Project Reports

Project reports summarize and communicate project progress and issues to the various stakeholders. Reporting the progress of your project accurately and regularly allows for better quality decision-making. All concerned will have up-to-date information on which to base their judgements and everyone will be working from the same page.

Who are the people that will depend on project status reports? These can include:

• project sponsors
• steering committee members
• project team members
• projects office
• external project consultants and suppliers
• line managers
• end users
• employees
• affected public
• government bodies

Your stakeholder and communication management plans should identify which groups require project reports for your particular project. You will also need to specify who will need which project reports and how often. Stakeholder requirements will vary – one size does not fit all!

What should you cover in your reports? The level of detail will vary according to stakeholder needs and their level of involvement in the project. Your project status reports could include information on performance and issues in the following areas:

• milestones achieved
• deliverables completed
• costs incurred
• effort expended
• unresolved issues

For each project progress indicator, the report should compare the actual result with the expected result. We find a visual display, such as a “traffic lights” indicator, provides readers with a quick indication of project status and areas for concern. To find out more about the “traffic lights” method and how to calculate project performance, download our eBook, A Guide to Project Management. Our Guide also contains a ready-to-use and customizable project reporting template.

Some project management software packages save you the effort of manually producing project status reports. With these packages, project progress reports are generated automatically from the project data that is entered into the package. Project Master is a simple yet effective Microsoft Excel template that generates automatically a one-page project status report at any stage of a project. [Project Tracking Software] << Click here to find out more and to download a free fully functional sample project file.
 

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