Consulting Status Report Template

Milestone Tracker

Two columns nobody puts in a workplan, and the status falls out of them.

Slip is overdue minus float, and nothing else. The requirements pack has six days of float against a decision ten working days late, so it moves four days. The business case has the same gating decision and two days of float, so it moves eight. The board recommendation had no float at all and inherits the eight.

Then the sentence the sponsor reacts to. 23 December is past the 15 December board. The next board sits on 19 January, so two unanswered questions have moved the decision this engagement exists to produce by five weeks.

Nobody argued for that status. It is subtraction, and it is why a report here cannot read green over an open question.

Decision Log

Every open question aged from the day it went in writing, with the consultant days sitting behind it.

23 days at $850 is $19,550, against a $187,000 fee sold as 220 days. Ten and a half percent of the engagement is sitting behind four emails. A sponsor reading "two open decisions" does nothing. A sponsor reading that number acts the same week.

Blocked and worked around stay in separate columns because the second one is worse. Blocked work is visible to everybody. A workaround looks like progress, so the fee gets consumed twice and the report still reads healthy.

D-05 and D-06 were answered in four and two working days. A three day answer is normal here, which is exactly what makes a ten day wait worth naming.

D-07, and the five days it cost to say it out loud

Interface specification for the ticketing gates. The one request on this engagement that was not written down the day it was raised.

Nine workaround days, four of them recoverable. The window opens on 12 September, so the five days spent before it are gone: $4,250, on a question that was discussed in five consecutive meetings and never written into a report.

Federal practice is where this rule is written down. A buyer failing to act within a reasonable time is a compensable delay, and the claim excludes any cost incurred more than twenty days before written notice. Which makes a dated standing section in the report an instrument rather than a courtesy.

The other four requests on this engagement went in writing the day they were raised. All of that cost sits inside the window.

D-01. Which fare media options are in scope

In writing since 11 September. Needed by 25 September. Overdue 10 working days. 11 consultant days blocked.

Why the date was 25 September. The requirements pack goes to the vendor panel on 20 November and takes six weeks to build. Fare media changes about a third of its content, so a later answer does not compress. It moves the pack.

Recommendation: Option C. It covers 94% of current journeys and the concessionary obligation, and it defers the one option whose technology will have moved by the time the system is procured.

If this is not answered by 16 October, the requirements pack stays at 12 November, the business case at 9 December, and the board recommendation at 23 December, past the board.

Two or three costed options, a recommendation, and a date with its reason. Never a question mark and a blank space.