Communicate Progress to Clients and Management

Friday, Oct. 28, 2005
Friday, Jan. 20, 2006 at University of BC Robson Square

Project reporting occurs at two levels. First the project managers report progress on their individual projects. Second the project management office should provide management and clients with an unbiased view of the status of each project. Organizations need an early warning system to identify projects that need attention. Most projects slip behind schedule long before anyone being aware of what is happening.

Define reporting standards to establish consistent reporting between projects. Centralize reporting in the Project Management Office. If the project management office has not established reporting procedures then each project manager must fill the gap.

Reason for project managers to communicate progress to clients and management to keep the client informed and raise the comfort level with the project. Maintain support for the project so your resources will not be stolen for other projects. Reduce clients’ anxiety levels.

Improve reporting efficiency by replacing static reports with online access over the web to project information. Simplify communication using a Project Management Information system. Unlock valuable project information by standardize reports with Microsoft Project Server and Web Access. Project reporting requires project managers to keep their plans up to date.

A project manager should report issues and risks that threaten project success in a timely manner. Face reality or your project is in trouble. Reporting is easy when a project is going well and most difficult when a projects turns sour. Difficult for a project manager to be honest. Organizations prefer not to hear bad news.

Communicate project schedule and budget progress against the project baseline. Progress is measured by finishing key deliverables on reported milestones. Identify tasks to start in the next time period so everyone is prepared to start on time. Mobilizing resources to start tasks on time helps a project stay on schedule. Identify tasks that will not finished on their scheduled finish date.

Project reporting takes considerable amount of time. Project managers should allocate this time in the project plan. Organizations can lighten a project managers communication workload by standardizing reports across major projects. Assign the PM an administrative assistant.

Project manager should create a communication plan early in the project life cycle to establish expectations with the client and management. Schedule project review meetings. PM must split time between focusing on the project and communicating with clients and management.

The last session discusses methods and tools for reporting project progress to clients and management. Participants will learn to:

  1. Create a communications plan for your project.
  2. Create consistent reporting standards
  3. Understand reporting requirements
  4. Design efficient reporting systems.
  5. Build custom reports with tables and views.
  6. Automate standard project reports across projects.
  7. Understand the power of macro's and Visual basic for applications
  8. Report progress to management
  9. Conduct a post-project audit

Project Managers will find this course valuable in Standardizing reporting within a Project offloads administrative work from the project manager and allows them to focus on managing the project.

email Brian Mullen with your questions

Click to register for the October 28, 2005 course

Communicate Progress to Clients and Management
Agenda for Friday, Oct. 28, 2005, 9am - 4pm

The following topics will be covered in this course.

 
Oct. 28, 2005 Topic Report Progress to Clients and Management
 9am  Communicate to succeed in project management
  • Report progress for all projects
  • Drill down to find detail.
  • Keeping project on track requires action
  • Communicating a key Project managers' responsibility
  • Difficulties with honesty
  • Difficulties with managing the news.
  Build communications plan
  • Identify stakeholders.
  • Identify reports by project phase.
930am Defining reporting requirements.
  • Decide reporting process. 
  • Critical project metrics to report
  • Earned value reports
  • Identify reports to produce.
  • Reporting top ten risks
  • Getting timely feedback
10am Coffee 
10:15am Design reporting architecture 
  • Regular project review meetings
  • Distributing information via email
  • Benefits of distributing information from repositories.
  • Designing a project web site
  •  
11am Produce project reports with views, tables and filters.
  • Customizing Microsoft Project reports
  • Flagging tasks that need attention
  • Defining columns with tables
  • Selecting tasks with filters.
  • Building custom views.
  • Adding reports to menus
12noon Lunch break
1pm Simplify reporting with Microsoft Project Web Access
  • Save projects in a central repository
  • Distribute project reports with Internet
  • Compare Web Access and Project Server
  • Specify views for Project Center
  • Specify views for Resource center.
  • Pasting project views to Word

 

230pm Coffee
245pm Conduct project reviews
  • Steering committee agendas
  • Communicate action requests in writing
  • Escalating issues
  • Post project audits
4pm Finish
Click to register for the October 28, 2005 course
email Brian Mullen with your questions

Updated: Oct. 18, 2005.