We conduct a cleanup & reporting process for each client on an ongoing basis. The frequency is based on their Core Coverage tier but is almost always weekly.

Over the years, we have found that that projects with a consistent weekly process rarely go off the rails. The weekly process is one of the most powerful PM tools we have ever found. Do not ignore it!

Steps

Per Site

• Review all ‣s within the related Asana Projects. Validate that they are on track and looking good, or intervene to help. Make sure:
  • [ ] No active work is in the Backlog.
  • [ ] No tasks are overdue.
  • [ ] All active tasks are on the Big Board and are assigned to the correct week based on their due date.
  • [ ] All tasks targeted for this week are clarified, or there is a plan in place for getting them clarified immediately.
  • [ ] Any completed projects are archived in Asana and Harvest, and removed from the relevant Asana portfolios
• Ensure that the project is properly represented on the Big Board for the current week and next week.
• For each Asana project, create an internal status report using the “Status” button:

Per Project

Go through the Harvest project and review the time entries by the team for the last week. Ensure that you understand them and that they are in the right projects. If we have exceeded budgets or are in any kind of danger of doing so, take action accordingly.

Per Client

For each client, send a weekly report delivered via Email or Slack that summarizes the current status of all of their active Projects. Remove any in-house chatter/notes/planning, and add more context that matters to the client. Change wording to be less technical and more approachable. Copy all relevant Cantilever team members.

Recommended Format

Hello Client Name,

Hope you had a great week! Other miscellaneous chatter here.

Last week, we...

• Did a thing
• Did another thing

This week, we...

• Will do a thing
• Will handle that other thing

Budget/Timeline Update [As appropritate to the project itself] We are at X hours out of our Y hour budget. The project is on schedule. The schedule is broken out below...

If the client has many projects going, you may want to break out the report by project for clarity.

Approvals

If you feel comfortable you can send these updates without approval. For newer PMs or when onboarding to a project, we recommend asking the Strategist to review before sending the client update. If you want your update to be reviewed, make sure to finish it early in the day Monday so that the updates can go out by EOD Monday.