Free Project Management Tool – Delivery Status Grid

The Delivery Status Grid is provided here to help you in your project communication and reporting.  It was designed by Paul O’Brien, an experienced project manager and the creator of the Promise Keeper.

The following post has been written by Paul O’Brien.

What is it?

The Delivery Matrix for each project lists all the key work products (documents, contracts, test-plans, computer code etc) and has a set of columns showing progress through the life of the object. It covers the initial design meetings, doing the work, reviewing and sign off phases. I put the rough % completion status in for every object. Again its all brightly colour coded by conditional formatting to give an at-a-glance overview of everything. I add colourful speach-bubble notes and big red circles etc to highlight problems.

I used to drive things with this tool but it’s too crude. Now I just keep it as a communication tool and rely exclusively on AutoFocus and the Promise Keeper.

Why use it?

The clients love it for 3 reasons.
1. It looks official and shows we have a cunning plan
2. It motivates people to push for completion and show progress
3. It makes it easy for senior execs to tell what’s happening (they can’t read gantt charts)

How to use it?

I update it using a projector during my weekly project meetings – so everyone can see and debate what progress we are recording (or lack thereof).

These are quirky little tools I have created just for myself. I only explain them here because several people asked.

Respectfully,
Paul

Next Steps

The Delivery Status Grid may be easily duplicated using any spreadsheet program.  If you decide to create one to use on one or more of your projects (highly recommended), please consider offering your version as a template for others to use.  If you send it to me, I’ll post it here for others, and will give you credit as well.  Thanks! -Alec

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