stakeholder-updatelisted

# Stakeholder Update Use when a project must report progress to a steering committee, donor, board, or client sponsor. The output leads with what changed and what needs a decision, not with a chronological account of activity. ## The core principle Stakeholders do not want to know what you did. They want to know: are we on track, what changed, what do you need from me. Every sentence that does not serve those three questions should be cut. ## Workflow 1. **Establish the reporting baseline.** State the plan against which progress is measured: original scope, original schedule, original budget, and the last approved revision. Variance is meaningless without a baseline. 2. **Report by exception.** Detail only what deviates from plan. Activities that are on schedule need one line at most. This inverts the instinct to describe all activity. 3. **Quantify variance in the units the stakeholder cares about.** Schedule variance in days or milestones. Budget variance in currency and percentage. Scope variance in deliverables delivered versus committed. Avoid qualitative reassurance where a number exists. 4. **State forecast honestly, including bad news.** For each open item: current status, forecast completion, confidence level, and what would change the forecast. Never hide a slip by omitting it; stakeholders discover slips and then discount everything else in the report. 5. **Surface decisions required.** List each decision the stakeholder must make, with: the decision, the