The importance of project reporting
Transparency is key for successful project and program management—Problems that are realized too late can increase the cost significantly, or even lead to the failure of the whole project.Successful projects managers therefore establish adequate status reporting right from the beginning with three goals in mind.
1. Understand the qualitative status
Communicating what happened since the last update creates a common understanding of the progress. Any risks and issues should be brought to attention early. And a common understanding about the next steps is the basis for smooth progress.
2. Track the quantitative progress
Sometimes, words can be white washed, and only hard facts tell the truth. On the one hand, you'll want to keep track of milestones and when they're achieved. On the other hand, it's a good idea to define Key Performance Indicators or KPIs which let you track the progress.
3. Trigger communication
Finally, project reports also serve as vehicle for communication. The regular exchange of information triggers interactions that otherwise wouldn't happen—or would happen much too late.
Status reporting doesn't have to be time-consuming
When asked about their experience with status reporting, most people think that it takes up more of their time than it should—for the project managers as well as for the respondents.
With rogr.io, you can set up and run your project reporting in three simple steps. No installation needed. Let's take an example and create the project status report as shown below.
This report was created in a few minutes by filling out the cover letter
and then defining the data needed.
Our previous blog posts describe in more detail how to create a project reporting fetch and how to track and use the data.
