Project Management Reporting for Engineering, Operations and Executives
Their are a number of tools that exist to manage projects. In my experience, the only person that has an interest in using the tools is the project manager. Engineering, Operations and Executives will not use a project management system to get the data they need. In order to provide the data these stakeholders require, create a PowerPoint template.
The sections of the PowerPoint template can be extracted from your Project Management tool. The sections should include the following listed below. Please note, after the first few meetings, some of the slides can be moved to the appendix.
Timeline: Each significant event that takes place should be recorded on a side. This should include the date it occurred and a link to an artifact that proves that it took place. For example, if you submitted the paperwork to buy a product the timeline entry would say: *Sent email to buy the product — MM/DD/YY. See link here for artifact”
Project Objective: Maintain this single slide that reminds all the team members the goal of the project
Tasks for the next two weeks: List out the tasks required over the next two weeks. Assign a team member(s) that will coordinate the tasks
Resource List: Build a table of the team member email address and their department
Action Item List: Build a table for action items. The table should have the following columns: Title of the action, Date Assigned, Due Date, Closed Date, Status, Assigned To and History. For the history field, use one cell and separate the updates with a semicolon; and the update with a colon. This would allow you to parse the list into a CSV format if needed in the future. The example of a history field looks like this: 4/2: Issue reported and the case opened. ;4/6: Case closed.
Closed action items should be moved to a new slide listing the closed action items.
Risk slide: Create a slide that documents the risks. This should have the standard fields for tracking a risk which includes: Description, Impact on the architecture, user, testing, design, operating procedures, recommendation to avoid, mitigate or transfer the risk and the final decision about the risk.
Decision List: Create a table of decisions. If you are using a system like Microsoft Team Foundation Server, enter the items in TFS then copy the data to the table. The fields in the table should include: Decision number, Decision description. The description should also provide a link to the documentation about the decision. This should be meeting minutes or an email.
Project Charter Slide: Provide a slide with the project charter and the link to the full document. Team members should have the ability to read the project charter to determine the decision process and other governance models.
Each week, update the slide deck and send it out to the team members prior to the start of the meeting. During the course of the meeting, update the slide deck with any changes.
Engineering, Operations, and Executives can’t use a tool designed for Project Managers. Their data needs to be simple and concise. I realize that using this format creates an overlap, but providing an artifact will give you the evidence that you are tracking the correct project items and somebody may actually read them.