Chapter 12: Reporting Project Information

Overview

By now, you've built your project plan and you're using it to track progress and display project information. Because you're now in the execution and control processes of the project, you'll need to share important data with stakeholders. For example, your new test procedure might have worked better than expected, but your materials testing ran into some unanticipated slowdowns. All this information is reflected in the project plan. However, for different audiences and different purposes, you want to highlight certain information and filter out other information to present a particular focus with professional panache.

You can print views and generate reports built in to Microsoft Office Project 2003 and use them as an integral part of your project communication plan. These views and reports leverage the power of Project 2003 by presenting the specific focus and clarity required by corporate and program departments. By tailoring the views and reports to the interests of different groups (finance, human resources, and procurement, among others), you can feed the right information to the right people, avoid misunderstandings, and mitigate problems. Microsoft Project views and reports are often used for:

• Weekly project team meetings

• Monthly department status conferences

• Quarterly or annual executive reviews

In addition to printing views and generating built-in reports, you can design custom reports to meet your specific project communication needs. You can publish project information to the Web. You can also generate reports using project data saved as XML.