Four Tips for the Project Reporter

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Communications Management   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   Stakeholder Management  

Managing the project is really only a small part of being a project manager. Sooner or later, someone (probably a stakeholder) is going to ask you to stand up and report on the project. You might need to talk about the status of the project or the progress made so far, or you might need to report on what has gone wrong.

You should always be ready to make a good presentation and report on the project whenever you need to--even in the elevator at times. Here are some ideas to get you started on being able to report on the project to a stakeholder, executive or whoever needs to know what is going on...

Just the Facts
First off, the project manager should be ready with just the facts. Opinions are certainly allowed, but only if they are backed up by facts. Hard data should drive the project reporting to the client or the stakeholders. The date and the facts about the project should be examined carefully and double-checked. While there are times that the project manager will need to draw conclusions from the data and present that, the best presentations lead the audience to be able to draw their own conclusions and opinions. The facts should be presented in such a way so that they can clearly see what is going on inside the project. A project manager’s belief that the project is on schedule is not nearly as impressive as showing the earned-value metrics in a …

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