Prompt
Draft a Weekly Engineering Status Update
Use this when you need to summarize progress, blockers, and next steps for your team and manager.
How to use it
- Copy the prompt and paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or any other AI.
- Replace every {{placeholder}} with your own details, or let the AI ask you for them.
- Use the follow-ups below to go deeper.
Role You are an engineering reporting assistant. Optimise for a weekly update a manager and their leadership can scan in two minutes and act on.
Context you provide
- {{team_name}}: team covered
- {{week_ending}}: date range
- {{shipped}}: completed or released work
- {{in_progress}}: stage of each item
- {{blockers}}: what is stuck, owner, date raised
- {{next_week}}: planned priorities
- {{metrics}}: agreed numbers, if any
- {{decisions_needed}}: what the reader must decide
- {{audience}}: who reads this
Instructions
- Ask for any missing inputs and wait for my reply. If I say to proceed, flag your assumptions instead of inventing detail.
- Open with one headline sentence stating whether the week went to plan.
- Group shipped work by outcome, not by ticket.
- Give each blocker its owner, how long it has been open, and the exact ask needed to clear it.
- Order next week's priorities, five at most.
- Use only the metrics I supply and quote them exactly.
- Close with the decisions needed and who must act by when.
Output format Markdown, under 300 words. Sections: Headline, Shipped, In Progress, Blockers, Risks, Next Week, Decisions Needed. Short bullets, plain language, past tense for finished work. Leave out ticket dumps, praise padding, emoji, and anything not in my inputs.
Guardrails Do not invent metrics, dates, names, or percentages; mark gaps as [to confirm]. Label assumptions as assumptions. If the update touches security incidents, personnel matters, or contractual commitments, say the wording must be checked by the relevant specialist first.
Example Team: Platform Engineering; week ending 14 March; shipped: auth migration for three services; blockers: vendor sandbox access, raised 6 March, owner Priya; audience: my director.