So for the past two months, I have been involved with larger scale, longer duration projects. I have been wrestling with our current project reporting and status reporting from the field. I have seen varied customer types. Some want detailed reporting on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Some want just the end-result in a master database or spreadsheet. Some want daily detailed reporting. If the project reviewer is higher up the "food-chain" or "chain of command", typically the level of detail is looser or lost to some degree. The more complex the project (no, we have not been using Microsoft Project which complicates my situation even more), the more quantity of projects one is juggling at a given time, the lesser project monitoring is done.
This is just a function of capacity and human bandwidth. The dilemma then becomes, do you monitor a project status quantitatively or qualitatively. Being a melancholy by nature, I prefer the quantitative measurement of milestones hit and achieved. Instead of a descriptive text-type reporting of project status, issues log, project reporting, I have come up with a template (simple Microsoft Excel template) for the field engineer or field technician to populate. It is a simple yes or no, for specific milestones completed/not completed. This will be a weekly report to be submitted to the PMO. As a project manager for a different industry, what is your preference? What industry are you in, and what type of reporting do you prefer?
