you formulate a winning update.

How often should you report out?

The frequency with which you send project updates depends on the type of project you’re running. If your project has a short timeframe, or if things are moving quickly, aim to send weekly project status reports. Alternatively, if the initiative you’re reporting on is a long-term project, you probably only need to send biweekly or even monthly reports. The most important thing is making sure your project stakeholders are up to date. 

When you use a project reporting tool, you can set a task for yourself to always send status reports on a certain day each week. These recurring reminders make it easy to keep stakeholders informed, whether you're sending weekly status updates or monthly progress reports. Either way, stakeholders will begin to expect your updates, which means less frequent check-ins from them (plus they’ll appreciate always being in the loop).

By sending regular reports, you can avoid multiple meetings related to a project (we all know unnecessary meetings have their own reputation ). Skip the check-in meetings and save your time for more important work.

Who should you include?

It depends on the project and who is involved, but typically plan to send an update to any stakeholders working on your project. You should have created a stakeholder analysis—outlining all stakeholders, sponsors, and team members—during the project planning process, but refer to your project plan if you aren’t sure.

Even if that week’s status report doesn’t affect a particular team member, you should still share it with everyone. It’s important for everyone to have a high-level overview. Team members who don’t need to review the report in depth can quickly skim your summary section, while others who are more involved can dive into the details you’ve provided. 

How detailed should you get?

A project status report shouldn’t offer every little detail. Let the work tell the story—you’re simply curating information and adding a little color. Think of a project status report as a top line message—just the most important pieces of your project that affect most of stakeholders should be included.

You should always indicate whether the project is on track, at risk, or off track, give a quick summary of what’s complete and what’s upcoming, then link out to other resources for people who want more details.

Where should you write your project status report?

The best way to draft and share status updates is with a work management tool . Look for a tool that offers an overview of your project, so your team has a central source of truth for all project-related work. That way, instead of managing projects in spreadsheets , you can keep it all—status updates, project briefs, key deliverables, and important project milestones—in one place. Your reports will be easily shareable, and stakeholders can look back on previous reports at any time, avoiding email overload on your end.

Wrapping your project up: summarizing your work

The status reports we’ve been talking about are always sent during a project to keep everyone in the loop. However, once the project is finished, it’s smart to send out a final summary report. Think of this as the executive summary for your project. This is your chance to offer stakeholders a wrap-up to the project. Use it to officially close it out.

Again, it’s a high-level overview, but instead of including updates and statuses, you’ll provide a summary of how the overall project went. Here are a few questions to answer in a project summary report:

What were the goals of this project and were they met?

Was the project completed on time and on budget (if applicable)?

What successes should be highlighted?

What challenges did we run into?

What can we learn from this project to help us on future projects?

Keep every stakeholder on track with status reports that write themselves

If you’re looking to over-deliver on your next project, try sending project status updates. They keep you productive, efficient, and accountable, while giving everyone else a quick (and engaging) look into what’s been happening. 

Use the resources we’ve provided to create reports that give just enough information without diving into too much detail. Find a project management solution like Asana that has features designed specifically to help with status reports. You’ll save time and be as organized as possible.

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Top 7 Project Update Templates with Examples and Samples

Nidhi Aswal

In the dynamic arena of project management, where the landscape is in a perpetual state of flux, maintaining proper communication with stakeholders is a cornerstone. Picture, if you will, the classic "Chinese Whispers" game—a simple yet illustrative analogy. In this game, a message is conveyed from one individual to another, often resulting in significant distortion by the time it reaches the final recipient.

Transplant this analogy into the context of project management, and one is compelled to confront a paramount query: How can one ensure that the message, vision, and essence of a project remain unadulterated as it traverses this intricate game of whispers? Here, the disconcerting revelation gleaned from a PMI report comes to the fore—almost sixty percent 60% of projects falter due to inadequate communication.

The solution, you ask? SlideTeam presents you with the top seven project status report templates with samples and examples to facilitate your reporting process. The 100% customizable nature of the templates provides you with the desired flexibility to edit your presentations. The content-ready slides give you the much-needed structure.

Let’s explore the templates on offer!

Template 1: Project Activity Update PPT Template

This expertly developed PPT Preset offers visuals and graphics perfect for topics like project completion reports, critical issues, risks, update reports, activity monitoring, and analytics dashboards. It explains the eight-step process of writing a project activity update report in an easy-to-understand manner. 

Download now!

Template 2: Project Activity Real-Time Update and Monitoring PPT Slide

The next PowerPoint Theme displays a dashboard for real-time project activity updates and monitoring. This PPT Set emphasizes stages like planning, design, development, and testing while illustrating aspects such as project budget, workload, overdue activities, and activity logs. It helps ensure real-time status tracking and streamline project monitoring. 

Template 3: Weekly Project Status Updates PowerPoint Template

Stay on top of your projects with the weekly project status updates PPT Slide. This powerful PPT Design ensures comprehensive monitoring of milestones and deliverables by covering essential topics such as weekly progress reports, performance reports, and progress tracking. Get it today for a structured project overview and captivate your audience.

Template 4: Project Updates PPT Visual Aids Layouts

This PPT Layout covers critical stages of project updates, including sales process map, sales funnel results, top clients, and sales channel KPI tracker. This structured six-stage process ensures comprehensive project tracking milestones and deliverables. 

Template 5: Project Status Updates with Key Milestones Achieved

Our project status updates slide highlights significant project milestones. This organized PowerPoint Presentation focuses on essential topics such as project objectives, risks, critical issues, and financial systems. Get it today to present a complete project development and key outcome summary.

Template 6: Automatic M ont hly Project Goal Status U pdate

This PPT Framework highlights important details, including priority order, purpose, objectives, outcome, deadline, plan to improve, and current situation. You can use the ‘plan to improve’ section to communicate important points to stakeholders.

Template 7: Project 4-Month U pdates list PPT Layout

With this PPT Presentation, you can ensure optimum presentation efficacy. This four-stage method emphasizes crucial areas such as resources, analysis, and performance. You can curate this PPT Slide to develop engaging project stories to captivate your audience at each meeting. 

Template 8: Automatic Monthly Project Status Update with Budget and Risks

You can quickly eliminate doubts with the automatic monthly project status update with budget and risks PPT Slide. It is a clarity booster for your project status. This PPT Theme showcases key topics such as tasks completed, tasks delayed, tasks planned, and project budget. Get it today to analyze key project risks and lead your business communications in the right direction.

Project update PPT Templates from SlideTeam give a streamlined approach to productive communication and engaging presentations. With these carefully-developed designs, you can direct your initiatives to success, catching attention and pushing your point home with clarity and conviction while monitoring key project risks. Upgrade your presentations now and leave a lasting impression.

Are you looking for more? Our weekly project status report is key to keeping projects on schedule and stakeholders in the loop. Check out these project status PPT Templates to simplify and improve your status reports. Streamline your IT project reporting with IT project status report PowerPoint Layouts.

FAQs on Project Update

What is a project update.

A project status report is a document that informs stakeholders of the current status of a project. Typically, it describes the progress made, the tasks completed, any delays or problems encountered, major milestones, and frequently includes financial information. This communication tool promotes openness, keeps stakeholders informed, and enables prompt decision-making.

How do you write a project update?

A project update begins by summarizing the overall progress. Describe accomplished tasks, major milestones attained, and any difficulties encountered. Highlight impending tasks or deliverables, offer a financial summary if needed, and note any help or choices that may be required. Reiterate key points and outline expectations for the next update before concluding.

What should be included in a project update?

A project update should include the overall project status, tasks completed, milestones reached, challenges or issues encountered, upcoming tasks or deliverables, financial overview or budget status, any decisions or inputs required from stakeholders, and a forecast or prediction for the project's next phase or period. It guarantees that decisions are made in an educated and timely manner.

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Home Blog Business How To Create a Project Presentation: A Guide for Impactful Content

How To Create a Project Presentation: A Guide for Impactful Content

Corporate, academic, and business meetings share one common factor: successfully delivering project presentations. This is one skill professionals should harness in terms of articulating ideas, presenting plans, and sharing outcomes through an effective project presentation.

In this fast-paced reality where new tools and frameworks make us question the human factor value, we believe there’s much to be said about how working towards building presentation skills can make a difference, especially for making a project stand out from the crowd and have a lasting impact on stakeholders. We can no longer talk about simply disclosing information, the manner in which the narrative is built, how data is introduced, and several other factors that speak of your expertise in the subject.

This article will explore the art of project presentation, giving insights to presenters to deliver a memorable project plan presentation. Whether you are new to this experience or a seasoned presenter, this article promises to give you valuable information on how to build and present a project presentation that resonates with your target audience and will convert into your expected results for the project. Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

• Who is the audience of a project presentation?

Executive Summary

Project overview, the project process model, the project scope, the project resources, the project roadmap, the project activities plan, the project risks, quality control, project execution and monitoring.

• The Project Team

What Is a Project Presentation?

A project presentation is a business activity that brings together stakeholders and team members to oversee a project from execution to completion. During a project presentation, one or two people present a document or slide deck with an overview of all the project’s details.

