7. COMMON DOCUMENT TYPES
7.5 Progress Reports
The Progress Report is a particularly important genre used in almost all businesses and organizations to inform supervisors, associates, or clients about progress you have made on a project over a specific period of time. Periodic progress reports are common on projects that go on for several weeks, months, or longer. Whoever is responsible for (or paying for) this project wants to know whether tasks are being completed on schedule, on budget, and according to plan. If the project is not on schedule or on budget, they want to know why and what additional time and resources will be needed. If changes are needed, people need to be alerted as soon as possible.
Progress reports answer the following questions for the reader:
- How much of the work is complete?
- What part of the work is currently in progress?
- What work remains to be done?
- When and how will the remaining work be completed?
- What changes, problems or unexpected issues, if any, have arisen?
- How is the project going overall?
Purpose of a Progress Report
Progress reports have a surprisingly persuasive element: you want to reassure clients, supervisors and other interested parties that you are making progress, that the project is going smoothly, and that it will be completed by the expected date — or to give credible and reasonable explanations for why any of those might not be the case. They also offer the opportunity to do the following:
- Provide a brief look at preliminary findings or in-progress work on the project
- Give your clients or supervisors a chance to evaluate your work on the project and to suggest or request changes
- Give you a chance to discuss problems in the project and thus to forewarn the recipients, manage expectations, and request additional resources
- Establish a work schedule that will encourage you to complete the project on time.
Format of a Progress Report
Progress reports can take a variety of forms. Depending on the amount of information you need to convey, importance of the project, and the recipient, a progress report can take forms ranging from a short informal conversation to a detailed, multi-paged report. Most commonly, progress reports are delivered in the following forms:
- Memo: a short, semi-formal report to someone within your organization (typically ranges in length from 1-4 pages)
- Letter: a short, semi-formal report sent to someone outside your organization
- Formal report: a long, formal report sent to someone within or outside of your organization
- Presentation: an oral presentation given directly to the target audience.
Organizational Patterns
The recipient of a progress report wants to see what you’ve accomplished on the project, what you are working on now, what you plan to work on next, and how the project is going in general. The information is usually arranged with a focus either on time or on task, or a combination of the two:
- Focus on time: shows time period (previous, current, and future) and tasks completed or scheduled to be completed in each period. For example: Last quarter, we completed X ; this quarter, we are working on Y; next quarter, we will focus on Z.
- Focus on specific tasks: shows order of tasks (defined milestones) and progress made on each task in each time period. For example: Phases 1 & 2 are complete; phase 3 in progress, and phase 4 has yet to be started.
- Focus on larger goals: focus on the overall effect of what has been accomplished. For example: We’ve achieved a 70% participation rate so far by doing A,B, and C; we plan to do X, Y and Z to increase this rate to 90% over the next 6 months.
You should refer to established milestones or deliverables outlined in your original proposal or task specifications. Whichever organizational strategy you choose, your report will likely contain the elements described below.
1. Introduction
Review the details of your project’s purpose, scope, and activities (your reader may be supervising many projects and need a reminder about what you are working on and why). Depending on context, the introduction may also contain the following:
- date the project began; date the project is scheduled to be completed
- people or organization working on the project
- people or organization for whom the project is being done
- overview of the contents of the progress report.
2. Project status
This section (which could have sub-sections) should give the reader a clear idea of the current status of your project. It should review the work completed, work in progress, and work remaining to be done on the project, organized into sub-sections by time, task, or topic. These sections might include
- Direct reference to milestones or deliverables established in previous documents related to the project
- Timeline for when remaining work will be completed
- Any problems encountered or issues that have arisen that might affect completion, direction, requirements, or scope.
3. Conclusion
The final section provides an overall assessment of the current state of the project and its expected completion, usually reassuring the reader that all is going well and on schedule. It can also alert recipients to unexpected changes in direction or scope, or problems in the project that may require intervention or extension.
4. References section if required.
EXERCISE 7.4 Practice the Progress Report Genre
Focus on Goal: Practice giving a short progress report in an informal verbal form to a classmate. Fill them in on where you are currently at with an upcoming assignment: what work you have completed, what’s in progress, what you still need to do, and what problems you’ve encountered. Note that in this case, you are focusing on the larger goals.
Focus on Time: Create an outline for more detailed written progress report, focusing on time: Create a list all your assignments this term and break the term up into 4 time periods. Indicate which assignments need to be submitted in the each time period, and where you are currently at in this process.
Focus on Tasks: If you are working on a complex team project, do a task analysis to determine what all of the main tasks and sub-tasks are, when they need to be done, and by whom. Consider how you might present this information as a progress report to your instructor, and how you might incorporate a request for feedback or additional support.
