“When I am working on a problem I never think about
beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But
when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful,
I know it is wrong.”
— Buckminster Fuller,
architect, engineer
Is your presentation report ready for
prime time?
Your presentation report is finished...you are ready for
the status meeting with your client.
Or are you?
After creating a presentation report, ask yourself:
Does the report explain itself, or need minimal
explanation? While you won’t just say, “Here’s the
report...see you later,” a professional presentation
will be easy to read with clearly defined content.
Can it be interpreted in more than one way? Generally, a
good project report will be interpreted objectively. For
example, clearly defined values, or stoplights driven by
values, objectively measure status.
Is the report flexible enough to respond to your
audience’s questions? A flexible report can show a
project overview with the ability to drill-down to the
details when needed. Or, if the customer asks, “If Date
X changes, what will be the impact on Date Y?”, can your
report show the impact on dependencies?
Can you distinguish between projects, phases and tasks?
An indented outline, as well as text styles and
highlights, clearly separate areas of the project
report.
PROJECT REPORT
CHECKLIST
The project report is:
Objective
Clear and concise
Easily interpreted
Able to drill-down to
details from the summary
Able to show impact when
dates or values change
Separated into distinct
areas of focus
SAMPLE REPORT
In this
sample report, the
funding health of each
project and phase is
evident with
stoplight-status
symbols.
The
legend clearly defines
the meaning of each
milestone and stoplight.
The
projects are easily
distinguished with
highlight shading. Any
of the phases can be
expanded to show hidden
task details.