During a project presentation, the project manager highlights key data about the project initiation and planning activities, like the project scope, requirements gathering, a deliverable list, timelines, and milestones.

The first instance of a project presentation is right before the execution of the project itself. Then, during the project process life cycle, you present it again with timely updates and news about the progress.

Who is the audience of a project presentation? 

A project-related audience is made up of stakeholders – all individuals and entities that affect or are affected by the project’s existence.

Discuss the project presentation with team members that’ll work on the project so they know what’s at stake and what’s expected of them. They’ll need information like requirements, the roadmap, the work breakdown structure, and deliverables.

Stakeholders

Present your project to the stakeholders that can authorize resources and expenditures. Show them how the project will offer the solutions they want under the conditions they impose in a set amount of time. 

Stakeholders want to know details like project scope, budget breakdowns, timing calculations, risk assessments, and how you plan to confront these risks and be ready for changes. 

The Structure of a Project Presentation

Project presentations follow a standard structure covering all critical elements. Follow this guideline to ensure that you cover everything with the slides, the speech, and the discussion.

In the next section, we describe a project presentation structure you can build with SlideModel templates or working with our AI PowerPoint generator . As you will see, most sections in the structure are summaries or overviews of project management practices completed during initiation and planning. 

At the start of your presentation, add an executive summary slide . This section is meant to welcome the viewer to the presentation and give an idea of what’s to come. To differentiate your executive summary from the project overview that comes right after it, use the opportunity to place the project into context. 

In an executive summary , show how this particular project fits into the overall strategy for the company or the section it belongs to. If, for example, your project is about TikTok Marketing, offer information as to how it fits in the overall marketing strategy.

Continue the presentation with a project overview to show the audience what to expect. This section covers one slide or a combination of slides depending on the layout. The project overview slide serves as the introduction to a project presentation and what’s inside.

Include these items:

• An Introduction with a brief background about the project. 
• A short explanation of the project’s objectives and completion goals.
• A quick overview of the timeline with start and end dates.

The project life cycle is the series of phases that a project goes through from its inception to its completion. The project process model is the group of knowledge areas, processes, and their relationships that will guide the activities along the project lifecycle. The next slide should display the chosen project process model and explain how it’ll be carried out along the different lifecycle phases. Project process models examples include Waterfall, Scrum, and V Model for software development, and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) and Swimlane for general business-related projects.

Process models are important for the team to understand execution processes. Stakeholders need to see the process model to understand the systematic process of activities and how long they will take. 

Use one slide for the model, show only high-level components, and offer details during the presentation if the audience asks for them.

The scope is a crucial element of any project and needs its own section in the presentation. The scoping process begins with requirements gathering and includes the creation of a work breakdown structure , an analysis of what’s in and out of scope, plus validation and scope management plans. 

One or two slides are enough to highlight key scope details in a dashboard-style layout mirroring the information on your project scope statement. Preferably, place the scope slides towards the start of the project presentation close to the process model and project resources.

Every project needs resources, and that assessment must be included in the project presentation as well. In a general sense, all resources are what make up the overall budget for the project. In turn, you’ll need to show a budget breakdown that shows high-level resources.

Like many aspects of a project presentation, what you include depends on the industry you’re working for. Construction projects use constructors, materials, machinery, etc. Software projects use programmers, designers, software licenses, computers, etc.

Time is the main resource of any project. During project planning, the project management team estimates the required effort needed to complete the defined scope. Using the Project Process Model, Scope, and Resources, a plan is built. Present a roadmap to highlight the expected time for project completion and where each milestone falls along that line.

Roadmaps can be constructed with an infinite variety of visual layouts, from highly creative and illustrative to structured formats resembling spreadsheets and tables with color-coded roadmaps across the cells. Use one slide to show the roadmap highlighting time estimates, constraints, and projections. For updated project presentations, mark where the project is on the roadmap at that particular moment in time.

Every phase of the roadmap is broken down into action plans . Action plans list activities, their duration, allocated resources (human, material, and financial), and the relationship between activities.

Present your project activities plan with a Gantt Chart and a Costs Report. The Gantt Chart will show the activities to execute, how long they will take, and who (person or team) will be responsible for them. The costs reports will show how much the execution of activities will cost.

During the presentation, you’ll spend the most time on this section, as this is when and where your entire plan is outlined. To show more detail than the roadmap overview, use a few slides to show specific sections of the main Gantt chart and show key activities per phase or milestone.

All projects present risks, and to control them, they must be identified, assessed, evaluated, and mitigated . Visualize your risk assessment with a risk matrix and include it in the project presentation. 

Use this slide to explain to stakeholders how you plan to mitigate the identified risks. Share with team members what’s expected of them in order to keep the risks under control. Risk management is a critical component of project management and something stakeholders will always be looking at.

Controlling the quality of project deliverables is critical for positive project outcomes and continued success with the deliverable. This process is called quality control or quality assurance.

The project process model includes which quality control techniques the team will use and when. Some quality assurance (QA) techniques include statistical process control (SPC), Six Sigma, ISO 9000, and Total Quality Management (TQM). Use one slide to visualize the process and your plan to execute it.

Once the project starts, the project plan is a living entity and evolves over time. This section will need to be regularly updated with progress reports, performance KPIs, and status updates.

Across these slides, explain how activities will be monitored and deliverable outcomes measured. Show exactly how you will determine if the project is on course or has deviations. Visualize all execution activities with a Gantt chart to show the current progress. Use big numbers and data points to highlight performance metrics. Use a comparison slide to visualize the completeness percentage vs. planned progress and budget consumption vs. planned budget.

Explain all monitoring activities for the execution phase using a calendar or schedule that shows on what days activities will take place and who is involved.

The Project Team 

When presenting a project, include a stakeholder map to describe the management team, the sponsors, the main stakeholders, and the implementation team or teams. Depending on the size of the project, this will be an org chart or multiple org charts across a few slides.

Why is it important to present the project team to the stakeholders and vice versa? So that everyone involved knows the other parties and their responsibilities.

Another use for the team slide or slides is to present the next person who will speak during the project presentation. This gives the audience some background on that person’s role in the project.

Case Study – Project Presentation Example

Using the structure we present above, we outlined a case study of a realistic project and how the project manager puts together the project presentation using SlideModel templates. The project presentation example is based on a complex project of building a bridge (Cline Avenue Bridge). For the educational purpose of this article, we are not delivering all the elements of the project presentation, as it is out of scope. Still, we illustrate the more representative slides of each section, show how to prepare a PowerPoint Presentation for a project and how simple it is to adapt the templates to the content that needs to be presented. As a disclaimer, all information we present is an adaptation and reinterpretation of the real project, modified by SlideModel to fit the use case learning goals. This information and presentation should not be considered a source of information related to the Cline Avenue Bridge Project.

In this slide, the presenter summarises the project highlights in a project charter style. The Project Manager can extend this introduction all over the project lifecycle, and the speech can jump from different knowledge areas without the need to change slides or get deeper into details. Specifically, in the Cline Bridge Project, the objective is narrated, the location is just mentioned and linked to a map for further details, and a set of important facts are presented (Building Information Modelling Process, Budget, Duration, Sponsor, and Constructor). Key Highlights of the final deliverable are listed (Segmental Bridge, Material Concrete, 1.7 miles of length and 46 feet of width)

Process Model

The Process Model slide illustrates the framework for the project lifecycle, processes, planning, and execution. In this slide, the Project Manager will describe the model and how it is tailored to the specifics of the project. In this case, for the development and construction of the Cline Bridge, the builder has defined the use of BIM (Building Information Modelling) as the process model. During this slide, the presenter can describe the lifecycle phases (Design, Production, Construction, Operation, and Planning) and drill down one level over the knowledge practices involved. For example, the initial stage consists of “Design”, which has two main knowledge areas, Conceptual Design, and Detailed Design. The project manager is able to explain this definition without the need to outline detailed processes and activities within them.

The Scope section of the presentation generally involves several slides, as the content layout is a list of “requirements.” Based on this fact, a table layout is suggested to make good use of space. It is important to avoid abusing the “list” and present the group of requirements rather than specific requirements. Otherwise, the project manager ends up transcribing the requirements document.

In this project presentation example, we present 10 groups of requirements traversing different stages of the project lifecycle. 

• Design Standards: Bridge design must comply with local, national, and international design standards, including relevant engineering and safety codes
• Load Capacity: The bridge must be designed to safely carry a specific maximum load, which would include the weight of the bridge itself, traffic, pedestrians, wind, and other factors.
• Seismic Design: The design must account for seismic loads. 
• Aesthetic Design: The bridge must be designed to meet certain aesthetic criteria aligned with the artists and architects.
• Accessibility and Use Requirements: Requirements for pedestrian walkways, bike lanes, vehicle lanes, load restrictions for vehicles, clearance heights for boats if over a waterway, etc.
• Regulatory Approvals: The project must secure all necessary permits and approvals from relevant local and national regulatory bodies.
• Environmental Impact: The project must take steps to minimize its environmental impact during construction and the operation of the bridge, including implementing erosion and sediment controls.
• Materials Simulation: Materials should comply with regulations and usage expectations for current and future expected requirements.
• Site Preparation: The project must include preparation of the construction site, including any necessary land clearing or grading.
• Foundations Construction: Foundations will need to support materials weight and traffic expected for the next 30 years.
• Site Acquisition: Acquire site and terrain for building and logistics.

