In every firm, there is a need for the business management team and relevant stakeholders to be kept abreast of the activities of their project to know their next line of action.
A project report is a vital tool that establishes a strong connection between the project team and the stakeholders because it gives them full visibility into every activity that is related to the project.
It gives a detailed representation of what a project is or what it intends to be over time. Furthermore, it provides guidelines for start-ups and existing businesses. Again, the project report is essential for business organizations that are seeking financial assistance from institutions.
There are different types of project reports that can aid the decision-making effort of the project team. The different types of project reports help you and your team to run the activities of your project successfully.
This article discusses different types of project reports that can be leveraged in disseminating your project information to the relevant stakeholders.
Types of project reports
The types of project reports used in projects are listed below:
Project status report: a project status report is useful for reporting the progress and crucial activities of the project. It is a tool that streamlines the communication effort between the project team and the key stakeholders.
It gives a summary of the completed tasks in a project; it shows an update on the budget and project timeline. It is useful for reporting the risks issues, and mitigation to address the risk.
Also, the project status report can be used for keeping the record of the past event, actions, and decisions. The different types of project status reports are daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly. They simplify the process of gathering and disseminating information about key information on the project.
Risk report: this type of project report helps in reporting the risk management strides of the project team to the stakeholders. It documents the successful management of the existing and emerging risks that are synonymous with a project.
The risk report should include a brief statement of the risk profile of the project. This includes the details of the risks that have the potentials of truncating the project and how you plan to manage them.
Executive reports: this is the type of report that summarizes the organization’s business plan for lenders. It helps collate the outcome of multiple research studies for decision-making. The executive report is the tool for kick-starting a conversation with the investors.
However, the executive report of your project should be prepared in a manner that gives a great impression in the minds of the readers. It should be concise and begin with a comprehensive summary of the project.
Resource report: this is a type of project report that allows the project team and the stakeholders to gain insight into how the resources are shared across the tasks of the project. The project resource report will show the breakdown of which project team member is allocated to which task on which day. The project resource report is useful for highlighting the problem of over-allocating project resources.
Variance reports: the variance report is useful for comparing the project plan against the actual results of the project. It offers a metric to measure if the project is on track, ahead of schedule, or running behind schedule. Furthermore, the variance report will collect and organize the data on what you are comparing in a project. This can be a budget schedule or scope.
Without mincing words, the role of project management tools in creating the project report cannot be over-emphasized; it simplifies the process of creating the report of the activities of the project to the key stakeholders.
For instance, Sinnaps, an online project management tool will assist you in creating different types of project reports in one click. It will establish the right synergy between the project team and stakeholders through effective communication and collaboration.
All about Project Reports:
Project management report types
Project management report plays a vital role in communicating the latest updates about the project. Again, project management reports can be used for monitoring the budget and timeline, mitigating risks, and building on the initial project plan. The following are the project management report types:
Team availability report: this project management report type helps in reporting the resources available to get the tasks of the project done. It will showcase how much work each team member has in their schedule before you embark on resource planning for your project.
Project health report: this gives the overall snapshot of the project status. It helps the project team and stakeholders to know at a glance what is on schedule in the project, what is lagging, and what is overdue.
Risk assessment report: in this project management report type, you are allowed to identify and categorize the risk of the project depending on their severity and the likelihood of occurrence. This allows you to prioritize issues and be proactive in addressing them before they impact the project negatively.
Time tracking report: this project management report type offers you visibility into the amount of time your team is spending on the tasks of the project thereby allowing you to track it with the project estimate. A time tracking report helps a lot in providing crucial insight for future project estimates.
Baseline report: a baseline report helps in comparing the original timeline with your actual project timeline thereby enabling you to learn from the previous project in your bid to scope out the future project. It will reveal how changes can affect the overall project timeline.
Irrespective of the types of reports in project management, it is important for you to set a cadence for your report by keeping the lines of communication open. Furthermore, you must be mindful of the data that you integrate into the report and ensure that they are valid.
Again, you must focus on your audience and keep it succinct with bullet points and make it enticing to the readers by adding useful visuals like charts and graphs to drive home your point. Also, you should be honest with your budget and schedule.
Sinnaps will aid in all these because it is embedded with useful tools that will painstakingly aid you in generating different project management report types that will be appealing to your stakeholders.
Types of feasibility report
A feasibility report is the report of the feasibility study carried out to evaluate the level of expertise needed for a project. It is always carried out before the execution of a project, it helps to address where and how a project will operate.
The feasibility report examines the qualitative assessments of other resources that are essential in the project and assists in identifying the critical points that should be considered in the project.
It estimates the project completion time, how much cost will be required to complete the project, and identifies the potential obstacles that could impede the activities of the project. The different types of feasibility report are listed below;
Technical feasibility report: in the technical feasibility report, the assessment of current and technology is done to accomplish the needs that the project aims to satisfy. It analyzes the technical skills and capabilities of the project team members. Also, it determines whether the relevant technology is available for the project.
Operational feasibility report: this assesses the extent to which the project is able to solve the problems of the users. It reports if the customers can use the product developed from a project immediately or not.
Economic feasibility report: this type of feasibility report helps in determining whether the project is capable of generating financial gain for the firm. It involves the cost incurred on the project and other costs. Also, an economic feasibility report assists business organizations to manage their financial resources by ensuring that the most profitable projects are undertaken.
As a project manager before embarking on a project, you must carry out a detailed feasibility study to have an in-depth understanding of the project and deduce whether it is viable or not.
Feasibility report allows you to identify new opportunities that can be explored; it also enhances the success rate of your project by evaluating multiple parameters. A tool like Sinnaps aids you in the proper analysis of the project parameters to enhance your decision-making efforts.