The other day, I was reading an article about project reporting. The final part was really good and delivered the right focus and direction i.e.
“to design reports that are relatively easy to produce, ask the right questions, are well-structured and well-formatted, and contain needed data.”–end quote.
However, two aspects of this post made me growl!
Project management elitism is one my bug-bears and the following unfortunately did not help dispel this view.
Quote No 1 : Developing reports is an art form.
No it’s not. It’s about delivering the right information at the right time to the right people – nothing more or less.
In reality the report needs to say;
- are we on time?
- are we on budget?
- is anything going on that is a concern?
- any lessons that we need to take into our next project?
This is the information a project officer, project manager, program manager or a business owner needs.
Unfortunately we now expect our project managers to spend as much, if not more time, writing management reports on projects than we do on getting them to focus on the job in hand – communicating with the team, supporting the customer, making decisions etc.
It has become too big a part of a project managers working day and is costing businesses a fortune.
Quote No 2 : A well-formatted report will in itself increase positive emotions?
Pardon? This has to be the strongest sign yet that aspects of project management have really lost direction.
I appreciate the sentiment but feel we should be focusing on the positive emotion from “real” facets of delivery.
- A satisfied customer (we delivered quality).
- A productive and happy team.
- Knowing that you came in on time and budget.
Surely these would give stronger emotional connection and positivity. It’s all very well generating or receiving a great report, but it’s not much good if the project is not going well.
Don’t get me wrong. Project reporting is a vital part of any project delivery. Let’s keep it in perspective though please. Keep it simple!
Your thoughts?
[...] do we generate interest in our own area of writing without having to utilise other companies profiles and brand? If a writer does this too [...]
[...] processes and complex tools to help their projects along. Project management is described as an art form and a huge industry has grown out of this whole [...]