Building a bridge involves a high level of resource usage. In an executive meeting of a project presentation, the recommendation is to structure this section as a Financial table with only one level of detail. Further details are delegated to specific resources and cost analysis presentations.

The resources list presented is:

• Professional Services
• Construction Labour
• Quality Assurance
• Contingency
• Waste Disposal and Cleanup
• Subcontractors

In order to break the style of table after table during the project presentation, we suggest using visual elements as icons and colors metaphorically related to each of the elements listed.

Project Roadmap

As explained earlier in the article, the project roadmap serves to offer a comprehensive overview of the significant milestones that will happen over the course of time. Given the magnitude of a bridge construction project and its prolonged duration, it is advisable, particularly for such extensive endeavours, to present a roadmap that aligns milestones with corresponding lifecycle phases in a discernible manner. This approach enables the audience to mentally envision the sequential progression of the construction process.

Aligned with previous slides, in the example we created a roadmap with the following high level milestones, and sub componentes:

• Project Budgeting and Financing
• Land Purchase & Renting
• Conceptual Design
• Detailed Design
• Access Routes
• Waste Disposal
• Simulations
• Materials Tests
• Seismic Tests
• Fabrication
• Preparation of Modular Pieces
• Build and Assembly
• Test under Acceptance Criteria
• Stress Test
• Operation and Maintenance

As you can see, the Project Manager decided over a sequential roadmap, presented with little detail in timings, with start and end dates to picture dimension over the diagram.

Action Plan

In the bridge construction project of the example, there will be plenty of activity plans. All along the project several of these slides will be created and updated. The most suitable option for presentation tasks, durations, precedence relationship and resource allocation is the Gantt Chart Template. We present the first Quarter of the project, over the Conceptual Design Activities. 

As displayed in the PowerPoint Slide , the subtitle clarifies the number of slides that will be used for this purpose.

The activities presented are:

• Site Analysis
• Feasibility Analysis
• Design Concepts
• BIM Model Creation
• Model Revision
• Environmental Impact
• Present Design

Project Risks

Risk management is an iterative process all over the project life cycle. When presenting your projects, the risks will vary depending on the progress over the roadmap. For this specific example we decided to present the risks being discussed during the Ideation stage, where the developer is exchanging risks with contractors and the company that will build the bridge.

Our suggested layout for this kind of information is a simple table, where the risks are clearly readable and visible, while the description is a hint for discussion rather than an in depth explanation.

It is very important to classify the presented risks, at least with two dimensions; “Impact” and “Probability”. This will generate quality conversations around them. 

Outlined Risks during the Initiation Phase:

• Design Errors
• Construction Delays
• Budget Overruns
• Regulatory Changes
• Site Conditions
• Equipment Failures
• Health and Safety Incidents

As the reader can spot, the risks outlined, are very high level, and each of them will trigger specific Risk Analysis Reports.

The quality control section of the project presentation may vary depending on the quality process adopted. For large scale companies with a uniform portfolio of projects , it is common to see a continuous improvement quality model, which iteratively builds quality over the different projects (for example software companies) For construction companies like the example, the situation is not different, and the quality control model is aligned with the specific building process model. In this specific case, the project manager is presenting the quality control process to be applied over the BIM model and the Quality Control process to be followed for the physical construction of the bridge:

Execution and Monitoring

During the project, several status meetings will be carried out. During the project presentation the manager can establish the pattern to be used along the project.

For this example, we set a basic progress dashboard where the project manager can present : 

• The current timeline
• Top 5 issues
• Current Burndown
• Top 5 risks.

The art of project presentation goes beyond listing data in random slides. A project presentation is a powerful tool to align stakeholders and foster an environment of trust and collaboration over factual information.

With a structured approach, all members involved in the project design and execution can understand the direction that’s being taken and the importance behind certain decisions. We hope these insights can turn your project into a powerful presentation that inspires and deliver results.

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Project Presentations: How to Prepare and Deliver a Project Presentation

Can anything make a project manager’s heart sink faster than being told that they need to give a project presentation to the board of directors? The pressure. The responsibility. Sure, you’re happy that the directors of the company trust you enough that they want your input in the project, but having to present in front of these powerful players is making your stress levels spike.

If you haven’t come across these presentation requests from senior managers yet, you will! These scenarios are common on projects, especially projects that introduce a new product or involve organizational change. But don’t feel overwhelmed. Giving project presentations may feel scary, but you can plan and prepare for them just like any other meeting.

What Is a Project Presentation?

A project presentation is an opportunity for you to explain your project processes and deliverables to key stakeholders. These can be informal, like a quick update via reports with a few individuals, or formal. Formal project presentations often require proper meeting times, thought-out slide decks, goal review and more. We’ll spend most of our time discussing how to prepare and deliver a formal project presentation.

A formal project presentation requires good data. Project management software can provide you with the dashboards and reports you need to supplement your points and progress updates. ProjectManager has real-time dashboards that you can share with stakeholders, and eight different in-depth project reports that you can make with just a few clicks. Get started for free today!

Why Is a Project Presentation So Important?

A project presentation is your opportunity to convey the importance of the work you and your team have been doing. If you’re unable to articulate your progress and achievements, key stakeholders won’t understand why money, time and resources are being spent on your project.

When you think of it like that, it’s no wonder why people spend so much time preparing for their project presentations. Read on to see how you can knock your next presentation out of the park.

How to Prepare for a Project Presentation

Preparing for a project presentation can be more important than you actual delivery. That’s because good preparation can set you up for success on the big day. Let’s go through some preparation techniques you can do for your project presentation.

1. Create a Calendar Invite for Your Project Presentation

You can’t just expect people to turn up – they need to know that there is an important event that requires their attendance, so get it in their diaries. People plan their meetings and calendar appointments sometimes quite far in advance, giving ample warning. Schedule the presentation as soon as you can, and check with the individuals (or their assistants) if you don’t get a reply about their availability.

If you have been invited to someone else’s meeting to talk about your project, make sure it is in your planner and book some time to plan for it in advance. If you don’t, you risk running out of time to prepare your material.

2. Select a Format for Your Presentation

How are you going to get your message across? If you’ve scheduled a meeting it’s likely that you are expecting to do a formal presentation. That’s fine, but how? Will you use slides or flip charts or mirror your iPad on a monitor? Do you expect the audience to participate in any part of the presentation? Can you speak without notes or would it be better to have some pointers with you on the day?

You should also consider where you will be giving the presentation. For example, a format that is suitable for a small room and a limited audience, such as a loosely-structured project update with a couple of slides, is not going to be appropriate for a room full of stakeholders, laid out like a lecture theatre with you at a lectern at the front.

3. Practice Your Project Management Presentation

Giving presentations is a skill. Practice, practice, practice. Before your big project presentation, volunteer to do some smaller ones, like staff briefings or shorter updates at team meetings. You want to feel comfortable both standing up in front of the room and with the material. Run through your presentation at home or in an empty meeting room so that you remember where the slide transitions are. Practice using the projector and a clicker to move the slides forward. Write out your flip charts several times so that it becomes second nature.

Practice and training will make your delivery much more polished and professional and give your audience a far better experience.

4. Write Big So Your Presentation Is Legible

Whether you are using slides or flip charts, write big or use big fonts. It is often difficult to see what is on the screen, even in a small room – and that means your message is not getting across. And it’s an excuse for audience members to check their phones instead of listening to you.

A good tip is to print out your slides and put them on the floor. If you can still read them clearly from a standing position, then the text is big enough. If you can’t read the words or you have to bend down to read them, make the font size larger!

5. Have a Backup Plan for Your Presentation

Projectors break, meeting rooms don’t have conference phones in, pens run out just at the critical moment. Plan for everything to go wrong. Your presentation audience is made up of busy people and they don’t want to sit there watching you fiddle with the technology. Get it all working before they arrive, and if it doesn’t work when you get going, make sure that you have a contingency plan (like a printout of your slides) so that you can carry on anyway.

How to Give a Project Presentation

When the fateful day arrives, there are some important things to keep in mind when giving your project presentation. Follow these best practices and you’ll portray your project and your team in the best possible light.

1. Speak Clearly and Don’t Rely on Jargon

Presentations depend on clarity and good communication . If you bog down your presentation with jargon and convulated reasoning, you’re going to lose your audience. Make sure that you use language that your audience will understand, so they can follow along with all of the key points you need to make.

Remember, not everyone in that meeting is going to understand all the intricasies of your project, in fact, none of them likely will. So speak slowly, clearly and ensure that you communicate.

2. Stick to What Matters and Use Data

When giving your project presentation, don’t lose sight of the original goals and requirements of the project. Your stakeholders agreed on certain goals at the beginning, how are you trending towards reaching those goals? Sometimes it’s easy to focus on setbacks or difficulties, or things that you may find fascinating. However, it’s best to recenter on critical business objectives.

