Performance Reporting

Project reporting is the collection of all the activities aimed to monitor the progress of a project. When a project exceed a certain scale is necessary to establish some form of formal control. By controlling the status of a project, a manager can keep people accountable for process execution and prevent minor problems to scale up. The main outcome of a functional reporting system is providing information about the state of a project. These information should be available in a time range that allows the project manager to eventually take effective corrective actions . Each report is shaped on the project manager (or other stakeholder) necessities. Consequently, the report metrics has to represent and estimate accurately the intended performance. Typically, key measures assume time or financial value. However, the introduction of KPIs aimed to measure other kind of performances (as for example people motivation or project reputation) is not excluded. Additionally, managers has to identify in the organization different professional in charge of gathering data, implementing the report and distributing it. While the project is in execution, the actual data are compared with the estimated data, defined in the baseline. This comparison can eventually exhibit a variance, that can be considered as signal of ineffective process execution. In a longer time prospective, the purpose of reporting is to prove how different decision making process and practices led to failure or success. This insight should then be used as guideline for improvement by replicating good practices and avoiding mistakes.

Scope of Control

Different knowledge areas are involved as in planning, also in the control activities, these are:

Area	Role	Reporting documents
Scope (or Configuration) Management	The scope of work defines what the project is producing or delivering. Reports will take track of scope variation during the implementation.	Project Communication Impact statements Variations and Modifications Change requests Concessions Closeout report
Technical Support	Technical experts keeps track of their results to interpret clients need and addressing it respecting regulation and adopting good practices.	Configuration control Impact statements Commissioning As build drawings
Time Management	Outlines the sequence and timing of the scope of work through control documents as Progress report	Progress report (actual vs planned) Gantt chart Revised barchart Earned value Trend documents
Procurement Management	The procurement function classifies all the purchased items. These are procured to specification, time schedule and budget	Purchase Order Gantt chart Expediting status report Revised procurement schedule and budget
Resource Management	Resource management is in charge to integrate the resource estimate with time management to produce resource forecast. Used resourced are closely linked to manpower requirements.	Time sheets Revised manpower histogram
Cost Management	Cost Management allocates budgets and cash-flows to the work packages	Expenditures report (actual vs planned) Committed cost and cost-to-compete Revised budgets Earned value
Change Control	Set of documents that tracks and revise the progress of the scope of work.	Project Communication Impact statements Non Conformance Reports (NCR) Change request and Concessions Drawing revisions Modification and Variation Orders (VO) Extras to contract Specification and Configuration revisions
Quality Management	State how the company plans to meet the requirements	Inspection reports Non conformance Reports (NCR) Concessions As-built drawings Data books and operation manuals Commissioning
Communication Management	The communication functions share information and instruction to the responsible parties.	Transmittals Minutes of meeting
Human Resource Management	The HR function sets frameworks for the persons employed in the project.	Time sheets Performance evaluations
Environmental Management	Takes in account all the external issues that may effect the project.	Environmental report

Data acquisition

Data capture is the activity of collecting and reporting information to the project manager on periodical basis. This allows the project management to be aware of the project's progress and status. The purpose of the metrics is to provide the management with the current situation overview and possible future scenarios. Before starting other reporting activities is necessary to understand who is the owner of the report and which kind of performance he/she intend to monitor. Once the metrics are defined is necessary to ensure a good quality of the measured data, as the reporting system will results accurate as the data captured are.

Metrics

The data are collected on the base of the performance the manager wants to measure. Usually it is not possible to make measurement on the intended mertics as they do not manifest in quantitative values. For this reason proxy metrics are introduced for measurement purpose. Typically the information that are expressed by the data are related to:

• Activity duration and completion status
• Resource usage rate
• Actual cost of resources and activities

Those measures are then compared with the expected duration, usage and costs defined before the activity execution. When projected and actual data are available is then possible to make a comparison and identify possible deviations. However the control process should not just take in account time and cost variable, but also the inconsistent issues and behaviors that can be identified during the execution of project activities in different knowledge areas, such as Project Value, Quality, or Reputation. If some deviation manifests in the schedule, resource or expenditure metric it should be possible to locate the problem in the organization. The report should be capable to explicate causes and responsibilities for overrun. Additionally the report should indicate the forecast for cost overrun in case of midway overrun.

Maintenance

Once the metrics are defined is necessary to define:

• Who should be responsible to gather and elaborate the data. It could be a project team, contractors, cost engineers or data could come from the company's ERP
• When the data will be assembled and communicated and which is going to be the reporting period (day, week, months, quarter...

Application

Setting a Baseline Plan

As first action to implement progress and performance reporting is to set a baseline. The development of a project baseline is properly a part of planning process. However, since it constitutes the main input for the comparison with actual data, it constitutes the foundation for any reporting activity. The baseline is an written document that represents commitment to the achievement of some cost, schedule or other performance. The reference value are acquired from the work breakdown structure. The WBS provides discrete work packages tied to deliverables and organization unit. Furthermore, each work package defines the work, duration and budget. The project network schedule time-phase all work, resources and budget into a baseline plan. The costs included in the baseline are usually labor, equipment and materials. Also direct overhead costs are associated to different work packages. One of the most common methods to assign costs to the baseline is to divide in percentage the completion of the project. This is possible by identify a relevant measure unit that properly express the progression of the project. Units could be workdays, drawing completed, line or code or others.

Baseline and tracking Gantt Charts

Measuring Progress and Performance

The measured indicators can be qualitative or quantitative. Qualitative indicators can be performed by on-site-inspection or other kind of personal assetment. Quantitative measures regards mainly time and budget performance. Relevant measurement are made on the early or late actualization of the critical path. The slack of of near-critical path can be measured in relation with the arise of new critical activities. Economical measurement keeps track on the expenditure performance to compare it with the budget values. However, in order to realistically estimate the performance agains time phased budget, we have to consider earned value as well. Earned value is defined as budgeted cost of the work performed.

Time performance

The project network schedule derived from the WBS/OBS is used as baseline to monitor the current project status. The two tools used for communicating the project schedule status are Gantt chart and control charts. Tracking Gantt chart associate to the baseline duration of each activity to the actual completion until the report date, and the remaining duration of the remaining activities.

Comparing Plan against Actual

As the plans rarely manifest exactly as estimated, it is a priority to detect deviations in useful time. The management must be able take corrective actions as soon the deviation manifests. For this reason is imperative to measure periodically the status of the project to compare the actual toward the expected plans. Consequently, the timing of the status must have a frequency that allows early detection and correction of deviations. A good indication is to generate a status report every one to four weeks to be useful and allow to take proactive actions.

Taking Action

When significant variances occurs, managers has to take action to bring back the project in line with the original or revised plan. When the scope changes throughout the project, a new baseline must be set, so to include the new informations. The project manager should train and communicate the importance of maintaining reporting system to the project members.