A new project is pending — whether through a new customer order or the completion of an extensive internal task. A project manager is appointed, who is responsible for the distribution of tasks and instructions to the team. While team members concentrate on their individual tasks, the project manager is responsible for maintaining a comprehensive overview and providing information on the current project status at any time.
The project report is an effective tool for collecting all relevant information in the hustle and bustle. In this blog article, you can learn more about the functions of a project report, how it should be structured and which tool you can use to further optimize your reports.
What is a project report
The reporting system during the course of the project acts as a written summary of the current project status and is prepared in accordance with the project plan. In Gabler Business Encyclopedia The term reporting is defined as follows:
“Name for all reports in written or electronic form that are systematically prepared and contain information relevant to decision and management. The aim of reporting is generally to meet the information needs of report recipients; in particular, creating transparency and preparing and monitoring decisions are emphasized. ”
A project report therefore provides neutral information about the progress of your project, shows previous results, presents potential changes or problems and, in particular, indicates the degree to which goals have been achieved.
For this reason, the project report is also often referred to as a status report or status report. The frequency of reporting can vary depending on the duration, scope and complexity of the project — however, a regular schedule is defined as part of the project.
What are the purposes of a project report?
The project report is essential for management in order to Profitability of your projects to keep an eye on. As a project manager, you focus in particular on whether and when the individual project goals are achieved. Your team also receives neutral information about any problems, changes, or solutions for future work steps. In addition, your stakeholders can use the project report to track developments over time and determine which goals have already been implemented or are still pending. The provision of this neutral information contributes to greater transparency, added value and trust at all levels.
The central goal of a project report is therefore to inform all relevant stakeholders — starting with the members of your project team, management, management and your clients. Reporting is an integral part of project controlling. In doing so, you should ensure that the following questions can be answered in detail, comprehensible to everyone and immediately:
1. What are the project results so far?
2. Which decisions still have to be made by whom?
3. What tasks are still pending?
4. What phase is the project currently in?
Your project report should serve as an initial briefing and introduction to the project, both for active project participants and for people who are not actively involved in the project but simply need to be informed about progress.
What content belongs in a project report?
In its entirety, a project report has the task of providing all relevant information relating to the project and its process. Reading the report should therefore leave no unanswered questions behind. Your management is particularly interested in which employees — i.e. personnel resources — are involved in the project and how much budget has already been raised. Your customers and other stakeholders, on the other hand, would rather know how much they will have to pay for the project at the end. As a project manager, you need a comprehensive overview of all details of the project and should ensure that your project report includes the following criteria:
The project name: Especially if your company manages many projects, the clear naming of each project is crucial. This may seem obvious, but naming the files and headings precisely helps save time.
The parties involved: The number of project staff provides information about the scope. If the project duration is longer, it may be necessary to expand the team or redistribute tasks. At this point, you should adjust the project plan if necessary.
The status: Have you already completed the project or is it still in progress? Here you can note whether parts of the project have already been invoiced to the customer. The status in your project report is particularly important if the reader reads the report alone or needs to overview several projects.
The running time: The duration of a project should definitely be shown in your project report. Not only so that your supervisors and customers can get an overview of time, but also to ensure compliance with costs. If the duration for a small project is too long, you may need to adjust project management or project planning and speed up processes.
The resources: The budget of your project — both in terms of money and personnel — is of decisive importance. A display of how much has already been consumed supports further planning. If the budget is insufficient to achieve the project goals, you should make adjustments and communicate them to all project participants and stakeholders.
The subtasks: Subdivide Main tasks into multiple subtasks or task packages. In this way, you always have an overview of tasks that have already been completed. If certain steps take more time than planned, you should take appropriate action and note this in your project report.
Turnover: The information about how much revenue your project has already generated is of particular interest to your management. Sales can be compared with the budget to determine the amount of effort your customer is still willing to pay.
The traffic light system: Color markings in the project report provide immediate insights into the current project status. A traffic light system with the familiar colors is particularly suitable for this purpose. Attention: Define the colors as clearly as possible in advance so that no questions remain unanswered when looking through the project report.
Writing a project report: structure & structure
Now you know what content should be included in your project report. But: In addition to the content components, a project report is also structured and structured according to a classic pattern:
Project report structure
In the introductory part, you outline the context and framework conditions of your project. In doing so, you present key information, such as the project name or the project number. This ensures that readers of your report can unquestionably identify which project it is — this is particularly useful when If you have multiple projects (possibly even for the same customer) process in parallel.
The introduction also includes a list of all people involved, including sponsors, stakeholders and team members. You define the project duration by entering the start and end dates and the duration of work carried out so far. In the introduction to your project report, you can also specify whether you use a traffic light system for status reports and how readers should interpret this. Also remember to include the creation date of your project report. In this way, you underline that the present document is always up to date.
Main part of the project report
In the main part of the report, you describe the project development and compare the current situation with Target values of your project plan. Address important aspects:
• What tasks have been completed so far?
• What is currently being worked on?
• Are there any changes to the original project plan?
And analyze your goals:
• What goals have been achieved so far?
• What goals still need to be achieved?
• Are there goals that can no longer be achieved?
In the body of your project report, include what results you've achieved so far with your team, and address key progress. Also look at the resources and explain which resources you actually needed compared to your defined project plan — in terms of personnel, time & money.
In the main section, explain whether you were able to identify potential problems or risks for the further course of the project, how you could solve them and how much time you might need to do so. If necessary, create a detailed solution plan so that the reader of the report does not have any questions unanswered.
Use specific figures and avoid empty phrases and excesses. Your project report should be short, clearly structured and limited to the essentials. It does not replace cost analyses or quality controls, but simply shows an overall situation on the basis of which you can make further decisions.
Conclusion/Conclusion Project Report
In the conclusion of your project report, you should briefly summarize the progress made so far. If unexpected problems or changes arise during the project and these have an impact on the next steps, please pay particular attention to them and mention them separately. This enables a precise assessment of the current project status and targeted planning for the next phases of your project.
Formulate project report
Write your project report either in present tense or past tense — the latter is the most common wording. Please use clear and concise phrases without filler words. Use active sentence constructions—for example, “We decided that...” instead of “It was decided that...”
Always adapt the terminology in the project report specifically to your customers. Avoid complex sentence structures and unnecessary substantivizations.
Refer to older project reports in your company to understand and, if necessary, adopt the writing style. In many cases, it is sufficient to use an existing project report as a sample and use it as a basis for further reports. But beware:
The individual adaptation of the report is absolutely necessary, especially for special projects with a unique structure or special conditions!
How to write your project report
As a project manager, you can quickly lose sight of the project report in hectic everyday work. New information flows in continuously and its integration requires valuable time. In the midst of your numerous tasks, project-related time recording is easily forgotten.
However, by using software such as ZEP, you not only effortlessly record your working time, but also the hours for customers, projects and services provided. With ZEP, you and your team stamp your time on a project-specific basis and thus lay a solid basis for your project report. You always have an overview of who is working on which project and can easily export corresponding evaluations from the program. This makes incomplete information and slow billing processes a thing of the past.
With project time recording software such as ZEP, you can more easily recognize when budgets are reaching their limits and can take appropriate countermeasures. As soon as you have successfully completed a project, you can thanks to the Invoicing module Invoice all project hours spent directly from the software to your customer.
Thanks to various functions of ZEP Design your project report yourself step by step. Try our software for free and without obligation for 30 days.
