Many project reports are exactly that much – “Aal izz well” (and for those uninitiated to the latest bollywood blockbuster ’3 Idiots’, it simply is “All is Well”). They speak of yesterday’s weather, don’t help much in forecasting the future and the only thing they help create is the impression that all is well! An important fact about project status report that people don’t realize is that until the time a project has met its objectives and delivered its promised goods, the only ‘output’ from a project is really the communication to its stakeholders and the outside world.
However, in real world, project reporting is often treated with contempt it hardly deserves! I have seen more project managers at the extremities – either too fanatically pushing the project report whether or not it helps anyone, or literally delegating it to an admin assistant to just compile it together and send it out. In the former case, a lot of team effort is being wasted to create worthless pieces of information that no one cares, except perhaps the project manager who thinks his only job is to create beautiful masterpieces that history will remember him for. In the latter case, the project manager perhaps considers the activity a waste of time that serves no one, and hence decides to take matter in his own hands. Whether the intent in both these cases is bondfide or not, the project and its stakeholders are definitely not being served. Those project reports are, thus, not an administrative irritant, but must be treated with due importance.
Here are some of the ways you can improve your project reporting:
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