Project status report no. 8 - Citizen Service Portal (BSP-2026)
- Reporting date
- 31 December 2026
- Reporting period
- 1 to 31 December 2026
- Project manager
- Dr Anke Berger
- Sponsor
- First Deputy Mayor, City of Lindenau
- Distribution
- Steering committee, PMO
- Duration
- 01/05/2026 - 30/06/2027 (month 8 of 14)
- Report status
- Submitted
1 Overall status
2 Schedule, cost, scope
- Schedule3
- Amber. Trend: ↘ worsened. Milestone M4 "Interface to residents' register accepted", planned 31 January 2027, now 15 March 2027. The version of the register software used at the town hall is not supported by the portal; the update is being brought forward from next year.
- Cost4
- Green. Trend: → unchanged. Spent €187,000 of €480,000; plan at reporting date €195,000. Extra cost for the early update: €14,500, covered from contingency.
- Scope / quality5
- Green. Trend: → unchanged. Pilot with three services stable since 30 November, 412 online applications in December, 6 incident reports, all resolved.
3 Progress and milestones
- Progress6
- 58 % (plan: 60 %). M1 functional concept ✓ 31/07 · M2 contract awarded ✓ 30/09 · M3 pilot ✓ 30/11 · M4 interface → 15/03/2027 · M5 all twelve services 30/04/2027 · M6 regular operation 30/06/2027
4 Risks and issues
- Risks7
- State service account: approval of the test environment outstanding (likelihood medium, impact high). Response: request escalated via the state authority, reply due 20 January.
- Issues
- The public order department has not yet reassigned the two posts handling appointment booking; the January training cannot be scheduled as a result.
5 Next steps
- Next steps
- Install register software update (IT coordination, by 31/01) · Training plan public order department (Dr Berger, by 20/01) · Request service account test access (IT coordination, by 20/01)
6 Decisions required
- Decisions required8
- Item 6: release of €14,500 from contingency for the early update of the register software - by 15 January 2027.
Notes on the fields
- 1Overall RAG: The overall rating is your judgement, not an average of the individual ratings. Usually it follows the weakest item - if it does not, say why.
- 2Reasoning: Two sentences are enough. The first says what is going on, the second what that means for the end date.
- 3Schedule: Plan versus actual per milestone, slippage in weeks, cause. "Delayed" on its own is not a status.
- 4Cost: Actual cost always next to the planned value at the reporting date, not next to the total budget. 39 percent spent says nothing until someone knows whether 39 percent was planned.
- 5Scope / quality: This is where the deliverables go - accepted results, usage figures, open defects.
- 6Progress: Progress by accepted results, not by elapsed time. Achieved milestones with date, slipped ones with the new date.
- 7Risks: Only the risks that have changed since the last report or need a decision. The full risk register is a separate document.
- 8Decisions required: What the steering committee is asked to decide, with amount and date. A status report without this line gets noted and filed.
What a project status report is - and what it is not
The project status report (also status report, progress report or project report) is the document with which the project manager reports the state of the project at fixed intervals - usually monthly, every two weeks in critical phases. The recipients are the sponsor, the steering committee and the PMO, or in smaller organisations the management board. It belongs to project controlling; it is the point where what the team knows becomes an official statement.
Its core is the RAG rating. Green, amber, red for the project overall and separately for schedule, cost and scope - some call it a traffic-light report, the meaning is the same. Then progress and milestones, the main risks and issues, and the part many templates forget: what is the reader supposed to decide? A status report with no decision required is a situation report. You read it and put it away.
What the status report is not: an activity log. What the team did over the last four weeks interests the steering committee only insofar as it changes the position. And it is no substitute for the risk register or the project plan - it refers to them.
The template here comes as a Word document (the classic report, one to two pages), as a PowerPoint slide with the same fields for the committee meeting, and as a PDF. Plus the completed sample from the fictional "Citizen Service Portal" project of the City of Lindenau shown above.
How to fill in the status report template
Start with the reporting date, not with the rating. The reporting date is the day the figures apply to - not the day you write. That sounds trivial, but it is the most common reason two reports do not match: one was written on the 3rd but refers to the 31st. Number the reports (no. 8 in the example), then they can be found again.
Then the individual ratings, each with one sentence of reasoning in the same field. For schedule that means: which milestone, planned date, new date, cause. For cost: actual next to the planned value at the reporting date. For scope: what has been accepted, what is in operation, what is missing. Each rating also gets its trend since the last report: ↗ improved, → unchanged, ↘ worsened. Only then the overall rating - it is your judgement, and it may differ from the weakest individual value if you explain why.
State progress as a percentage, but by results: what has been accepted, which milestones are reached. Elapsed time is not progress. Under risks, only what has changed since the last report or needs a decision; the rest is in the risk register. Then the next steps up to the next report and finally, as a section of its own, the decisions required, with amount and deadline - that is the line the steering committee reads the report for.
