You have to report, and it has to hold up
A steering group, a grant body, an auditor or your own board: someone asks for an account every period. And the question behind that question is always the same: is this right, and what shows it?
What you run into
- Every report is assembled by hand and costs a day
- Two reports about the same period quote different numbers
- Afterwards it can no longer be reconstructed what a figure rested on
- One recipient reads Dutch and another reads English
- For an R&D grant it must also show who supplied what, and when
What we do
Reporting begins with a yardstick. If your project is already running we record one with a Project Scan; if it has yet to start, with a Project Start. After that every report is produced from a snapshot: a frozen copy of the project data on the reference date, with a checksum. What the report says is traceable to that snapshot, a year later too, even if the project has changed in the meantime.
What you are left with
A report per recipient in their own language, on a fixed cadence, with the same figures underneath. Board, steering group, team and end client each get what they need, and nothing that is not meant for them.
The documents we produce
- Board report
- Steering group report
- End client report
- Team report
- Advice accompanying the report
- Project plan
- Project Scan delivery handbook
- Budget
- Schedule and work structure
- Change requests
- Risk register
- Issue list
- Action items
- Decision log
What goes out when, and to whom, is agreed when we set things up. Not everything is needed, and not everything goes to everyone.
Demonstrability
Every snapshot, every rendering and every delivery goes into the log, and that log is only ever added to. Together with the check value on the snapshot that means: if someone asks next year whether the March report still holds, that is a check and not a discussion.
Do you have another report to account for soon?
Arrange a conversationOr is this closer to your situation?
Your project is running late and nobody can point at where
The delivery date keeps moving, the updates stay optimistic, and the question "where do we stand" produces a different answer every time. That is rarely unwillingness. What is missing is a yardstick.
Stalled project →You are starting a project and want it set up right the first time
The most expensive mistake in a project is made in the first two weeks: starting without recording what has to be delivered, when, and how you will know it is done. Much of what goes wrong afterwards traces back to that.
New project →Your project is running well and you want to keep it that way
Nothing is going wrong, which is exactly why nobody is looking. Until someone asks where it stands, or until the first setback arrives and it turns out there is nothing to measure it against.
Project on track →