The Importance of Reporting

Many people lose sight of the importance of reporting, seeing it as dull and pointless, this blog will hopefully restore your faith in this crucial pillar of project management.

Author: Rob Orford is a Junior consultant at i3Works, specialising in planning and scheduling.

Time and time again we’ll hear people complaining about having “yet another report to fill in”, and while reporting can seem dull and time consuming, we must always remember that reporting is an essential part of any organisation or project. Without it we cannot check whether good progress is being made, make the necessary arrangements to ensure we hit our targets, keeping progress within tolerances and senior leadership happy. In other words, it’s a vital ingredient in your recipe for success!

Here are three of the main reasons I think we should keep positive about reporting:

1. Facilitates communications – Let’s face it, without good comms your project is destined for failure or at the very least mass confusion within the team. Project status reports provide a consistent and timely vehicle for fact based reporting about the project that can be consumed in a meaningful manner by all stakeholders (core team members, project sponsors, and other interested parties). In my opinion communication is by far the most important of all aspects of project management, you should never think twice about communicating with those above, below and around your project. It supports a no surprises culture and puts your team in the best position to produce work of the highest and most appropriate quality.
2. Establishes a rhythm – Yes, believe it or not rhythm is just as important for your project as it is for your trombone practice! A strong reporting drumbeat ensures that on a regular basis the project team gets together to take a look at what has been accomplished, how the team is performing, and what corrective actions need to be implemented. Without this everything starts to feel very reactive rather than proactive. It’s one of the first things I establish upon initiating or joining a project as it really does feed into a lot of other great practices, one of which being the point above, as a good rhythm gives a regular opportunity for communication.
3. Gives context – Getting trapped in your own bubble of work is a very dangerous situation to find yourself in and it’s all too easy to let this happen if you’re not aware of the big picture. Reporting gives visibility to those within and around the project of what’s going on and what they should be aware of. This could include information which means you need to re-evaluate how you’re approaching your current tasking or even stop altogether! It highlights where the team needs to focus to correct problems or maintain the progress required to meet or exceed customer expectations. I once arrived at an organisation where the project manager was so wrapped up in the work he was doing that he didn’t actually let anyone near it, quite often leading to him missing deadlines and producing poor quality work. He didn’t look around him at the current context or see where others may be in an excellent position to improve his project work.

While all this is very good to keep in mind, I’d like to add a few caveats, as some people can go a bit loopy with reporting.

Format: Always keep in mind who you are actually reporting to. What do they need to know? This will range wildly from the interests of a project team member and the CEO. How much time do they have to read the report? Keep in mind that some managers may have to trawl through tens of reports while others may only be focused on one or two, which leads me to my next point. Is the information easy to digest? If the report is just a word dump people will probably only read the first few lines before casting it aside, try highlighting particular areas that will be of interest to those reading this specific report and then using traffic lights to indicate how each of these areas are doing. If they need more detail, they’ll ask.

Timing: Timing is crucial, and by this I don’t mean timing the submission of your report to allow yourself a quick exit from the building. You should think about the appropriate frequency of each report (which slots nicely into your project rhythm which we covered above). It should be timely enough to be proactive, without becoming burdensome to the intended recipient. No one wants to be drowning in reports!