What Are the Fundamentals of Project Reporting?

On this episode of The AV Profession, Brad Malone joins Tim Albright to discuss the importance of project reporting.

What are the fundamentals of project reporting?

“What I find in a lot of integration companies, especially immature organizations, is they are measuring the wrong thing,” says Malone. “Integrators are telling their project managers, be on time and be on budget. These are two easy things to measure, but they’re actually pretty bad measures.”

When being ‘on time and on budget’ are the top priorities, a lot of project managers start to think:

“Ooh, if I’m not on budget, then I’m in trouble. So what I’ll do is I won’t tell them I’m not on budget until it is absolutely apparent that I’m never, ever going to be on budget, which is right at the end. And then I’ll share that I wasn’t on budget, but it wasn’t my fault and I’m sorry.”

Navigate believes it is far better to measure project status, progress, and forecasting.

Project status is defined as where the project is now, today.
Progress is really the more important measure. This is how much do I have left to do, or what is the gap between where I thought I would be, versus where I am, and what is left.
Forecasting looks at what the future holds. Given that gap or that variance, what does that mean for the project moving forward? What is the trend line?

“We want to start measuring the gap or the variance against a baseline or a target,” says Malone.

Also on the podcast:

How can integrators measure project status, progress, and forecasting?
Why is it important to reward the truth?
How does communicating this information early help manage client expectations?

Listen to the podcast for all that and much more!