The numbered notes on the sheet above go through the fields one by one.
Typical mistakes in status reports
- Amber rating, green text
- The rating is amber, the text says everything is on plan. The reader then believes neither. If a rating is not green, the same field needs the cause and the response.
- Cost against the total budget instead of the plan
- "39 percent spent" is not a statement until it says next to it how much should have been spent by the reporting date. In the Lindenau example €187,000 after eight months is unremarkable because the plan foresaw €195,000. Without the planned value the figure would look like thrift - or like standstill.
- The report as an activity list
- Twelve lines about which workshops took place and none about whether the end date still holds. The steering committee wants the position, not the work. Activities belong in the team meeting minutes.
- No decisions required
- The report ends with "next steps", but nowhere does it say what the committee should do. Then it gets noted. If there is nothing to decide, write that down - "no decision required" is information too.
- A new template for every report
- After three months every project has its own version of the template, with different fields in a different order. Whoever has to compare the reports gives up. Fix the template once and leave it alone - or keep the reporting in one place.
When the Word template stops being enough
For one project, one sponsor and a monthly rhythm the file works. The problem starts with collecting. A PMO with twelve projects receives twelve files a month, 144 a year, each by e-mail and in a slightly different version of the template. Before the report to management is finished, someone has asked twelve times whether this really is the latest version. And the history of a rating over six months sits in six mailboxes.
That is the point where status reports belong in a tool. In WORKSPACE.PM the report is a record inside the project, with the same fields as this template:
| In the file | WORKSPACE.PM |
|---|---|
| Every report is a fresh copy of the template; progress, budget and figures are typed in again. | The status report is created inside the project; project fields marked as report fields are pre-filled from the previous report. |
| Submitted means: e-mail sent. Who approved what and when is recorded nowhere. | Reports move from draft to submitted to approved; after approval the values captured at the reporting date are locked. |
| The rating history over several months has to be pieced together from old files. | The ratings for schedule, cost and scope sit on the project per report and can be read across reports. |
| For the committee meeting the report is transferred to a slide once more. | The project one-pager summarises status, risks and finances on one page and exports to PDF. |
This template exists in WORKSPACE.PM as the status report inside the project
The project manager creates the status report directly in the project: progress, ratings for schedule, cost and scope with RAG status and reasoning, next steps. The report moves from draft to submitted to approved; project fields marked as report fields capture their value at the reporting date per report and are locked after approval. For the meeting, the one-pager provides the one-page summary as PDF.
See status reports in WORKSPACE.PMThe same template with placeholders - for upload into WORKSPACE.PM
The Word version also comes with placeholders in double curly braces instead of free text, such as projekt.name for the project name or the fields of the latest status report. Upload it under Administration, Document templates; on upload WORKSPACE.PM shows how many placeholders were recognised. From then on you generate the report from the project file with current project data - as a download or straight into the project file. Placeholders without a data source are shown before generating and can be filled in by hand.
Frequently asked questions about the status report template
01What does the template cost, and do I have to sign up?
Nothing, and no. The files sit directly behind the links, without a form and without an e-mail address.
02Is the project status report also available as an Excel template?
No, deliberately not. A status report is text with ratings, not a table; in Excel it turns into a list of numbers without reasoning. If you want to see several projects side by side in one table, that is a portfolio overview - which will come as a separate template.
03How often should a status report be produced?
Monthly is the usual rhythm for projects with a steering committee. In the hot phase before a go-live or with a red rating, every two weeks. Weekly only if the sponsor demands it - then the report gets shorter, not equally long more often.
04What is the difference between the status report and the steering committee slide?
The status report is the document; the steering committee slide is derived from it. That is why both formats with the same fields are provided here: Word for the report, PowerPoint for the meeting. Whoever maintains the slide separately has two versions of the truth after two meetings.
05What exactly do the RAG colours mean?
Green: on plan, no action needed. Amber: a deviation the project can absorb itself - with the response in the report. Red: a deviation that needs a decision outside the project, i.e. from the steering committee or sponsor. Put the definition in the project handbook once, otherwise everyone means something different.
06Does the template work in LibreOffice?
The files contain no macros and use only standard features of Word and PowerPoint that LibreOffice Writer and Impress also support. LibreOffice replaces the Calibri font with Carlito, which has the same character widths, so line and page breaks stay in place. We have tested the template with Microsoft Office. The ratings are coloured cells, not form fields.
07May I use and adapt the template at work?
Yes, commercially too, in any number of projects, with your own logo. Only resale and publication as your own template are excluded.
Write the next status report in the project instead of in a file
The sandbox opens a WORKSPACE.PM instance with demo projects, no registration. Create a status report with RAG ratings there, submit it and see what happens after approval.
Up and running in five minutes, no credit card.