Your business is starting a new project. A bit later, you realize that you need to check how everything is going. But you don’t know where to start or how to gather all the data.

With a Project Summary Report, you will soon see if the project is on rails, what problems it is facing, and plan future strategies with the results you encountered. 

We’ll look at its definition, its content, and how you make a consistent and robust summary report.

A Project Summary Report is a brief description containing a specific project’s details concisely.

These timely updates demonstrate all important aspects of the project, and it is a perfect way to keep stakeholders in the loop and aligned on how everything is progressing. 

It will present the project’s objectives, specifications, and requirements, making it a crucial document at the start of a project.

A Project Summary Report will provide everyone with a big-picture view of the project and its important points.

It covers the project’s goals, limitations, task schedules, and many more. It ensures that everyone who is involved knows the plan. 

There are many more benefits that a project summary can provide, which we’ll see next.

These reports summarize what happened throughout some established time (a week, two weeks, or a month). 

They allow your stakeholders to stay informed about how well you keep to the project plan.

A Project Summary will guide you through the various steps and stages involved in your project. 

It will help keep your team updated about the project lifecycle and gives crucial updates to your stakeholders.

This summary will help you to know the project stands. Because a Project Summary Report mixes high-level summaries with important metrics, everyone will have a sense of the project's health. 

This will allow you and your team to act quickly against any problem that may come so that your deadline is not affected.

Since a project summary condenses the vital information into a single page (or a few), it is easier for the readers to go through it, wasting less time. 

Project reporting tools also make it easy to find, with just a few clicks to access it.

Every project will encounter a few roadblocks. With a Summary Report, you will inform about the delay and what you are doing to solve it. 

A proactive summary report helps you to identify and overcome any issues before they impact the project’s timeline.

Keep updating the timeline of your project. Include dates, events, and important actions that will provide an update on you and your team regarding the project milestones and deliverables. 

The project team, project sponsors, important stakeholders, and cross-functional team members should keep up-to-date with the progress. 

Let everyone know what’s happening without throwing them all the details.

It’s time to plan to write your Project Summary Report. One of the most important things you should remember is to have a clear structure and be simple. 

Your main objective is to keep the reader's attention and make them understand your points. Avoid using technical terms. 

Next, we will dive into what you should consider putting on your project summary.

On the front page of your project summary, you should add some basic project details, like company name, project name, launch date, and current date, and you can add project members too. 

Keep it simple, so everyone understands what you are presenting.

Everyone should know about the current status of the project. Project health may change from report to report, especially if problems arise on the way. 

You can color code some metrics (usually, green is “positive,” yellow means “warning,” and red is at “risk”) to indicate if there are issues or if things are improving.

The project summary should be brief – a few sentences. You want to give readers the most important facts about the project.

This will be the first impression, so try to include highlights and note unexpected major risks and blockers.

Depending on the project, your summary can have different metrics or the same for one to another. 

But, for each key area in the report, add bullet points that update progress, accomplishments, and upcoming work.

If you need to add some charts and graphs, don’t hesitate. 

Remember that the project summary should be readable for everyone involved and if a graph improves understanding of what you are introducing, go for it.

While you should keep it simple and brief, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t include details in your project summary.

There will be stakeholders looking for some in-depth information for specific details about the project; you can provide extra links and documents.

Also, adding your sources will give you more credibility and enhance your work.

You should include a list of the next steps for the project and what should improve.

Flag any blocker on the report that may hurt your project or put it at risk. It will help to keep everyone on track when issues arise.

Once we finish the previous section, it is time to create your Project Summary Report. These procedures will ensure that preparation and implementation will result in success.

This is not a project manager’s “solo” job. Meet up with your team members. Discuss and brainstorm what details and elements need to be included in the project summary. 

It will ensure everyone is in line to create the best report.

The next step is to establish objectives and targets to meet in the report. It will allow us to continue working on the project with a destination.

You need to include them in the project summary so the team members can develop a plan of action early.

The project scope will provide the project outline of your task’s limitations. This should be clear for the client too, so it helps to understand what you can do or not during the process. This sets any expectations from the client and does not demand more of what you can manage. 

Besides, it also will provide a definitive schedule when you accomplish tasks.

Investigate the concept of your project as you collect data and information about it. When you have it all, perform an analysis to track the progress of the project. 

Read sufficient previous research reports and other significant key information for your project.

Your project summary needs to satisfy your client and their market. 

Do a market analysis and check which is the overall project audience. Ask about their demographics and factors that guide their preferences. 

You’ll be able to provide your clients with results that suit their taste and their targets.

As we stated, the report should be brief. You are curating the information for curious readers. You just need to write the most important details.

You should always indicate on your report if everything in the project is on track or at risk; give a quick summary of what’s complete and determine what’s next. And for any more specific details, you can link it out to other resources.

Everyone involved in the entire project should keep in check about any updates that may occur. But your main focus is keeping the stakeholders in the loop. 

It’s highly important that everyone has an overview of how everything is going with the project. Team members who don’t review the report in depth can quickly skim your summary section, while employees more involved may need insight into some details you’ve provided. It will end up in an effective project management.

A project summary update depends on the project you are working on. If the project has a shorter timeframe or things are moving quickly, try to send your project summary every week. But if we are talking about the long-term, you should send the project summary every two weeks or a month.

If you set a certain period to submit your report, stakeholders will begin to expect your updates, which can lean in fewer check-ins from them. 

You can also avoid multiple meetings by sending regular reports, letting you and your team spend hours completing other tasks.

To save some time, you can download a template for Excel and edit it to fit your needs. There are plenty of free templates available. And if you need to get Excel, you can get the whole Office package, in its latest version, on RoyalCDKeys at a low price. You can create your own templates, too.

In this Project Report Template, you can drop several items for your status report. Not only the overall view of the project, but you can go more specific with the budget tracker, milestones, risk, and several more tabs.

With this Monthly Project Status Report Template, you can make a monthly status report about the project. While it is not as detailed as the previous, it is simple and easy to read, so it’s a good option to present it to your stakeholders.

This Project Status Report template example is focused on IT Projects. The simplicity remains, with changes being more on specific terms and evaluations to fit the purpose of being an IT Project Status Report.

All these project summary reports are set during a timeline while the project is on. Once it is finished, it would be smart to submit a final summary report. Think of it as an executive summary of your project. You will wrap up everything that happens and close it out for your stakeholders.

Instead of updates and statuses, you should describe what was achieved, with all the accomplishments highlighted, and what challenges we ran into.

This article should be helpful for you or anyone on the project management team in creating a strong Project Summary Report. 

Always remember that your number one priority is clarity – convince your target audience with the project proposal, and capture their attention. It will not matter how much data you have or how much research you did make. You won't get any further if it’s not written comprehensively and concisely.