Your boss or supervisor has innumerable reports to read and it’s likely that your valiant efforts at identifying key markers and issues get buried underneath many of the others. But those reports help drive management to make informed decisions, optimize efforts and reduce waste. Here are a few strategies you can use to make sure your reports don’t just get signed, but actually get read.
Write Risk Reports
- Review the Project Manager’s overall valuation of the project’s risk position and then identify its present status within that context. Is it growing over time? Is it declining? Or has it hit a plateau? In some cases, you may want to incorporate separate reporting sections to call out the impending opportunities (upside risks) and threats (downside risks).
- For each high severity risk, provide as much specific detail as you can. That will help identify actionable factors.
- Visually convey and summarize the probability and impact (PI) on a PI matrix to make it easier to appreciate the trends.
- List any new risks that have emerged since the last report.
Improve your Financial Reports
When possible, be sure to include the following categories in your financial reports:
- Total Expenses. This is the money spent during the reporting period
- Commitments. These are the expenses that have been earmarked or committed, but not paid to date
- Cost Variation. The difference between actual costs and expected costs for all expenses
- Changes in spending patterns. For example, the planned timing of purchases may have changed to reap the savings from an unexpected special offer from a supplier. These kinds of changes can tip the balance of financial reports, and can force a superficial perspective that does not reflect the actual long-term savings. This item will help explain the aberration.
And if you submit financial reports to a Finance Department, you’ll do everyone a favor if you determine how they want to receive the data from you. Do they want a hardcopy of a straightforward list with totals? Or do they need you to enter your findings into their proprietary financial software?
In fact, whomever you are reporting to, it’s advisable to elicit any other reporting preferences that they might have. When you deliver on those, you’ll help them do their job.
