Is there a need for traditional project reports?

Projects mean reports! Many project teams are required to produce weekly and monthly reports as part of a contract, tender or grant agreement, or because of an internal set of reporting requirements. This process comes with challenges:

• The information is often out of date.
• Most reporting regimes use a standard structure, beside the updates there is a lot of redundant information.
• The people who really need the information are usually too busy to read it.
• The information is edited to suit the narrative the report writer would like to tell.
• Reports are time-consuming and expensive to produce.

Therefore, do we need traditional reports? Developments in data management offer a far more useful solution, putting real-time information in front of the people who really need to know now. Most of the information of any project is recorded in various software tools.  With a little bit of organization, the data can be brought into a project management software system in real time.  The result: a dashboard showing what is occurring in real time, better than most, carefully edited “Executive Summary”.

Do reports still have an importance? I say, most times yes.  Reports are needed to explain something or to show the results of an assessment, development, or research.  On one hand, to report on the preferred solution or assignment for a particular role on a project and on the other hand to give the background information and necessary evidence for any audit, maybe done years later. The report also provides the leadership with the information and options needed for decision making processes.  In my opinion, this would be a far better use of the time currently spent by project managers and project staff preparing and distributing weekly and monthly progress reports.