Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. The Reports are important in every stage of project management. Reports provide essential inputs to team, top-management and stakeholders.

Reports can be for Status Information or for Metrics – they get information from Project plans and Log registers. Let’s discuss about few essential reports and their data sources.

Time based Reports:

Schedule based reports, includes achieved activities, in-progress activities, not started, not finished, estimated schedule, slippages, actual schedule etc. The data source is Project plan.

Cost based Reports:

Budget based reports, includes Estimated budget, actual cost for completed activities, pending activities to be completed, revised estimation for pending tasks, revenue reports etc. The data sources are Project plan and Account Revenue Status Sheet.

Resource Reports:

Resource reports are reports all about Team size, resource utilization week or month wise, resource availability, skill matrix etc. The data source is Project plan.

Scope Reports:

Scope Changes and Impact analysis, revised estimations, revised resource requirements, revised budget can be presented in Scope Reports. The Change Request Log, Project plan, Estimation Documents are data sources for these Reports.

Quality Reports:

Quality reports are about Issues Recorded, Open & Closed, expected delivery schedules, testing estimations & actual, Bug Report Status, Quality Metrics etc. The data sources are Issue Log, Bug repository etc.

Action Reports:

Action Reports are mostly about Action Items based on Status calls, Stake-holder communications, Opportunities, challenges, Risks and Issues etc. The data source will be minutes of meeting, Change request Logs and Project plans.

These reports can be in document format or spreadsheet, but I suggest using presentation tools – it gives detail view and helps you to add more graphs and models. There are many templates available – you can also develop and share your own models.