It’s important to use data to supplement your project presentation as you address key goals and initiatives. But don’t use too much data! People will get lost in the numbers and stop listening to what you have to say. It’s a delicate balance.

3. Tell a Story

You have probably sat through a fair few presentations in your time, and I expect you’ve tried to stop yourself from nodding off in some of them. Project status updates can be boring. If the subject matter isn’t dull, often the speaker is. Don’t let that be you.

One way to keep the attention of the audience is to structure your presentation in the most interesting fashion. Consider what they will find interesting (and it won’t be the same as what you find interesting). Telling the story of your project is a good idea. Think about a start, a middle and an end to your presentation. Perhaps follow the lifecycle from the perspective of a customer.

Focus on the benefits and not the project management process. If you don’t know if your presentation material makes sense, run it past a friend or family member who doesn’t know anything about your project. If they don’t fall asleep, it’s OK!

4. Ask for Feedback on Your Presentation

When your presentation is over, ask for feedback. You could do this directly at the end of the session before people leave the room, or a couple of days later. It’s good to get some feedback as it helps you work on what to improve for next time.

Ask people to give you their impressions both of your presentation skills and also of the presentation content. You could find that the content was really good but you lacked confidence delivering it, or conversely that you were an engaging presenter but the material was not relevant to them. All this is useful stuff to know and it will help you improve your presentation skills for next time.

Project Management Presentations Take Time to Master

Giving presentations isn’t an everyday occurrence on projects but it is likely that you will have to give one or two during the project lifecycle – more if your project involves a lot of workshops or user sessions.

Don’t panic – presentation skills are something that you can learn and you will get better with practice! Once you have cracked it, you’ll feel confident delivering presentations and you’ll find that it gets easier to prepare for them in the future.

The scheduling features of our software can be used to book your presentations on the team calendar, which can be easily seen on the project dashboard. With it you have the ability to share agendas and slides after the presentation with the online document library. Then you can carry on the discussion after the meeting by using the great chat tool. Try the software from ProjectManager free for 30 days and see how helpful it really is.

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How do I present a Project Update?

Your project success relies on you communicating project status. Use these tips and templates to help

1. Keep your update short – aim for 5 minutes or less. 2. If you have project objectives, compare progress with these objectives. 3. Provide a 1-page document so that people can take away the key messages. 4. Provide easy-to-understand status indicators – “Red / Amber / Green” (RAG) status for each update item.

Project Update in more detail

Project updates are a crucial part of project and product management.

• Provide some introductory context – remember that everyone’s mind is elsewhere.
• Avoid going into detail – just give the headlines!
• If there are any issues, provide some suggested solutions.
• Show this side-by-side: Targets vs Actual Progress.
• RAG Status is a good way of highlighting good and bad progress.
• If you bear bad news, it always pays to have some suggested solutions.
• Once again – keep it simple.
• Use a Status Report or Dashboard template (see below).
• RAG Status: this can be achieved with traffic lights, or dials, or just simply the Red, Amber, Green colours.
• Dials: While it may seem a bit of a gimmick, dials can be very popular with corporate stakeholders.

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Use these templates to help with this best practice:.

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Project Report

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A Project Update Template That Your Executives Will Understand

• by Adrian Neumeyer

Every couple of weeks you’ll have to give a status update.

Executives want to know if your project is making progress. For reasons of clarity you should use a standard template during these meetings.

Here you find a project status update template that works for any project.

What a project update template is used for

A project status report template is a standardized document you use to show the progress and health of your project. Most projects use a Powerpoint as tool, because the status report is typically part of a general project update.

A good status template is clear, concise and contains some visual indicators that show the project status in a traffic light system.

Why you should use a update template

You should use a standard template for the following purposes:

• show the status of your project
• highlight any issues or risks and bring them to the attention of management
• show budget status

The benefit of using the same template for each of your status meetings is that it provides a simple structure that people can understand. Your audience, typically senior executives in a steering committee meeting, will get used to the structure of your updates.

They can focus on the content of your message instead of having to spend time on understanding the structure and reading the Powerpoint.

What should a good status template contain?

Every project will have different requirements when it comes to status reporting. However, most good templates capture the following key pieces of information every executive will want to hear about:

• accomplishments
• budget status

If you’re using Earned Value Analysis to measure the progress of your project, you may also include the EVA metrics including Earned Value , CPI and SPI in a separate slide.

Get my project update template

We have created a generic project status template for you which works for any project . It resembles the general format and contains all the pieces of information you are expected to share during an update.

The main slide is shown in the screenshot below. It summarizes the key points such as accomplishments, issues, risks and next steps. The color coding reflects the status with respect to time planning, quality and budget.

Red means way out of plan, amber means somewhat out of plan and green means within plan. This is also called the RAG value (red, amber, green) and it’s a common feature of most project status reports.

There are also fields for planned and actual cost . Managers care a lot about the cost, so you want to give them a glimpse of whether your project is still within the planned budget or not (get our project budget template here).

Download the project status template

This kind of dashboard style is also ideal for sharing in email updates. Suppose you are sending around a monthly project update to management. Then you can attach the slide in PDF format and everyone will know at one glance how the project is doing.

We’ve included some sample entries so you see what kind of content should be added. It’s best to stay concise and include only the most important items.

• project summary view
• dashboard view

The Powerpoint also includes two additional views: A cost and effort summary view and a phase view. The cost summary view shows the aggregated plan and actual cost for each phase. It also shows planned and actual effort by phase.

The phase view is helpful for explaining deviations , both in cost or effort. Let’s say in one phase you’ve massively exceeded planned effort. Then you can dive into the phase view to show what teams had to work more. Here’s a screenshot of the phase view.

Hi! I'm Adrian, former Senior IT Project Manager and founder of Tactical Project Manager. I created the site to help you become an excellent project leader and manage intense projects with success!

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How to use project status updates (explained with example).

Updated on April 13, 2023 by Luke Henderson

Published on March 18, 2022 by Luke Henderson

In life, there are plenty of times we all feel like a hamster stuck on a wheel going nowhere! Online project management can sometimes feel the same, especially if you aren’t using project status updates to your advantage. 

Projects make a business what it is. No matter who you’re doing business with or what kind of project it is, it always helps to keep your stakeholders in the loop. Project status updates are an effective way to do just that. 

This article covers everything you need to know to create and use project status updates. 

What Exactly is a Project Status Update?

Project status updates are essential to keeping people informed about a project. It’s essentially a document that lets everyone know what’s going on and helps keep people engaged, especially those stakeholders who may not be as familiar with the project details.

Since the purpose of a project status report is to keep stakeholders up-to-date and portray areas that need more organizational support, you need to touch on all the critical elements of a project status update to  communicate better with your team  or stakeholders.

✨ Keep leadership in the loop : Understand how to provide an up-to-date picture of work progress to help streamline status updates. Learn more

Key Elements of a Project Status Update

Remember, when writing a project status update, there isn’t a one size fits all approach. The amount of Information a status update can have varies from organization to organization. Here are a few basics things that you must include in your status update:

✨  Try Nifty for free and automate your project status tracking in real time.  

1. Give a relevant name to your project 

People will use your report’s name while trying to access the specific status report. A relevant name is precious if your business is working on multiple projects.

The project name should be short and to the point. If it’s too long and people can’t remember it, they’ll have a hard time finding the status update in the future. At the same time, consider using a similar name to the project you are working on to make it easier for you to connect the status report to the project it talks about.

2. General Project info

The general project information is the crucial element of a project status update. This includes the details of when a project started, stipulated time, and cost. It also considers that there are sufficient resources to carry out the required activities.

Keep your reports organized and straightforward for yourself as well as other stakeholders; identify the following at the start of the report:

• Project Name 
• Project manager
• Date of the report

3. Project Summary

The project summary is an essential part of your project status update. It gives your reader an overview of the project, including location, key stakeholders, budget, timeline, and objective.

A great way to do this in  Nifty  is by leveraging the  Dashboard screen of a Project. The project dashboard in Nifty provides space for project description and members and also allows for customizable widgets showing items such as Milestone progress, essential tasks, and tracked time or budget you might be employing for the project.

The project summary is one of the active tools to gauge your projects. It is a good idea to make this area concise yet informative about all the aspects for easy monitoring and comprehension by all the concerned parties involved with your project.

4. Measuring Status

Measuring Status is one of the most crucial parts of an effective project status update, but measuring status incorrectly leads to missed deadlines, poor project outcomes, and unnecessary stress.

To avoid discrepancies, you need to communicate your status visually. For this purpose, Nifty uses a kind of “stoplight” approach:

Green indicates that the Milestone is complete. Yellow indicates that it is in progress, and Red indicates that it is overdue. In this way, Nifty’s Dashboard is generating this report for you as your Tasks and Milestones progress.

✨ Get started with Nifty for free and automate project status updates for all key stakeholders!

5. Milestone Status

Here, y ou can share more details about the tasks and milestones. Milestone status is the crucial element of a project status update for your customer because it helps to understand how close a project is from the final release.

