Regular project report importance?

It depends on the situation. However, I believe there should be a report on a regular basis.

Suneel,

Thanks for sharing, your experience in the absence o monthly reports.

Sante,

Lessons learned, yes we haven't learned yet to do them!

Luis,

That is if online project performance is available and sufficient. Then you have a realtime report.

I think that PM need to report the progress on monthly basis and also per quarter. The difference between both will be what the kind of reports and information that need to be reported in this frequent.

Some issues should be reported and presented as soon as possible to avoid happening of any fatal problem because of the too late reporting.

By the same, another kind of issues no need to be reported and presented on monthly basis and only enough to be highlighted and reported per quarter or half year (if the project duration more than a year) and this to for follow up and being updated with the progress and the project performance.

The average duration of projects/programmes I have worked are always over 18 months and in some cases spanning across 5-year regulatory cycles. I have established a span control of at least 3 or more delegates who used to gather and compile the report and share the same to all stakeholders. We were reasonably compliant with this process(95%). I guess that is the best you can do in any project situation. As I mostly worked in the regulatory Industries over the last 20 years, we had an additional onus of closing every project formally for regulatory requirements of respective countries. I won't score myself very highly than 55% to 60% compliance though.

They're an important source to refer back to. Each organisation has lessons learned specific to only their organisation in addition to the general ones experienced across all organisations. So, it would be worthwhile implementing these, as they will assist future projects and project teams.

Our governance structure requires PMs to report at least once on an annual basis, but our projects run 10 yrs plus. While with another Omni-bus type project we had monthly meetings, which I found useful in way, but not in other ways, as some info never changed month to month.
As I mentioned in the other thread, we are seeing a real increase in automated reporting via our SAP/ ERP system, as senior management likes the idea of being able to run their own reports whenever they wish to do so. In fact, so much so, that PMs and their staff are being asked to update project contained in the ERP system every two weeks.