Just Enough Project Reporting

Lots of detailed and overwhelming project reports drain stakeholders’ confidence. Too few reports are even worse. How do you know when you produce the right number of reports at the right level of detail? Here are some indicators that you’ve hit the right amount of project reporting.

• Positive stakeholder feedback. Positive feedback from stakeholders is the best indicator. However, stakeholders might only skim your reports, trusting that you’ll let them know if there’s an issue. Ask your stakeholders questions about details of the reports you distribute. If you get positive feedback and answers that show a knowledge of what’s in the reports, you’re on the mark with your reporting. Answers without that detail mean your reports aren’t being read. You can ask your stakeholders more questions to figure out how to modify your reports to satisfy their expectations.
• Do stakeholders ask informed questions? Encourage stakeholders to ask questions. Intelligent questions about status reports usually means they’re on target. Think about the questions asked to see if you should include more explanatory text in your reports. Questions might mean you should make a report more understandable. Think about the questions people ask and use them to make your reporting more effective.
• Is there a clear presentation of status? Effective reports include clear indicators of status — usually up-front with a color scheme. If there are status issues, include the actions and outcomes the project team is taking to correct course.
• Do sponsor and status meetings focus on the reports? When project status conversations revolve around your reports, your reporting is likely on target. Because project managers rarely interact with every stakeholder, reports make up for that communication gap. Reporting is doing its job when casual stakeholder discussions include an accurate picture of project status, especially when the PM doesn’t interact with those stakeholders very often.
• Is reporting effort and risk balanced? Ideally, report generation is automated, it doesn’t take much effort. Sometimes you need specialized reporting, which requires extra work. Suppose the project objective is leapfrogging the competition. You might need detailed reports on the performance of a new product. In this case, the extra effort to produce these reports is worthwhile, because it’s a way to manage risk. Contrary to the effort to produce a special report to satisfy a single stakeholder’s curiosity.

What other indicators tell you your reports could use tweaking? If you’re willing to share your secrets, what reports features do your stakeholders love?

It dives deep, but you can learn about data analytics with Robin Hunt’s Learning Data Analytics: 1 Foundations course.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 66,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

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