PMO Setup Part IV – Weekly Status and Reporting

While building out our foundation for a Value Added PMO, one of the frequently and most consistent uses of information exchange is with the development, maintenance and ongoing reporting of the dreaded ‘Weekly Status Report’. Done correctly, with the proper foundations put into place, it can and will serve as a critical communication vehicle between the Project Manager, Project Team and of course Management and the Business Sponsors. On the other hand, if it is put together and managed like most weekly reporting is – it will simply become another one of those reports that is a nuisance and also serves no real purpose. The weekly Status Report should serve as the single document that is used to reflect what has been ‘accomplished’; what will be ‘accomplished’; and areas that may need attention including the key Issues and Risks that are being tracked.

It is important not to throw up your hands at this point, with the overall thought that reporting in your organization is ‘dictated’, and management will not be receptive to change. Bull! Let’s talk about a real world scenario that happened several years ago. Our PM group filled out and filed somewhere between 3-5 project status reports each week. There was the one for the Functional Manager; one for the Program Manager; another for the PMO and of course the one that was needed by the Business. That, and whatever other ’status’ reporting that might come down at any given time. Each of the 8-10 PM’s that we had in our group, were spending 1-2 hours per week on each of the status reports. Multiply that out and we were allocating 60-80 Man Hours per week on a task that did nothing to advance the actual deliverables to the project towards successful completion.

Weekly Reporting – Developing the Content

All of the PM’s were very tired of the round and round we would be required to go through each week, so several of us approached management with an offer to undertake a comprehensive re-write of the weekly status report. We spent quite a bit of time and effort, putting together the ‘critical success factors’ and information needed – with no preconceived ideas on what the structure would be, or the tool used to produce it. What we wanted, and what we wound up with was a report that had four distinct areas of information contained within it. Here are the four areas, and what they contained.

Quadrant 1 – Basic description of what the project entailed, sponsorship information, key personnel assigned and working on the project and any other ‘basic background’ information that someone would find beneficial. This is not a complete org chart of the Project Team and Organization, but rather key personnel: Sponsor, PM, BA and the primary Subject Matter Expert.  This information for the most part stayed fairly static, unless personnel assignment changes happened, or other key information about the project changed as the result of a change control.

Quadrant 2 – This is where the meat and potatoes of the information needs to be entered, as it contains information about what has been accomplished; and what is to be accomplished in the next reporting period. Please notice, that this quadrant of the weekly status report is focused on ‘accomplishments’, and not what is being worked on. As a PM and most certainly as the PMO – you should be focusing on accomplishments and deliverables and not be simply reporting on what is being worked on. An good example might be: ‘Completed the Functional Requirements of the Business Requirements’, as opposed to – ‘Work continues towards the completion of the Business Requirements’. Upcoming accomplishments might be reflected by – ‘Initiate work on the Non-Functional Requirements with an expected completion of 10/23/09′. This is going to provide valuable information to the entire spectrum of readers, that is definitive and useful.

Quadrant 3 – This should simply be a short and to the point area where key milestones and/or deliverables are reported on. A short description; start date, target/planned date; % Complete and status (Green, Yellow, Red). An additional piece of information that is suggested is a late delivery date or slip date. If your deliverable is Yellow or Red and your end date is moving out, having both the planned end date and the new target or slip date is critically important. Common practice is that once a deliverable is completed, it will stay on the report for one or two reporting periods, then be removed. The focus on this quandrant is not to detail out the entire project plan, but rather the key items that are upcoming. On a shorter duration project, this may focus on a 4-6 week time frame and the reporting is more granular and may be on a ‘micro reporting level’. On a longer duration project or program, this time frame generally represents 2-4 months and is more ‘macro’ related, rather than ‘micro’ related.

Quadrant 4 – Key issues and risks make up the final information needed in your weekly status reports. This is not where all of your issues and risks will be carried, but the most important and the ones that are affecting the critical path of your project or will affect the critical path. They need to be descriptive, but short and to the point along with the severity level or status (once again, common practice is either a number scale or a red/yellow/green status). Please note here, that my opinion is that no issue or risk should ever be colored as Green. If it’s an issue, how can it be Green? Additionally, you might want to have a color such as Blue to indicate when an issue is resolved or a risk has been mitigated. One of the most frequently left off pieces of information in this area, is the identification of the Primary Person that is responsible to solve/address the Issue or Risk along with an expected ’solution’ date.

It took us quite a while to get agreement on what went in each quadrant; how it was formatted and organized and of course the tool that was used. Here is another suggestion or tip. Regardless of the tool, format or ‘ergonomics’ of the weekly status report, it should fit on one (1) 8.5 x 11 piece of paper when printed. It needs to be concise and to the point. It’s not important to get too caught up in some of the details, as long as the content that is gathered and presented falls generally into the categories and descriptions described, and meets the needs of a diverse readership.

