how to write to keep your finger on the pulse. + Regulations

Hello everyone, my name is Sasha Kombarov, I am the CEO of a web studio. We share regulations that will be useful to managers, analysts, designers, testers and developers. Today we will talk about the weekly report.

A weekly report to a client is a letter that states:

what was done last week;
what are your plans for the current week;
questions and possible problems on the project;
deadlines and our agreements.

We send, as the name suggests, every week.

In addition to the project, clients are engaged in additional activities or are running several projects at once, in general, they are busy. This report allows you to “synchronize watches” and understand what is happening on the project without additional pinging from our manager, especially when all issues are agreed upon and do not require discussion.

To make it easier for both the client and us to navigate the report, we compile it according to a certain structure – it is consistent throughout the entire project.

Now I no longer manage projects and, accordingly, do not send such reports. Project managers put me in a copy of the weekly report to the client so that I, from the agency’s side, can control the process and direct it in the right direction. Below are our rules for writing a report.

A few rules for writing a report

The report is sent to the client’s email from the contract and to all interested parties;
The report is sent by the project manager every Monday morning;
The head of the development department and the general director are included in the copy;
The report is divided into several blocks: Production accounting, Stage deadline, Done last week, Doing this week, Questions/Problems, Necessary documents;
For the “Done last week” item, take the list of tasks from the previous report and note what was done and where problems arose;
If there are links to materials (Figma, DEV), attach them to the items so that the client can see the results of the work;
If a task is not completed, write down the reason opposite it, what happened and what we will do;
Make a list of the jobs you will do this week. Not just “Design”, but: “Page Design: Contacts; Placing an order”, etc.;
If there is a shift in deadlines, then you need to justify this and you need to attach an adjusted work schedule to the letter;
If the deadline date moves, then we write the original date in the report, color it yellow and then write that the deadline is moved to such and such a date and write why it has moved;
Write a status on the time spent for the week and for the reporting period. Attach a table taking into account;
Ask questions and highlight problems in separate blocks;
Request the necessary documents (applications, acts) in a separate block.