Clicking on a Milestone in Nifty will show you the Milestone details as well as the individual Tasks within it. From here, you can click on any Task to get the task details and any associated subtasks.

Here’s another example of a project milestone used to track progress . Note that the report avoids listing the status of tasks to evade repetition of the project schedule.

The primary job of a milestone status update is to inform team members in charge of the successful delivery of a project as well as stakeholders involved in the outcome and progress of the project.

6. A high-level overview of each key area

The purpose of a project status report is to communicate the current state of your project to all stakeholders – including your team, upper management, customers, and other interested parties. 

This means that anyone who needs to know about any aspect of your project should be able to find this information in your report. 

It is important to remember that different stakeholders are interested in different aspects of the project, so you need to focus on the specific details that are relevant to each stakeholder.

The key areas to include in your report will depend on your project. They may vary from report to report or stay consistent. 

In case you are working on a project that keeps constantly improving, you can use dynamic key areas. Add the things your team has worked on throughout the last sprint. 

But if you are handling an event planning project, you want to cover things like signups, promotions, and speakers. 

7. Highlights

Project Highlights are the key elements of a project status update and are a summary of the most important events that have occurred since the last update. They can be presented in a table format or as a simple bulleted list. 

They generally include topics such as:

• Project Milestones Completed
• Project Milestones Upcoming
• Scope Changes
• Cost Variations
• Risks and Issues raised or resolved
• Key resources movements (in or out)

In this section, you can also add any extra information that you have. In case you are facing roadblocks, highlight them. At the same time, you can also highlight any potential challenges you expect along the way. 

In this section, you can address any issues that you have spotted, potential risks, or required changes.

Due to delays in implementation, lack of communication among the team, and more,  there are some critical risks associated with a project that needs addressing as soon as possible.

You should outline both new issues or risks and previous ones and note the steps taken or will be taken to address them under each issue. You should also note if those plans are working and showing positive results.

Aside from identifying risks, this section also includes risk evasion strategies and mitigation procedures when they do arise.

8. Team Progress

Team progress is the key element of a project status update. If you can keep the team up-to-date on the current status of all tasks, everyone will be informed and know exactly what has to be done.

This section should be dedicated to sharing an overall team status report. You can summarize your team’s progress in brief and add any notable achievements. 

It is also crucial to outline the team’s task calendar. Add tasks scheduled, tasks completed, and tasks planned for the upcoming reporting period.

Finally, you can conclude a short estimate of the progress you anticipate in the impending reporting period.

9. Budget status

It allows investors to immediately define the current state of affairs in your project, their approximate income and expenditure, and to estimate the probability of its completion within a fixed term. 

It isn’t wise to keep key stakeholders uninformed concerning your remaining project budget. You can share the overall budget or the budgets of tasks you are currently working on, depending on your project.

Also, consider sharing an overall percentage spent as opposed to the number of hours that have been spent. 

Take a look at this example to get an idea of how you can update stakeholders on your project budget status:

10. Links to other documents or resources

For any project, it is important to keep track of your updates and communicate with your stakeholders. 

If you could provide links to docs or resources , it would benefit stakeholders looking for more in-depth information . You could add links to specific project milestones or references to the goals the project is contributing to.

11. Next action steps 

Though you should focus on the past and the present, don’t neglect the future. Make sure you communicate what the next actions are. This is crucial in order to ensure that people know exactly what they have to do next. It provides a vision of where the project is going and gives you and your team members a clear idea of how far you have progressed. 

If the next actions are not clear, people will waste time trying to figure out what to do. Or even worse, they will spend time on something that was not the intention of the project manager.

Use a Visual Project Management Software

A great way to keep all your projects on track, especially when you are working with a team, is to use visual project management software. Nifty is the most visual project management software in the world.

With Nifty , you can easily:

• Capture the information process, manage progress, and help complete tasks.
• Automatically create easy-to-read reports. 
• Create visual reports that look at progress in different dimensions using words, charts, and graphs to explain the progress of the project, track the activity of team members, offer insight into what will come next, and help spot potential issues.

👉 Get started with Nifty for free, thank us later!

Where should you write your Project Status Reports?

Status reports are a great tool for keeping your project moving forward. They help to make sure everyone on your team is up to date and make sure there are no questions that you don’t have the answers to.

However, writing status updates can be a tedious task. But doing it in the right place can make all the difference.

A project management tool like Nifty is great for this purpose. 

Nifty provides a birds-eye project overview. That way, you can manage all your status updates, project briefs, deliverables, and milestones in one place.

​​You can share status updates on email and platforms like Slack and Pulse.

You don’t want to be managing projects in spreadsheets either, which is why you should use Nifty as your project management tool, as it offers a beautifully designed visual interface for your status reports. 

How often should you send out Project Status Update Reports?

With all the work you have on your plate, it can be hard to keep your projects organized. And although the details of each project might make them seem similar at times, there are many factors that differentiate them. 

So, how often should you send out project status update reports? 

The answer depends on your project. For example, in case your project has a short timeframe, sending a weekly project status report will be apt. On the other hand, if it is a long-term project, you can send biweekly or even monthly reports. Just ensure that your stakeholders are kept informed. 

You may want to report on project status as often as possible so that you’re always in the loop, or you might not want to do them too frequently because it could be a time drain for you and your team. It’s important to find the balance between delivering status too frequently and too infrequently.

Types of Project Status Report

How would you know if your project is on track? What kind of report would help you? Be it a team meeting or client briefing; there should be a succinct but informative report to describe the current status of the project.

Here are different types of project status reports that can help you explain varied information and deliverables.

1. The Weekly Project Status Report

The Weekly Project Status Report is a simple way to create quick project status updates for your team.

These types of reports should include as many relevant details as possible, including a detailed view of the progress of the project. It also tracks the budget, indicates milestones, specifies risks, and more.

2. The Monthly Project Status Report

A monthly or bi-monthly project status report should include a bird’s eye view of the project’s progress. It can help higher-level managers track the budget, spending, the quality of deliverables, and the nature of risks.

When they are kept informed, they can make necessary changes in management and take corrective action. To better understand the elements of project-level change management , check out this resource on what is change management .

3. The Stoplight Project Health Status Report

This report helps you to visually represent your project’s health by using color-coding to mark different elements.

For instance, green represents on-budget and on-target, yellow represents potential risks, and red represents real roadblocks. All in all, it will save you plenty of time.

Quick Tips to Create Project Status Update Reports 

Increase the trust your stakeholders have in you by giving them regular updates as well as easy access to project information. Use these pro tips to make sure your project status update reports are helping you excel at your job.

• Be concise and organized in your status updates discussion. Ideally, aim for less than five minutes.
• Plan ahead and ensure that the discussion is relevant to the topic. Leave out other issues for another time.
• Come up with a draft first and then correct it.
• Ask for feedback on how to present the best view of your project status updates.
• Be consistent across all project status updates.
• Consider the scope of the information. Think whether your team requires specific details concerning what you expect out of them, or perhaps a simple overview. Also, consider how you are presenting the information in order that your reports will fetch the best results.
• Report on the most important metrics.
• Implement visualization, such as charts and graphics if possible.
• Make the project status update accessible to all team members and stakeholders.

Over to You

To summarize, a project status update in a non-technical business setting is an easy-to-read document sent out by the project manager, or by someone overlooking the project. 

It should contain an overview of all of the activities done in a specific time window and present them to stakeholders and team members in a concise format.

Whether it’s for your own project or your clients, keeping everyone informed as to what has been completed (and what hasn’t) is a crucial aspect of any project. 

And as a general rule, project status reports should typically be provided weekly or monthly – depending on the size and duration of the project – during your normal business hours, or at some other predetermined time. 

The frequency and timing are important because it allows everyone involved in the project to keep up with what’s happening on a regular basis – instead of being surprised by unexpected issues at some future date.

Use the information and tips shared in this article to craft and use project status reports that keep your team and various stakeholders apprised of your project’s progress.

Try Nifty for free and transform the way you communicate project status updates to your team and stakeholders. 🙌

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Simplify reporting with a project update template

A project update template helps simplify reporting by providing a foundation for clear, effective reports. Key stakeholders in a project—from clients and sponsors to coworkers and team leaders—need regular updates on the project’s health. When you can accurately capture the current status of a project, you’ll keep everyone on the same page and increase stakeholder satisfaction.

During the next few minutes, we’ll take you through the benefits of project update templates. We’ll also share a project update template you can use with monday.com’s Work OS to make the reporting process simpler so you can focus more time on the project itself. Let’s lay the groundwork first on product update templates.

Get the template

What is a project update template?

A project update template — or project status report template — helps you capture the status of a project, including current health, progress, and future projections. This information is visually presented in simple terms, so all project stakeholders, including clients, sponsors, team leaders, and coworkers, can easily understand it.

A project update template makes creating visual reports simple, so stakeholders can stay up to date on the current health and progress of projects, but there are several other benefits to this tool as well.

Why use project update templates?

Project update templates are great communication tools that help teams support efficiency and remain on the same page throughout the scope of a project. A project update template can:

• Make project status update reports faster and more efficient
• Create simple, visual representations of project health and progress
• Highlight any risks or issues stalling a project team’s progress
• Show off individual or project-wide accomplishments
• Keep team members and stakeholders on the same page

You can also increase the benefits of project update templates by customizing them depending on your needs.

