How to write project management reports

How to write project management reports

 2019 Jun 27  Writing Tips

Writing project reports is not the most attractive part of your job, but they are very important for the whole team and company. Project reports help workers to evaluate the extent of the work performed and do all best to finish the work in time.

Let’s learn which types of project reports exist and how can you make it in order to support your team and become the best employee of the year.
By means of project reporting, you can discuss with your colleges the latest updates, potential risks, how to reduce the company’s expenses and think about how to improve the product.

Status report

This report may be produced to the members of a company every week or month. The frequency of producing these reports depends on the degree of product’s complexity. A status report is aimed to inform the team about the progress of a project. Here you can note which work is already done, which work is going to be done, note the overall project completion and budget spent on the project. You can propose here the possible solutions to the problems concerning budget, workers, performance.

Resource workload report

Through the use of this report, the company can monitor how much of work is assigned to each worker who is the member of a project. It can help the company to arrange all the duties correctly and the project work will be done effectively and in time.

Risk report

Usually, such reports are produced every month, but the worker is welcome to inform the company about potential risks as soon as he notices something that can inflict harm or ruin the project. A risk report should contain a summary of the risk profile of the project, but how you demonstrate this is up to you. It’s recommended to details only the risks that can create big problems for the team. Of course, you need to produce a report about all the risks, regardless of how essential they are.

Expense report

An expense report can be produced every week. This report is going to detail down all the expenses incurred and you will be able to hold these sheets in front of the budget planned as well. If there are gaps between the reality and plan the company’s team could respond quickly and address the issues without lost revenues.

Executive report

For this report, you have to think high level. They want to hear about important issues of the project, possible ways to reduce the costs, significant risks and their influence on the work. Make sure that this report will be understandable for them, use images, diagrams, technologies to illustrate the progress.

The structure of your report:

1. Summary
2. Introduction
3. Body
4. Conclusion

The summary you have to write as soon as you finish your report. Here you need to about all the important details of the project. This section will be read by the executive and your target to show them here whether this report is important or not. In the introduction give an outline of what are you going to talk further. In the body reveal all details, analysis and recommendations. In the conclusion sum up all the information and tell your team what to do in order to address the issues. Don’t forget to edit it.

Some tips to write a good project report

• Add to your report visual materials

The content of your report will be better to understand if you use images, graphs. Write for your audience, and you will be heard.

• Don’t deceive

Don’t hide even small issues. The sooner a problem rises into distinction, the sooner it can be fixed. Such an approach will help you to earn the trust of the team, executives and clients.

• Data

Make sure that you checked the data given in the report before sharing it. All your data should be valid and current.

• Discussion

The main target of any report is to address the issues. It can be done if the team start a discussion through which the best ways to handle with problems will be found. Your task is to initiate the discussion, encourage the workers to think and cooperate. Nothing will be done if you share the information and the team get out and do their things.

We hope our tips help you to make a good project report. Be honest, use technologies, check the information and the executives will appreciate your contribution to the company