Useful Tools for this White Paper Software Planner - Use for tracking all phases of the software life cycle including customer requirements, defects, and test cases, fully web-based. Free 2 Week Trial Remoteus - Use for remote desktop sharing, allows support teams to remotely connect to client PC's. Free 2 Week Trial Web Information Center - Use for Enterprise reporting, allows distributing of Crystal Reports and Pivot tables via the web. Sign up for our free monthly newsletters, with tips, tricks and best-practices for managing the entire software life cycle: Newsletter Signup (Enter Email): Topic: Web Project Reports Concise communication is an essential key to any project. This is especially important during the process of the software life cycle. But this cannot be properly done without being fully up-to-date on all aspect of a project. Creating project reports via the web is a great way to ensure that everyone is on the same page and also benefits the team by stepping back and analyzing how the project is progressing. The key to great communication is to collaborate with team members each day and to create weekly status reports to summarize your progress and to identify issues that need resolution. Web project reports can even be e-mailed so the everyone is assured instant updates. Below are a list of tips for making weekly status reports meaningful: Use the Red/Yellow/Green Metaphor - Status reports are designed to show accomplishments and to identify areas that need attention. Using a Red/Yellow/Green metaphor is a great way to separate those areas of the status report: Red - List critical issues that are keeping you from delivering on schedule and on budget. These items need management help in resolving. Example: You can not begin testing because management has not approved the purchase of your test server. Yellow - List issues that management should be aware of but do not keep you from delivering on schedule and under budget. These items may not need management help in resolving. Example: Your testing team is running 2 days behind schedule, but the testing team has agreed to work the weekend to catch up. Green - List accomplishments or progress made on deliverables for the week. Example: Provide a bulleted list of deliverables that should have been achieved this week, along with their status. Identify Week's Priorities - Identify next weeks tasks and priorities so that everyone knows what things are expected of them in the upcoming week. Different teams also use that to ensure that any tasks that are dependent on them are all in alignment as to be ready for those deliverables to be worked on. Provide Metrics - Providing metrics allow your team to step back and see things in the bigger picture. Typical metrics should include defect metrics (like number of defects by status/severity/priority, etc) and test case metrics (number of test cases run/passed/failed, etc). It could also include metrics regarding deliverables and your risk management efforts. Discussion Forums - Create a discussion forum for your team members. Post the weekly status reports in the discussion forum so that they are automatically distributed via email and a history is kept of each weekly status. Template - We have created a template we use for the weekly status report. To download a copy click here.