What are some examples of project update templates?

You can customize project update templates to highlight specific objectives or provide a comprehensive overview of the project. In addition, you can use status reports, risk reports, and cost and benefit analyses to give stakeholders a more in-depth understanding of the project.

Status reports

Status reports summarize essential parts of your project and present it as an overview for stakeholders during status meetings occuring every month or quarter. For example, your project’s weekly status report might include updates on budget usage, new issues or roadblocks, noteworthy accomplishments, and upcoming deliverables. You may also want to include deliverables from the last reporting period and compare them to the current one, so stakeholders have an idea of long-term project progress.

Cost and benefit analysis reports

Cost and benefit analysis reports help determine the financial health of a project and visually present it to clients, sponsors, team leaders, or coworkers. These reports can help you and your investors make better-informed decisions by demonstrating the actual return on investment (ROI) and financial risks of any project,  such as whether it falls outside of the budget. Besides an overview, you can break down cost and benefit analysis reports into sections like marketing, production, or sales. Specific analysis reports can help determine if any part of a project isn’t working so you can allocate valuable resources to a better-performing project sector.

Risk reports

Risk reports are formal documents that ensure teams capture potential risks information before moving forward with other efforts. Risk reports can:

• Help you analyze roadblocks, complications, or setbacks in your project
• Determine how to get projects back on track and aligned with the planned project timeline
• Create a plan to mitigate future risks

You usually present risk reports to the CEO or owner of a company. However, you can also deliver them to the committee board, clients, or high-ranking investors.

Daily or weekly updates

Daily or weekly project updates are a simple, efficient way to ensure everyone is on the same page. When investors, team leaders, and coworkers have regular, short-term updates, your project has the best opportunity to thrive. Team leaders will have the information to address issues as they arise, while investors are kept satisfied.

Pairing a template with a solution that supports collaboration and communication can help you keep everyone in the loop about your project. Strong collaboration tools also help you manage other parts of a project.

monday.com’s project update template

Monday.com’s Project Update Template provides a framework for document standardization. It provides everything teams need to customize project updates, all in one cloud-based location that ensures the right people have access to real-time information.

Once you implement easier, faster standardized reporting, you can further increase project management efficiency with monday.com OS by:

• Centralizing projects from the beginning: Our project management software lets you centralize all crucial project aspects from one customizable dashboard
• Automating project tasks and approvals: Make project management more efficient by automating routine assignments and approvals to reduce time spent on repetitive tasks
• Collaborating with your team seamlessly: Leave notes on tasks, documents, or boards and color-code them to alert coworkers of status changes to keep everyone on the same page

Monitoring performance from one dashboard: Use the project overview option to see where all tasks are to easily monitor performance and make informed decisions about future actions

Our project update template supports these functions by providing a clear, standardized reporting format that takes the guesswork out of what stakeholders most want to know. Templates make project management easier, so let’s explore a few additional options that can help you increase company efficiency.

FAQs about project update templates

How do you write a project update.

To write a project update, you should:

• Use an appropriate outlet to create your project update, such as a status update template
• Create a straightforward name for your report
• Analyze and summarize project health and status
• Highlight crucial aspects of your project like risks, roadblocks, accomplishments, and forecasts
• Create a brief overview of your report
• Add a high-level overview of each key area, as defined by your organization’s guidelines
• Include links to other pertinent documents or relevant resources
• Provide a brief outline of the next planned steps or actions

How do I deliver a project update?

There are many ways to deliver a project update, with each organization or team leader having a preferred delivery method. Common ways to provide a project update include email, a designated work platform, over the phone, or in person. Try to define how to deliver updates and status reports during the planning phase of your project to decrease confusion or uncertainty later on.

What should you include in a project update presentation?

Generally, project update presentations should be brief and include time at the end for answering stakeholders’ questions. You can effectively present a project update using five slides, including:

• Executive summary: The executive summary should include the date, project name, and project manager name with a summary of the project. You can also include a brief status evaluation.
• Completions and accomplishments: Highlight any significant task completions since the last project update. You can also use this slide to shout out any individual or team-wide accomplishments.
• Next steps: Provide a summary or outline of the next steps for the project and what goals you hope to accomplish in the short- or long-term.
• Risks: Use this slide to bring attention to any current or projected risks or roadblocks the project faces.
• Supporting documents or evidence: On the final slide, include links to any supporting documents (like a risk analysis) or any sources used to determine your project’s health or status.

Standardize reporting with monday.com’s project update template

A project update template increases efficiency by standardizing reporting. Customize the template to suit the needs of your organization or individual projects.

Project managers are using monday.com’s project update template to standardize reporting across your project portfolio and keep all stakeholders on the same page—are you ready to increase efficiency by streamlining the project updating process?

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How to Nail Your Next Project Status Update 🔨

Tips and a template for how to give an effective project status update in a meeting.

A methodology for amazing meetings. Say goodbye to boring, long, and unproductive meetings.

Meetings should be biased towards action.

But sometimes, project status updates are necessary. And if you can package yours with informative, clear points, they’re a useful tool for bringing others up to speed.

In this post, you’ll learn what a project status update is, what it should contain, and how to make sure your next one is effective as it can be. 

What is a Project Status Update?

A project status update is when people share information about the project status across departments. 

It can be a meeting by itself or it can be a short update in the middle of a meeting about a broader topic.

The goal of a project status update meeting is to identify any new issues or action items that need to be assigned.  

The project status update within a broader meeting is meant to inform others who may need background information to make a decision. 

What a Project Status Update Should Contain

Whatever the context of your project status update, according to this paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2008 it should contain updates on:

• Relevant action items
• Current or anticipated issues
• Quality or scope issues

If you’re giving a project update during a broader meeting, you definitely don’t need to include updates on all these items. Your update should contain only enough information to ensure all meeting participants have the context they need to make a decision.

This is why context is so important when you’re giving a project status update. You may have lots of information, but not all of it is pertinent to making a decision or taking some action. 

And the more information you provide that isn’t relevant to a decision or action, the less your audience will pay attention.

How to Give an Effective Project Status Update in a Meeting

If you want to give an effective status update , you need to think about it before the meeting itself. While you can’t anticipate everything, you can figure out

• Who will be at your meeting
• What they know
• What they need to know

Not everyone needs to know all the little details of what you are up to. More than anything, they need confidence about how a project is tracking, and they need to know if anything will impact their work.

And in the event you can’t guess how much detail someone might need from your update, either read the room when other people give updates, or just ask. "How deep would you like me to get into on this project update?" That way, you don’t launch into an unnecessary status update.

Put Bullet Points in the Agenda

Beyond choosing the appropriate time for an update, effectively delivering one depends on setting and following a structured agenda . If you have the ability to add your own bullet points summarizing your status update, all the better. And if you’re not in control of the overall meeting agenda, you can create a micro agenda for yourself. 

That agenda should include the information you need to cover in your update (and potentially some blank space to write in action items.)

3-5 bullet points is usually sufficient for a quick update.

Once you’ve covered what you need to, wrap it up. One of the biggest problems with status updates is that they go on too long, so don’t drag your conclusions out. Say what you have to say, smile, and don't feel like you need to keep talking.

Grab this Status Update Meeting Template

Product Marketing Senior Team Lead at Trello, Jessica Web, uses a weekly team meeting template that doubles as a project status update. The template, pictured below, runs through a meeting in which different departments provide an update and questions are asked and answered.

If you look closely at Web’s template, you’ll notice she structures it in a way to encourage concise, relevant updates. Everything, from the helper text below each header to the time limit reminders, provide the structure of a solid project status update.

{{weekly-team-meeting="/blog-inserts-7"}}

Make it Your Own 

If you manage meetings for you team, you can download Jessica Web's weekly team meeting template here , but don’t feel like it’s set in stone. You can and should adjust the template to your needs as you see how it works. 

Giving a good project status update depends on evaluating and reacting to the context in which you give it. And there’s no formula because context will always change. 

But, as you saw in this post, there are principles and structures that set you up for a successful project update.

{{go-further-with-hugo="/blog-inserts"}}

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Jacob Kaplan-Moss

How to give a status update to executives.

Here’s a weird little skill I had to learn the hard way 1 : how to give a status update to executives, investors, or boards.

If you’ve been in any sort of project lead position, you’ve probably been asked for a status. In most circumstances, specifics are details are pretty important – e.g., if your boss is asking for an update, they probably want to know what’s up in some depth. The good, the bad, and the ugly – you want to share all of it.

This changes once the audience is an executive team, and that can come as a surprise (it certainly wasn’t something I was prepared for). Executives tend to have a huge number of projects and priorities they’re paying attention to. And, the dynamic of briefing a team means each of them has their own different set of priorities and projects.

So, when briefing this specific audience, the format needs to change. Instead of specifics and details, the focus needs to be only on what you think this team needs to know. A good executive status update is very short – a few minutes, max – and includes just a handful of key points. More, and you risk misunderstanding.

