Putting It All Together

Monitoring and controlling the progress of a project won't happen just because the team is committed to the project. There must be an organized oversight process put in place and understood by the client, senior management, the project manager, and all the team members. As you have seen, there are reports for all of these audiences. You have also seen that the extent to which progress reports are necessary and the amount of effort to generate them requires a reasonable balance between effort and value. Requiring too much reporting takes away from the time available to work on the project. Requiring too little reporting puts the project manager at risk of not being able to complete the project within time and cost constraints. You have also seen that there are both numeric and graphic reporting formats. Some managers prefer numeric data, whereas others prefer graphic data. The reporting system you choose must meet the needs of both types of managers.