Stop 09 · Stakeholder Management & CommunicationTopics · 7/9

Written Communication & Reports

In short

Most of a BA's influence travels in writing: status updates, meeting notes, requirement summaries. If people have to read a message twice to understand it, they mostly won't.

Clear, well-organized written communication is often a BA's most-used skill — status reports, requirement summaries, and meeting notes all need to be scannable and unambiguous.

The purple blob happily holds up one small neat note card beside a tall, messy pile of paper.

Think of it like this

The train ticket SMS

Your train booking SMS has the PNR, train number, date, coach and seat. Nothing else. You understand it on a crowded platform in three seconds. That's the bar for a status update: everything needed, nothing extra, readable in a hurry.

Watch it happen

A weekly status update, section by section

Headline

Status

Done

Risks

Asks

1/5Six short sections, always in the same order, so readers know where to look.

The big ideas

What you need to know

Headline first

The first line should make sense on its own. Many readers will stop there.

Make it scannable

Short paragraphs, bullets and bold labels. Nobody reads walls of text on a phone.

Decisions and owners

Meeting notes should list decisions made and actions with a name and date, not a transcript.

Cut, then cut again

Remove filler like 'just wanted to touch base'. Shorter messages get read and answered faster.

See it in code

Walk through the code

text

1Subject: Fee Payment Project - Week 6 - AMBER2 3Headline: Launch moves from 8 to 15 March due to a vendor delay.4 5Done6- UPI payment flow passed UAT (42/42 test cases)7- Receipt emails live in staging8 9Next10- Card payments into UAT by Wed11- Go-live checklist review Thu12 13Risk: Vendor sandbox may slip again. Owner: Priya14Ask: Finance sign-off on refund policy by Fri (Rahul)

1/3Subject and headline carry the most important fact. A reader who stops here still knows enough.

A status update someone can read in 20 seconds. The subject line alone tells a busy reader the project, week and colour.

Save yourself the pain

Common mistakes

Oops

Writing meeting notes as a long summary of who said what.

Do this instead

List decisions, action items with owner and date, and open questions. That's what people come back for.

Oops

Burying the ask in paragraph four.

Do this instead

Put the ask near the top or in its own labelled line, with a name and a date.

Your mission

Rewrite a messy update

~20 min

Quick check

Your status update has one critical request for the sponsor. Where should it go?

Go deeper

1Write a status update using a clear structure: progress, blockers, next steps.
2Practice cutting a written communication down until only the essential remains.
3Learn to write meeting notes that capture decisions and owners, not a verbatim transcript.