Here’s my structure for this kind of update:

• An overall summary about how the project is going. I’ll usually first share how I’m feeling about the project (“it’s running well” / “I’m worried about …”) to anchor what comes next, but I’ll quickly aim for something quantitative (e.g., “we’re two weeks ahead of schedule”) to put that feeling into context.
• One or two highlights, if appropriate. If we just hit a big milestone, or shipped something major, or solved a huge problem, it’s worth bragging about. I’ll also use this point to highlight someone on the team whose work has been especially great lately.
• One or two of our biggest risks, if they’re something the executive team needs to know about. If we’re over budget, running late, or at risk of any of those: I’ll highlight them.
• A request for the team (or specific people), if I have it.
• “Any questions?”

Here’s what this might sound like:

Project X is running smoothly. We’re making steady progress: we’ve delivered a bit over half of the features on our roadmap, and we’re on track to launch publicly in May. I want to particularly highlight J—’s design work; every time we share a new demo with our user research group they rave over how much they love the design. We do have some cost risk: right now, the code’s pretty inefficient and would require us to increase our AWS spend by 25% when we put this into production. We either need to decide that cost is acceptable, or add some extra time to the schedule for performance optimization. I need some guidance from this team on that point: can you folks let me know if that cost seems OK or not? Thanks, any questions?

This might seem weird: there aren’t any specifics about deliverables, or features shipped, or how anyone on the team is doing (other than J—), etc. But it’s exactly what I want the executive team to know: things are on track, one person on the team is doing great work worth highlighting, and here’s my one question.

I think people can struggle with this lack of detail when they first try it. It can seem like there’s not enough information to show the status accurately. Or they’re afraid that the lack of detail can be seen as a sign that they don’t know what’s going on. They can feel the need to provide “proof” by getting into the weeds.

I think the difference is that, at the top of an organization, there tends to be a shift away from this kind of “proof” towards a general assumption of information-sharing on a need-to-know basis. Executives, especially at large organizations, need to synthesize a truly staggering amount of information, and so effective executives learn to value people who filter for “what you need to know.” The assumption becomes: if you didn’t mention it it’s because it doesn’t warrant mention, not because you don’t know it.

Of course, you still need †o know your shit! There very well might be questions, and detailed ones, and if you can’t back up what you’ve just said with the details, it’s a bad look. So the preparation for a status update is the same as any other situation, you just edit judiciously before actually speaking.

Story time: here’s how I learned this lesson:

I was leading incident response after a particularly nasty security breach, and I was asked to give a status update to the executive team at their next meeting. This was a large company – over 10,000 employees – and it was the first time I’d met any of the executives.

I had about a week to prepare, and I spent most of it pulling together a ton of data and information into a briefing. I think I ended up with about two dozen slides.

The day before the meeting, I got an email from the assistant to the CEO. He wrote, “you’ll give your update from 1:35 - 1:38, followed by 2 minutes for questions”. I thought for sure this was a typo, but no: I had 180 seconds for my update about an incident response that had been running for several weeks and included dozens of staff and at least one law enforcement agency.

In the end it went well: I was able to get some emergency coaching to help distill my points down, and that’s where I started to develop the template that you see above. But, gosh, that day was terrifying; I wish I’d been able to learn this skill in a less stressful way!

The story’s at the end of this article if you’re interested.  ↩︎

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How to Create a Project Status Update Presentation

Project status updates are crucial for effective communication in any organization, providing stakeholders with insights into ongoing projects. One powerful way to convey this information is through a well-crafted Project Status Update Presentation. In this article, we will explore the definition of such a presentation, how to present it effectively, and the importance of creating compelling PowerPoint slides for this purpose.

1. The Definition of a Project Status Update Presentation

A Project Status Update Presentation is a visual representation of the current state, progress, and key milestones of a project. It serves as a communication tool to inform stakeholders, team members, and decision-makers about the project's health, potential risks, and achievements. This presentation typically includes key metrics, timelines, budget information, and any critical updates that influence the project's trajectory.

To begin creating a Project Status Update Presentation, start by defining the purpose and scope of your presentation. Understand your audience and tailor the content to their needs. Whether it's a weekly team meeting or a high-stakes executive briefing, the presentation should address the concerns and interests of the intended audience.

2. How Should a Good Project Status Update Presentation Be Presented?

Creating an effective Project Status Update Presentation involves more than just compiling data. The presentation should be clear, concise, and engaging. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to present it effectively:

a. Define the Structure:

• Start with a brief introduction outlining the project's objectives and context.

• Provide a summary of the project's current status, highlighting major achievements and challenges.

• Break down the presentation into key sections such as progress, milestones, risks, and future plans.

b. Use Visuals:

• Incorporate visuals like charts, graphs, and images to make the information easily digestible.

• Use color coding to emphasize different aspects, such as progress (green for on track, yellow for at risk, and red for delayed).

c. Keep it Concise:

• Avoid overwhelming your audience with excessive details. Stick to the most relevant information.

• Use bullet points and short sentences to convey information efficiently.

d. Foster Interactivity:

• Encourage questions and discussions during or after the presentation.

• Include interactive elements like Q&A sessions or live demonstrations if applicable.

e. Practice Delivery:

• Familiarize yourself with the content to ensure a confident and smooth delivery.

• Practice your timing to stay within the allocated presentation slot.

3. The Importance of Well-Crafted PowerPoint Slides for the Project Status Update Presentation

The choice of presentation tools plays a significant role in conveying information effectively. Well-crafted PowerPoint slides are instrumental in enhancing the impact of a Project Status Update Presentation. Here's why:

a. Visual Appeal:

• PowerPoint allows for visually appealing slides, making it easier for the audience to grasp complex information quickly.

• Use a consistent theme, font, and color scheme to maintain a professional look.

b. Data Visualization:

• Charts and graphs can be easily created in PowerPoint, providing a visual representation of data trends.

• Visuals are powerful tools for emphasizing key points and facilitating better understanding.

c. Structured Content:

• PowerPoint's slide structure ensures a logical flow of information.

• Headings, subheadings, and bullet points help organize content, preventing information overload.

d. Accessibility:

• PowerPoint presentations are easily shareable and can be distributed to stakeholders for future reference.

• The digital nature of PowerPoint makes it convenient for remote collaboration and virtual meetings.

e. Flexibility:

• PowerPoint allows for flexibility in design and layout, accommodating various presentation styles.

• Multimedia elements, such as audio and video, can be seamlessly integrated for a richer presentation experience.

f. Efficient Editing:

• The ease of editing in PowerPoint facilitates quick updates to reflect real-time changes in the project status.

• Updates can be made without compromising the overall design and layout.

4,The Introduction of Smallppt’s AI PowerPoint

Smallppt's AI PowerPoint is a game-changer in presentation creation, serving as an efficient ai ppt maker and generator. It simplifies the process with seamless ai ppt slides generation, allowing users to input a topic and witness the creation of polished presentations.

Tailored for the fast-paced business world, this Artificial Intelligence presentation PowerPoint tool ensures swift and impressive presentations. Its user-friendly interface makes ai for ppt accessible, with an automated process of generating outlines and transforming ideas into well-crafted presentations with over 20 pages. Users can freely edit powerpoint slides by inserting text, images, shapes, charts, and more, offering flexibility and customization. With options for revision and redrawing, users can fine-tune their presentations effortlessly. The tool's versatility extends to export features, allowing users to download presentations in pptx, image, or pdf formats. Smallppt's ai power point represents the future of presentations, combining innovation and efficiency. Elevate your presentation game with this cutting-edge online ppt maker ai.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, creating a Project Status Update Presentation is a critical aspect of project management and effective communication within an organization. A well-crafted presentation, supported by visually engaging PowerPoint slides, ensures that stakeholders are informed, engaged, and aligned with the project's objectives.

When presenting project updates, remember to focus on clarity, conciseness, and interactivity. The visual appeal and structured nature of PowerPoint slides enhance the overall impact of the presentation, making it a valuable tool for project managers and teams. By following these guidelines, you can create compelling Project Status Update Presentations that drive understanding, collaboration, and successful project outcomes.

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• What is the project status report and why is it important to present to a customer?

As the name suggests, a project status report is the factual data about the work plan you’ve been assigned for. It’s a way of communication between a project manager, his team, and the client as well. A project status report keeps your project sponsor and other stakeholders updated about the progress you have made so far, risks and issues you’re facing, and the deliverables.

Project managers can’t prove their management skills unless they know how to present the status of their projects. Instead of discussing individual tasks and monotonous technicalities, your presentation will briefly overview overall progress. In a nutshell, your presentation works as a template to do progress control in a project and plan your time and risk management strategy.

Strategies to present the status report of a project to a customer

While presenting the project report to someone, most people, even seasoned managers, start stammering. To exhibit your project status report while keeping your nerves in control, you need to;

Create a project tracking report

To present the status report of a project, the first thing you need is, create a project tracking report . It will help you to get real-time status update and track your project progress. You’ve nothing to present if you haven’t prepared your project tracking report.    

Get familiar with the project management tools

A project manager should have hands-on project management software. Project Management Tools provide great assistance during project status report creation as well as presentation. Moreover, a digital job site diary will help in recording the production of your team members.

