5.4Project reporting & review

Project reporting is not about conveying a subjective impression like "things are going fine" or "we're a bit behind"—it is about conveying facts backed by objective performance data to stakeholders so they can make necessary decisions. In practice, however, PMs and team members sometimes hesitate to deliver bad news, causing reports to skew more optimistic than reality or problems to surface late. This section covers how to build evidence-backed reporting and how to counter the biases lurking within it.

5.4.1Progress, status, and forecast reporting (backed by EVM)

• Progress reporting shows performance against plan (work completed, budget consumed, etc.) using objective metrics. Status reporting summarizes the overall health of the project at a point in time (the current state of scope, schedule, cost, and risk) in a form useful for stakeholder decision-making. Forecast reporting projects the future (completion date, total cost at completion, etc.) from performance trends to date. All three presuppose being grounded in performance data rather than impression or subjective opinion.
• It is standard practice, especially for forecast reporting, to back it with EVM (earned value management) metrics. If a trend of SPI (schedule efficiency) or CPI (cost efficiency) below 1 continues, the PM can present the completion-date or total-cost forecast (e.g., EAC) to stakeholders as evidence backed by numbers rather than a vague sense that things are running late. A report that simply says "things are on track," even if that happens to be true, is insufficient in that it lacks objective backing and offers no basis for decision-making.