Sunday, April 16, 2006

Project Reporting – 2

3 comments

There are so many great templates in many project management sites. You can download them and customize them according to your requirements.

This is how I prepare it.

Page – 1 – Summary Information

Project ID : A1 ( How your Project office uniquely identify your project )

Project Name : ABC Business System ( Name of the Project )

Report Date (Current date )

Project Start Date:

Estimated End Date: ( According to your Project Schedule)

Current Phase: Execution (Whether your project is in Initiation, Planning, Execution, closing...)

Project Sponsor Mr. B

Project Owner ; Mr. A

Project Manager: Thushara

Section for Project Health – This includes areas such as status of the Project Scope, schedule and cost variances. Following is an Example;

Scope : Stable and Now frozen

Schedule Variance :(Please refer to EVM Post to see how to calculate this)

Cost Variance: (Please refer to EVM Post to see how to calculate this)

Schedule : project is 40 % completed

Project summary section; some important points about the project in point form. Summary of key milestones are listed here, Ex: Project Delivery date, Estimated UAT date Etc.

Then I introduce the color codes which I use in the project report. There after, they are called Project Health Indicators. Every task or issue is marked in one of these colors.

Project Health Indicators
Red

Not Progressing

Progressing with Significant Issues – Impact to Target Date, Budget and/or Scope

Amber

Progressing with Issues – Potential Impact to Target Date, Budget and/or Scope

Green

Progress with Insignificant or No Issues – No Impact to Target Date, Budget and/or Scope

Page – 2 – Project Activity Summary

Activity

ETC

AC

Current Issues

Data Sync Process

2nd Jan

2nd Jan

Task closed with no issues

System Integration with PDA

4th Jan

Ongoing

The team has not received the device for testing. The device is expected on ***

Authentication Module

4th Jan

6th Jan

The work completed and waiting for the QC reports













Look at this example. I list all the major activities here ( This should refer with the detailed project schedule) activities with major issues are highlighted in Red color., so anybody would notice them easily at a glance.

Page – 3 –Issues Summary

Issue No

Description

Responsibility

Progress

1

Provide PDA X5 model to the team

Shehan

The PO has been sent ., waiting for the delivery

2

Budget Revision

Project Sponsor

The 2nd phase of funding is required ., the meeting is arranged with the accounts Dept . on 15th Jan

4

The Team Member A has given resignation., Immediate Replacement needed

HR

Already allocated a new Member. Issue closed













I list all the issues I face with the project., Issues which are critical to solve and the impact is high, I mark them in Red Color, when the issue is closed I change them to Green color., This way I can get the attention from responsible parties to solve all the issues easily.

Page – 4 –Unresolved Risk Summary

Risk No

Description

Risk Owner

Likelihood

Severity

Mitigation

1

ABC

A

Low

High

****

























The Risk number is same as the risk number in your Project Risk Management plan. Only the summary is listed here . Same color codes are used to differentiate the seviority of the risks

Page – 5 –Project Variations

If there is any variations to the project such as scope variations, functionality variations or schedule variations, they are listed here as a summary

No

Variation

Date

Raised By

Status

1

PDA Medel Y should be used instead of X

08/01/2006

Customer

Accepted. The program works fine with the new model





















Page – 6 –Deliverables completed since Last report

The progress of the week is listed here based on activities.

Page – 7 –Deliverables to be completed next week

The deliverables to be completed in the coming week are listed here

Page – 8 –project Team

The names and the responsibilities of the Project Team is listed here, any resource movements during the week can be highlighted.



Useful Links :


http://pmpodcast.blogspot.com (look for Show 27)

http://www.ittoolkit.com/workbooks/qt_status.pdf

http://www.businessballs.com/freematerialsinword/projectmanagementtemplates.doc

Friday, April 07, 2006

Project Reporting - 1

3 comments


Project Reporting is one of the key areas of project Management as well as Project Office Management. In the communication plan, PM specifies how the project communication should be done., Different stakeholders of the project have different information requirements about the same project., So as PM, you group your stakeholders, and then you define the level of information requirements and the frequency of information requirements for each group. We can formally update our stakeholders through project meetings and project reports.

In this post, I will share little bit of my experience in Project Reporting.

As a PM, no point of you writing pages and pages of lengthy reports to prove the project board that you are in total control of the project. When updating my project stakeholders, I have always been successful by using simple but comprehensive predefined templates for Project Reporting.

Some of the benefits of using pre-defined Project status reporting templates:

  1. You will not miss important points because the template itself defines the sections for all the key areas.
  2. Your stakeholders will not have to read lengthy boring reports and understand something totally different to what you are trying to say.
  3. You will make less mistakes in report writing as it keeps you focused on subject matters, You will not go out of focus.
  4. You can easily provide required transparency of the project to readers.
  5. Every week they read the same format of report so it becomes very user friendly and familiar to them.
  6. You can maintain a company wide common templates for all the projects

Not only the template, the information you fill there should be accurate and clear.

I have few PM friends who creates different status reports for different stakeholders. internal They produce different status reports for internal people and different reports for the customer 2 reports contain total different views of the same project status ( they are not my colleagues) I do not agree with this., We have to provide maximum level project transparency to the customers and to all the other stakeholders., No point of creating different pictures for different parties., Remember .. “Bullshit can take you there but will not keep you there..” so one day everybody will get to know the truth about your project., Your credibility lies on the accuracy of your project reports. So the Rule No : 01 -Do not report false information to your stakeholders under any circumstances.

So how do you define a good report template to update your customers and key stakeholders? Its too much to write in this post …:( , So in my next post I will discuss “How to define a proper Project Report Template”

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