Give a short intro of your management process

Let your client know what’s your project management strategy. Keep in mind you’re communicating with your customer who might be unaware of the project technicalities, so make it coherent and understandable. Enlighten your audience how and why this process worked in previous projects and will give you the same required results.

Summarize the project progress

Don’t make your presentation a mind-numbing exercise for the audience. Discuss only key points instead of going into unnecessary details. Present the objectives, achieved milestones, issues you encountered during the process, and your strategy to mitigate them.

KPI and RAG Status

The best and most common way to present any of your project's KPI is the RAG status. Every project has objectives and whenever you’re presenting the status of your projects, you need to compare these objectives with the current progress. While using the RAG system (Traffic lights Red, Amber, Green) as the KPI, you let the stakeholders know;

• Red- the problem affecting the project’s health and needs immediate rectification.
• Amber- not evident, but it’s expected that some issue might create hurdles and precautionary measures needed to be taken to achieve the required results.
• Green- everything is going well. No apparent or potential hazards.

Rehearse before the actual session

Gather a group of volunteers and perform practice sessions in front of them. Let them ask whatever comes into their minds, so you could make yourself ready for any unexpected situation during the actual session. Request them to highlight the gray areas in your demonstration, so you could improve yourself.

Use status report template

Whether you’re a veteran or a recruiting project manager, you can’t spend the whole time crafting a project status report. Whether you like to work in Excel or Word, a project report template will become your finest helpmate while presenting the status report. It’s quite easy to find and download your required status report template from the Internet. 

Create a project milestone video

Videos and images are a good way to elucidate your project status to a customer. Along with Gantt charts and statistics, you should ginger up your presentation with milestone images and short videos. It’s quite easy to create a project milestone video from still images.

Expect questions from the customer

You don’t know what’s stirring up in your audiences’ minds and what questions they might ask in the QA session. You could, however, speculate, what queries are more likely to come from your client.

Every client looks for clarification of a few major and the most common concerns, which are;

• What’s your plan to finish the project on time?
• What is your risk management strategy?
• What will you do to curb unexpected delays in the project?

There are chances, they ask something you can’t answer right away. No need to kill yourself. You could take some time from your client and give them a timeline when you will answer their pending questions.

Presenting the status of a project is an essential part of project management. Either it’s your ongoing project or trying to convince a prospective client, the only way that will work to win their confidence is how you manifest the project status report.

• Why is Project Control So Important?

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Fedora Strategy 2028: April 2024 Update

Originally published at: Fedora Strategy 2028: April 2024 Update – Fedora Community Blog

from Fedora Project Leader Matthew Miller, on behalf of the Fedora Council

First, a personal note! As you may have seen, I was out sick with Covid for a month after getting home from our annual Council face-to-face meeting. It’s not been fun — some respiratory symptoms, but primarily, overwhelming fatigue. Somewhat ironically, the timing suggests that I managed to avoid catching anything at FOSDEM itself (where I wore a mask most of the time), or at the Council meeting, but rather on the plane or in the airport on the way back. Although emergency measures have been lifted, there really is still a pandemic going on. Be careful, everyone, especially when traveling! In any case, I’m back to myself now, and am excited for Fedora’s next big steps.

The Story so Far

So! I’ve been talking about “Strategy 2028” for a while — we started this effort seriously about a year ago. If you’re just joining in, or want a refresher, Fedora Strategy 2028: a topic index for our planning process is a great place to start. I won’t rehash all of that here.

The important thing is: 2023 was kind of a hard year , and although we made some progress, we lost momentum. The Council hackfest helped get things back on track, and we’re moving forward now. We’re not making any fundamental changes, but we are restructuring how we present things — and we’re moving on from theory to practical work.

A New Presentation

Over the last year, we got feedback from many people who felt that the organization into Themes and Focus Areas was overwhelming and confusing. It felt really big, maybe too much, and hard to know where one might fit in.

After some discussion, we decided that we could better present our various objectives as they align with something we’re all already very familiar with: Fedora’s “four foundations”: Freedom , Friends , Features , and First . The objectives we’ve talked about over the past year aren’t going away, but this gives us an easier way to organize and prioritize them over the next few years.

Even with a big and ambitious plan, we left some important ideas behind. For example, we want to better tell our Fedora stories (both inside and outside the project), and we want work to improve distribution security. We’re not immediately adding planned effort on these, but our new framing around the Foundations gives us more room to add those things as needed.

Our project has amazing, passionate people who have done amazing things for Fedora and for the world of community-built, free and open source software in general. We should do more to celebrate them, to give everyone the recognition they deserve. We should show new and potential contributors the incredible things we’ve done and the exciting things we’re doing — and what it means to be part of our community.

The recent xz exploit relied on long-term, persistent social engineering within an open source project, along with a very sophisticated technical attack. A long discussion on the devel mailing list shows that we have many ideas for how we can make Fedora more resilient against such attacks as a project, and Fedora Linux safer as an operating system. Initiatives to work on these improvements may end up under a different umbrella, but will certainly have some interconnection.

As we go through the next five years, don’t be surprised to see us add Community Initiatives focused on these things — and others, as they emerge.

And then, there’s AI

We’ve all heard a lot about various “large language model” chatbots, and about image and even video creation. There is obviously a lot of hype around AI — and inevitably, over-the-top nonsense. We’re not really “just five years away” from actual generalized Artificial Intelligence. This isn’t the start of Skynet from The Terminator movies. Human creativity isn’t being replaced, and I don’t think all programmers will end up as “prompt engineers”.

However, there is something real here.

Advances in accelerated hardware and machine-learning software have unlocked possibilities which were imagined last century, but which were not practical at the time. When the dust settles around the hyperbole, I believe we’ll still be left with something significant, powerful.

In addition to the big showy LLM-based tools for chat and code generation, these advances have brought big jumps for more tailored tasks: for translation, file search, home automation, and especially for accessibility (already a key part of our strategy). For example, open source speech synthesis has long lagged behind proprietary options. Now, what we have in Fedora is not even close to the realism, nuance, and flexibility of AI-generated speech.

Right now, most of all this is proprietary. It’s corporate-owned closed models trained with hidden data, largely running on hardware without open source drivers. If we ignore this, we’re going to be left behind — not just Fedora, but free and open source software entirely. On the other hand, we can take a leadership position, and build a future where AI belongs to all of us.

The Guiding Star for Strategy 2028 is about growing our contributor base. We can make Fedora Linux the best community platform for AI , and in doing so, open a new frontier of contribution and community potential.

This won’t be easy. We have a lot of basic work on platform fundamentals. That’s drivers and tooling, packages and containers, and even new ways of distributing Fedora software. We also need to improve developer experience — for example, it’d be nice to have Podman Desktop as part of Fedora, with easy paths to getting started.

We can use AI/ML as part of making the Fedora Linux OS. New tools could help with package automation and bug triage. They could note anomalies in test results and logs, maybe even help identify potential security issues. We can also create infrastructure-level features for our users. For example, package update descriptions aren’t usually very meaningful. We could automatically generate concise summaries of what’s new in each system update — not just for each package, but highlighting what’s important in the whole set, including upstream change information as well.

At the same time, we need to work with the rest of the free and open source world to create labels for AI technology which aligns with our values. We need polices on what we allow, and on what we encourage. We may even need to fight for legal frameworks friendly to community-built software.

Finally, of course, we can provide models in the OS. This includes accessibility tooling, which can benefit everyone: imagine an all-local voice assistant that doesn’t send your conversations to some big datacenter or try to sell you things while simultaneously selling your personal data. We could also include tools that make it easier to find help, features to simplify system administration tasks, and interfaces to better organize your documents and media — all within your control, all running on a free and open source software stack.

We’re just getting started here (with, for example, Pytorch coming in Fedora Linux 40 , CPU-only — for now). There will be more exciting things coming soon.

The next post will be the high-level view of Strategy 2028, updated from this new perspective.

The Council’s next immediate step is to identify Executive Sponsors and leaders for each Focus Area under the broad umbrellas of our Four Foundations. Then, we’ll plan and schedule concrete outputs and practical activities in each area. For larger efforts, we expect to launch Community Initiatives , but much of the work will be organized as smaller projects under each focus area banner. Expect more announcements soon as we build this out!

It’s possible that a lot of applications in the future will have an AI component in them. The same way every webapp has a database today. So having an open source linux distribution optimized for development (not only AI apps) will be huge!

How would such a platform look and feel? Are there any short-term easy wins that we can start working on today while having a clear endgoal?

Added council , strategy2028

Let’s hope we can get at least AMD GPU acceleration support soon. I’ve been swamped with other things but now that the PyTorch meeting is not so early in the morning I’ll try and attend and see if I can help with packaging…

I’m another AI skeptic, but at least I think it does have good/potentally good uses. We just need to make sure when we use it for something it makes sense and actually makes things better. We should avoid googles “all our products will use AI” blanket statements.

It’s an improvement over the last few hype cycles… blockchain and web3 didn’t really have much of any use, where I think AI can be useful sometimes in some places.

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