ADVANCED PROJECT MANAGEMENT REPORT.

Advanced Project Management Reports

August 12, 2013

Last week, by 3pm on Friday, most of my team members had sent me their status reports for the week. Some people will always need chasing up for that kind of information, but I thought it was pretty good that my team are now in the habit of sending over their updates before I ask for them. I use the status information from each of them to combine into my weekly status report, which I send to the whole project team, the business stakeholders and my project sponsor.

Not everything that the team members tell me makes it into the status report – I pick and choose the most interesting and relevant bits for the wider audience, but as a project manager it’s good to know everything myself. And the report practically writes itself as all I have to do is copy and paste the sections that I want to share with everyone.

You probably do something similar. Status reports are the most common type of project report. But there are other reports as well, equally as important to the successful management of your project. Here are 3 more types of project report. Do you use any of these on your project?

1. Dashboard Reports

Project dashboard reports are great as they provide an overview of the entire project. You can then use them to drill down into the detail if you want. Many software tools will come with a set of standard dashboards so you can tailor these to suite your own needs. Choose the performance indicators or metrics that are most relevant to you, or create your own!

As dashboards give you a snapshot of the project in real time they are ideal for showing a summary of progress, risks, expenses and effort on one page. You can use these as the basis for your executive or board reports, as the project sponsor and other executives will really only want to see the highlights. A dashboard can give you these, along with the opportunity to see the detail if they are particularly interested.

Dashboards are dynamic, so they update as soon as new data is inputted into your project management tool. That means that it is better to give your senior managers access to the dashboards online because as soon as you print out or save a copy to email to them it will be out of date. With online access they can see the current project status in real time as often as they like – although you might have to send out a reminder email once a month to prompt them to go and look!

2. Expense Reports

How much are you spending? An expense report can show you exactly. Your project management software may give you the option to record financial information about your project. If it doesn’t, you can set up a simple spreadsheet to track your project budget. It should include what money is being spent, when it is being spent and what it is being spent on. Ideally it should also track your forecast (your best guess at what you’ll be spending) and your actuals (what you really do spend) so that you can compare your estimates to the real life situation.

You’ll also have to consider whether or not you need to track people’s time and convert it to cash. Many companies have a fixed hourly rate for different types of employees so that they can be charged to the client or the department who has asked for the project. If you are expected to charge for time, you’ll have to make sure that your team members complete their timesheets (more on those later).

Bear in mind that Finance departments typically work with whole months. In other words, they will be producing financial reports at the end of the month, and probably issuing them to you in the first week or so of the next month. So information that you get from them will rarely be in real time as it takes a while to compile the data, and to get it approved and issued. Your own project records may be more up-to-date than their reports.

Expense reports can include sensitive data, especially if you are accounting for third party contractors or recording the costs of team members. This data that relates to salary shouldn’t be shared with anyone else without the individual’s permission, so you may want to ensure that expense reports are kept private and are not shared with a wide group – even if your project management software would let you do that.

3. Timesheet Reports

It is a good idea for your project team members to complete timesheets, even if you are not charging for their time. Of course, if you are expected to account for their time, you’ll need to know what hours they spend on your project so that you can charge for it. Timesheets are the only way to do this. But even if you aren’t charging the client for time (for example, if you are working on a project for an internal department) it is still useful to know how people are spending their hours at the office.

Timesheet reports provide a summary of what timesheet data has been recorded. You’ll need to get this from your timesheet software as it is far too difficult and time-consuming to compile it all by hand. You will be able to see from the report who is working on what, and which tasks are taking up the most time.

You can also use the data to check your estimates. If you notice that a particular task is taking longer than you expected then you can reforecast your project schedule accordingly.

Did you notice what all 3 of these reports have in common? They can all be produced automatically from your project management software. Producing project reports is a familiar way to spend your time as a project manager, so anything that can cut down on your admin time has to be a good thing, right? Whether it is copying and pasting from emails sent from your team like I do, or using the standard templates that come with your project tools, make your life as easy as possible by simplifying how you produce all those reports!