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Status updates (that don't) suck

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Project updates template

How to effectively communicate the impact and health of a project.
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Use this template to effectively communicate the impact and health of a project. To get started, copy this page, customize it for your own project, then share it with your team.
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Impact: Why are we investing in this project?

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Be sure to quantify impact and effort whenever possible, and be as explicit as possible.

Benefits to the user

Example: Improve product recommendation feed to help users discover more relevant products.

Benefits to the business

Example: we project 10% increase in shopping conversion on recommended products.

Effort

Example:
Planned length of time: 4 weeks.
teams involved: led by the Commerce Tech team, with assist from the ML + Commerce Content teams.

Timing

Example: We target launch two weeks ahead of Prime Day to capitalize on the spike in shopping (expecting 10x in traffic this season).

Health: Are we on track?

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Use colors: Quickly show progress and risks with colors. Projects that are at risk or off track should be coupled with a remediation plan to answer the question to put the project back on track.
Articulate the why: Show cause→effect relationships or make a specific ask. For example: team attrition putting capacity at risk, scope creep exceeding original expectation, or a new dependency.
Share new learnings: Include data, dependencies, or potential risks that are new to the team.
Use visuals: Embed mocks, prototypes, or recorded demos to tell a story.

Project health options
Status
Indicating
Probability of shipping on time
1
🟢 On Track
On track as expected.
75%
2
🟡 At risk
At risk of not hitting our target date.
50-74%
3
🔴 Off Track
Requires re-evaluation.
<50%
There are no rows in this table

Example project health update

This project is
Blank
Setbacks
Data integrity: A subset of our feature store data was found to be unreliable not usable due to invalid input data. It took us an additional sprint to create a new model based on the new feature store.
Attrition: One of our senior front-end engineer put in his notice last week. The good news is we have identified an internal transfer instead of opening a backfill, which would delay our project significantly Since the earliest internal transfer possible is beginning of 2023, we need to update our target date back two weeks to 2/3 from 1/20.
Wins
Offline tests showed a 9.3% average conversation rate. See chart below:
2
Celebrate this win!

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