Written by Douglas Cook

Recently, an experienced business consultant at Momentum, Inc. was asked to create a “lessons learned” report for a completed project that spanned an entire year – in two hours.  She succeeded because she was prepared with the right kind of documentation.  Are you?

Emergency reporting is just one reason why organized project documentation is important.  Another benefit that may prove far more valuable is that it can help you to guide your project to success.

One approach to ensuring you have the right kind of information both during your project and after it ends is to write an “End of Project Report” (also called a Project Final Report or Project Closure Report) starting on Day 1 of your project and continuing to its conclusion.  Some projects require this kind of report, which means you need to create one eventually.  But even if such a report is not required, you may do yourself a big favor by putting one together.

Benefits

By writing your End of Project Report (let’s call it EoP Report for simplicity) as you go, you:

• Will have quick access to the content you need to quickly create a variety of different report types, saving you time, and making you look good when you satisfy those last-minute requests!
• Will gain a valuable overall perspective on your project that is easy to lose when constantly focused on details (the “can’t see the forest for the trees” effect). From this wider perspective, you may identify work threads that need to be adjusted, or you might realize that the project team needs to revise its priorities to meet its goals.
• Will have a record of the project that can be used for legacy knowledge transfer for the stakeholders’ successors years into the future when everyone on the project team has moved on to other areas or retired.

What’s in an EoP Report?

If your project requires an EoP Report, the contract or organizational policies may already specify what it should include.  If not, here are some typical core elements:

• Brief description of the project (problem to be addressed, goal, scope, business case, stakeholders, etc.)
• Key deliverables or activities and status of each (with dates accomplished and where the reader can locate them)
• Key accomplishments (with dates)
• Key issues, risks, challenges, roadblocks and how mitigated
• Key decisions (with dates, decision-maker, and rationale)
• Benefits realized and the results or outcomes
• Lessons learned

There may be other elements relevant to your project, such as:

• Budget (and comparison to actual expenditures)
• Team members and roles
• Definition of project success
• Specific metrics
• Recommendations based on lessons learned

Of course, some elements, such as a final evaluation of the project and final cost, cannot be added until the project has concluded.  Don’t worry about those; just leave reminders for yourself to complete them later.

Getting started

First, choose a file format that will work for you.  It could be Word, Excel, or perhaps you have project management software that accommodates this sort of documentation.  If you are starting from scratch, you might want to check out the many EoP Report templates that are offered by a number of sources on the internet and choose one that best fits your project.

Once you set up your report file, it’s a matter of populating it.  Decide how often to update your file, and when the best day and time will be.  Then, put it on your work calendar.  If you have a weekly project team meeting, you could schedule your update soon afterwards and simply add anything that is EoP-worthy.  By doing this when everything is fresh in your mind (and while your weekly report is in front of you), you might be able to do your weekly in five or ten minutes.

Leverage other project documentation you and your team are already producing by catching bits and pieces as you see them.  You probably have hundreds of emails, notes from 50 meetings, some progress charts you created, a few ad hoc reports, several formal deliverables, etc.  Be on the lookout for items within these that should be documented – like successes and key decisions with significant impact on the project. By gleaning the ingredients for your EoP Report as you go, you can save yourself a lot of time going back months (maybe years) to find when a key milestone was reached, or who made a key decision and why.

Keep your entries as succinct as possible and include only what is truly relevant.  Maintain a “whole project” perspective, be objective, and think “executive summary” to weed out unnecessary details.  If you’re pressed for time, simply copy and paste important content into your EoP Report file.  If it eventually needs to look good, you can pretty it up later.  The immediate goal is to catch content and put it in one place under the appropriate heading.

Sounds nice, but “I don’t have time to do this”

We all feel like we have bigger fish to fry. It takes some time to do this documentation – but probably less than you think.  What I’m proposing here is for you to invest a little time now to proactively save time in the future.  Otherwise, when a stakeholder – particularly the executive you answer to for the project – comes to you and says he/she needs a status report for the board meeting in an hour, or a “lessons learned” report to share with another team undertaking a similar project, or any other kind of report, you will be forced to make the time to prepare it.  But given the short amount of time available, will you be able to find all the information you need?  Will you inadvertently leave out some important facts?  And, what new project work will you have to postpone in order to create the requested report?

Conclusion

As business consultants, project managers, and business analysts, we already know the importance of project documentation and communication with stakeholders.  But often, we are caught up in the details of the day.  Writing an EoP Report as your project progresses is one way to regularly bring your focus back to the big picture and the end goal, enabling you to “course correct” and guide your team to success.

Additionally, being prepared with project information has value in enabling faster and easier ad hoc reporting, which in turn, can help inform the planning of new projects, solve problems with other projects, save money, or create new efficiencies.  The cherry on top is that your work can be remembered by sharing your EoP Report with stakeholders who can use it for knowledge transfer to their successors.

A quick cost-benefit analysis reveals relatively low cost (time) and potentially a very high benefit from writing your End of Project Report as you go.  I wish you success in all your projects! If your business could benefit from support with project management, change management, process improvement, business analysis, or general business consulting, please contact Momentum, Inc.

Written by Douglas Cook

Douglas Cook is one of the experienced business consultants at Momentum, Inc.  Doug credits his winding career path as an invaluable source of experiences and perspectives he draws on to tackle business problems.  Starting as a musician touring the world, he moved to running music festivals in the US and Canada, then to serving as IT manager at a healthcare consulting firm where he got into data analysis and Medicaid policy, eventually joining Momentum, Inc., as a business consultant and Medicaid SME.  Currently, Doug serves on a team that supports special projects at the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services.