Author: Edul Nakra, PMP
Speaker: Peter Taylor
Co-speaker: Tim Stumbles, co-founder of Office Timeline
In this very interactive online event, Peter Taylor, the author of the bestselling project management book ‘The Lazy Project Manager’ led participants through the practical aspects of Project Reporting and getting the most benefit out of Reports.
As many of us can relate to, there are so many different reports: Status Reports, Risk Reports, Board/Executive Reports, Resource Reports, Variance Reports.. and the list goes on. It is sometimes hard to cut through the “noise” in the midst of this.
At the heart of what we do as Project Managers is communicate, and Peter emphasized that the key to this is getting the right information, to the right person, in the right way, at the right time! These are the building blocks. Reporting in itself is NOT Communicating – in order to communicate well, we need to get these key elements right!
Peter also highlighted the 5 top problems with Project Reporting. Keeping these in mind will help you to “get through” to your stakeholders.
“The key to the success probability of your project is to nail stakeholder buy-in..” and “the #1 way is to give them uncomplicated visual project updates...”
Tim Stumbles, co-founder and CEO of Office Timeline then led us through a demonstration of how this can be done with a tool he has helped develop “Office Timeline” – creating standard waterfall, swim-lane, and sub-swim-lane slides.
For a free trial for PMI members visit: https://www.officetimeline.com/pm-trial
Finally, Peter left us with an example of “Picture Visualization” to stress the importance of the visual aspect. If someone said the word “circle”, only 10% of us would remember what we were talking about in 72 hours time. In contrast 65% would remember if the circle were drawn!
After a fascinating presentation, Peter concluded by taking questions, and leaving us all with plenty of practical tips to take away!