Weekly Reporting – Ensure that the ‘Cadence’ is workable and a good Quality Review is performed

In addition, just as important as the content of the weekly status report, is the reporting cadence and reviews that it will go through along with the time period that it represents. It is virtually impossible to effectively give a status report that reflects current state, unless all of the PM’s are in the room/on the phone and are simply providing a verbal update – which is not (and should not) happen. While the PM may well participate in a review and explanation of the status report, the written report will need to be able to stand on it’s own as ‘time’ will invariably not allow for any type of in depth verbal status reporting of the weekly status report.

Let’s talk about the timing that management and business sponsorship needs, for that is going to be the basis of where we develop our cadence. Once again, we are going to the ‘end result’, and working backwards toward the source. While most of us that have been around for awhile and worked in a variety of departments and companies, we find that reporting may well be due to be presented any day of the week. The real trick here, is to understand and gain agreement from the people receiving the status reporting that when they receive it, the data within will be ‘dated. Recently, over a long running program, we never at any time really overcame a basic requirement of the end customer/client that the status reporting be up to date and reflect current status. No matter how many times we had this discussion, the fact of the situation is that there will be some delay between when the data is accurate and presented, and the time it takes to compile; perform QA, update and distribute it.

Right there, is the single biggest hurdle that you will likely face in gaining this agreement. It is unreasonable to ask the PM’s writing the reports, to collect the data, write the report and post it on Tuesday COB (close of business); have someone compile it that night, perform QA and then present it to management on Wednesday morning at 9:00AM. However, many managers and business sponsors believe that is how it should work. The step that is most important during this compiling and processing is the QA review by the PMO, along with a consolidated Team Review in larger Projects or Programs. This is one of the most important ‘Value Added’ tasks that an effective PMO can perform, as long as it is handled properly. On a recent program, we divided this up into several different areas and sections so that we could work in parallel and be more effective. One of our PMO Team (also a PM with PMP certification), that was a specialist with schedules and worked closely with most of the PM’s on the program, did a review of the updated project plans and Quadrant 3 (Scheduling Milestones) to ensure that everything matched up well. Another team member that worked closely with our AIR log (Action Items, Issues and Risk) matrix, did a similar review of the issues and risks. A third member of our team looked at the accomplishments – comparing last weeks reporting to current weeks reporting making sure that there was a logical flow to the information, and also making sure that something wasn’t intentionally overlooked or admitted.

After the compiled report was put together, each of our team took the information and worked with a designated PM to clean up and correct data. It was done in a professional manner, and most all of our PM’s that submitted reports, appreciated the fact that someone was ‘protecting their backs and catching mistakes’ that had been made. After this QA Review was finished (in this case all on Monday), we had a combined team meeting with the Program Manager and each of the PM’s (along with the PMO of course), to review and put last changes on the data. It would be nice to tell you that the review held on Tuesday morning was the last one, but it wasn’t. This particular review went through at least 2 more stages of reviews, with last updates to ‘freshen the data and make as current as possible’ on Thursday. It was then presented to the client on Friday morning in the combined management meeting. In this case the reporting ‘cadence’ was far too long and had too many steps, simply in an effort to make an attempt at presenting ‘current information’ – when in fact most of the information was at least a week old. You are far better off having a shorter ‘cycle’, and doing it effectively, than finishing up with one similar to what is described here. You have to make it work, for the extended organization.

Other Management Level Reporting

There are all types of ‘other’ reports and reporting that we could get into, but lets take a brief look at some standard ‘Management Level and Executive Level’ reports that will be useful. The following is taken from the governance section of the agreed upon ‘PM Methodology and Governance’ for a program in the ‘archives’.

• Management Level Reporting
  • Critical Path Report – 4 Week Look ahead of Major Milestones/Deliverables on a Functional Area basis.
  • Weekly Issue Management meetings have been established on Monday basis, to review and act upon Project and Program Level Issues that are critical to the continued success of your project/program.
• Executive Management Level
  • Snapshot of overall project – Critical milestones with % complete (Dashboard type status)
  • Top issues will be handled and reported on through both the Monday Issue Management meeting, along with Management level 4Up reporting performed on Friday

Obviously, Executive Management reporting will have it’s roots in all of the data gathered from the other standard weekly reports, but will likely be summarized and formatted to meet the needs of the Executives. This is one place, where their wants and needs giving input into how it is put together and formatted, will be very important. When designing and putting together this reporting, the value added PMO will help lead and make suggestions on the types of data that should be included; the frequency of updates, and how the PMO can best put the reporting package together. One word of caution here. In some organizations, ‘metrics’ are critically important. If metrics are a form of standard reporting that is presented to the Executive Staff, then you will need to make sure that your Value Added PMO has the ability to pull metrics together and put them into a usable format. On larger programs, you can collect many types of metrics. However, on smaller programs or single threaded projects, most of your metrics will be coming from your scheduling tool and the week to week march through the project plan. We’ll talk more about some of that next week, when we look closer at scheduling and where the PMO can be of assistance to your organization.

Next Week: How to provide value added service to your scheduling activities.

Tagged as: Communications Management, Leadership, Management, PMO, Project Management Office