How to Write Software Testing Weekly Status Report

Writing effective status report is as important as the actual work you did! How to write an effective status report of your weekly work at the end of each week?

Here I am going to give some tips. The weekly report is important to track the important project issues, accomplishments of the projects, pending work and milestone analysis. Even using these reports you can track the team performance to some extent. From this report prepare future actionable items according to the priorities and make the list of next weeks actionable.

So how to write a weekly status report?

Follow the below template:
Prepared By:
Project:
Date of preparation:
Status:
A) Issues:
Issues holding the QA team from delivering on schedule:
Project:
Issue description:
Possible solution:
Issue resolution date:

You can mark these issues in red color. These are the issues that require management help in resolving them.

Issues that management should be aware:

These are the issues that not hold the QA team from delivering on time but management should be aware of them. Mark these issues in Yellow color. You can use the same template to report them.

Project accomplishments:
Mark them in Green color. Use below template.
Project:
Accomplishment:
Accomplishment date:

B) Next week Priorities:
Actionable items next week list them in two categories:

1) Pending deliverables: Mark them in blue color: These are previous weeks deliverables which should get released as soon as possible in this week.
Project:
Work update:
Scheduled date:
Reason for extending:

2) New tasks:
List all next weeks new task here. You can use black colour for this.
Project:
Scheduled Task:
Date of release:

C) Defect status:

Active defects:
List all active defects here with Reporter, Module, Severity, priority, assigned to.

Closed Defects:
List all closed defects with Reporter, Module, Severity, priority, assigned to.

Test cases:
List the total number of test cases wrote test cases passed, test cases failed, test cases to be executed.

This template should give you the overall idea of the status report. Don't ignore the status report. Even if your managers are not forcing you to write these reports they are most important for your work assessment in future.

Try to follow report writing routine. Use this template or at least try to report it in your own words about the overall work of which you can keep some track.

Do you have any better idea for this routine work? Comment it out!