Status Report Template That Does Not Hide Trouble
A one-page status report built so a slipping project cannot look green — confidence in the date rather than a colour, what changed, what is blocked and for how long, and the decision needed this week.
Markdown. No sign-up, no email.
Most status reports are green until they are red. This one is structured so that the things which predict lateness — ageing blockers, decision latency, cumulative change — appear whether or not anyone volunteers them.
One page. If it takes half a day to produce, it is consuming the capacity that should be removing blockers.
Project: _______________ Reporting period: _______ Prepared by: _______________ For: _______________
1. The headline#
Would I personally bet on the current end date? yes / no / not any more
If no — by how much, and since when did I know? _______________
🔴 This replaces a status colour deliberately. "Amber" is a word that lets everyone defer the conversation; a direct answer to a direct question does not. Projects rarely fail through one event — they fail through a series of "we will catch up next sprint" judgements, none of which is ever escalated.
2. Progress#
| This period | |
|---|---|
| Completed and accepted | |
| In progress | |
| Not started, planned for next period |
Measured by accepted work, not effort spent. Effort spent is a measure of activity; accepted work is a measure of progress, and only one of them predicts a delivery date.
Anything claimed "90% done" for more than two weeks: _______________
3. What changed#
| Change | Impact on date | Impact on cost | Approved by |
|---|---|---|---|
Cumulative since baseline: schedule ____ · cost ____
The cumulative row is the one that matters and the one nobody volunteers. Fifteen individually reasonable changes have added eleven weeks; each was assessed alone.
4. Blocked#
| What | Blocked since | Waiting on | Chased | Escalate? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Oldest blocker: ____ days. Average time to get a decision this period: ____
Delay lives in queues rather than in the work. If the team waits a week for decisions, no delivery improvement changes the outcome — and this table is where that becomes visible to the person who can fix it.
5. Risks that moved#
Only the ones that changed. A full register read-out belongs in the risk register, not here.
| Risk | Was | Now | Why | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Overdue mitigations: ____
6. Quality signals#
| Open defects, by severity | |
| Trend — rising or falling as we approach the end | |
| Anything substantial still untested | |
| Non-functional requirements tested? | yes / no |
Defects rising as the end approaches, or a large untested area, are the two most reliable predictors of a late finish. They belong in the report before they are a crisis.
7. Decision needed this week#
| # | Decision | Who decides | By when | Cost of not deciding |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
The last column converts a request into a consequence, which is what turns an unread item into a decision.
If there is nothing here, say so explicitly — a report that never asks for anything trains the sponsor to skim it.
8. Next period#
| Commitment | Owner | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| high / medium / low |
Written for people who will read one page. Anything requiring more detail goes in an appendix nobody is obliged to open — and if the appendix is where the real news is, this report has failed at its only job.