Progress Reports

You write a progress report to inform a supervisor, associate, or customer about progress you’ve made on a project over a certain period of time. The project can be the design, construction, or repair of something, the study or research of a problem or question, or the gathering of information on a technical subject. Periodic progress reports are common on projects that go on for more than a few months. Whoever is paying for the project wants to know whether tasks are being completed on schedule and on budget. If the project is not on schedule or on budget, they want to know why and what additional costs and time will be needed. For a year-long project, for example, there are customarily three progress reports, one after three, six, and nine months.

   

Functions of Progress Reports

Progress reports have several important functions:

  • Reassure recipients that you are making progress, that the project is going smoothly, and that it will be complete by the expected date
  • Provide recipients with a brief look at some of the findings or work of the project to date
  • Give recipients a chance to evaluate your work on the project and suggest or request changes
  • Provide a chance to discuss problems in the project and thus forewarn recipients
  • Project a sense of professionalism to your work and your organization
  • Force you to establish a work schedule, so that you will complete the project on time

Format of Progress Reports

Progress reports can exist in different formats, depending on the length and importance of the project, the length of the progress report itself, and the needs or requests of the audience. You may write a short progress report in email, memo, or letter form, depending on whether the report recipient is in or outside of the organization. Emails, memos, and letters are relatively informal formats for progress reports. If your progress report is longer or needs to be relatively formal, use full report format and structure, with headings, subheadings, lists, visuals, etc. You may also be asked to do a progress report as an oral presentation to company officials or to the clients funding the project. Whatever the format, all progress reports focus on the project’s status at a certain point in time.

Project Status

Project status is the heart of the progress report. You review the work completed, work in progress, and work remaining to be done on the project, organized into sections/sub-sections by time, task, or topic. This main section explains any or all of the following:

  • How much of the work is complete
  • What part of the work is currently in progress
  • What work remains to be done, and what the timeline is for completing that work
  • What problems or unexpected situations have arisen, if any, that might affect the project’s completion, direction, requirements, or scope
  • How the project is going in general – what has worked well, and whether the project is still on its timeline
  • Reference to established milestones or deliverables outlined in your original project proposal or job specifications for the project

To report this type of information, you organize by either project tasks or report topics, along with time periods.

Time Periods

A progress report usually summarizes work within each of the three following time periods:

  • Work accomplished in the preceding period(s)
  • Work currently being performed
  • Work planned for the next period(s)

Project Tasks

Most projects are comprised of individual tasks. For example, building municipal baseball parks on city-owned land might involve the following tasks, assuming that there is already city administrative support:

  • measure community interest
  • locate suitable property
  • check legal requirements for municipal ball parks, including accessibility
  • design the park: bleachers, fencing, etc.

Report Topics

You can also organize your progress report according to the information topics that you need to report on overall for the project, the topics that will appear in the sections of the final report. For example, in a report on co-combusting municipal solid waste (MSW), you would need information on the following topics:

  • The total amount of MSW produced locally
  • The energy potential of MSW
  • Costs to modify city utilities in order to change to co-combustion

For each of these topics, you’d explain the work you have done, the work you are currently doing, and the work you have planned.

sample organizational strategies for progress reports

The following table shows how you might combine time periods with either project tasks or report topics in different ways.  Note that you can use time, tasks, or topics as the main organizational structure. The main structure is listed first in the heading for each example.

 

sample short progress report

The text of this memo uses a time/task organization. Note that even though this is a relatively informal memo, the writer follows standard conventions for memo format.

 

Smith Drains, Inc.
13 Lowpoint Road
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
smithdrains.com
518-888-0000

 

TO:                        Harold Jones
FROM:                  Sally Smith
SUBJECT:             2nd Progress Report, Drainange System
DATE:                   May 12, 20XX

 

During this period, we have continued to work on problems associated with the brine drainage tubes.

Previous period. After minor adjustments during a month of operation, the drainage tubes and the counterwasher have performed better but still not completely satisfactorily. The screen sections of these tubes, as you know, are located at variable distances along the height of the washer.

Current period. The screen portion of the brine drainage tubes have been moved to within 5 feet of the top of the pack. So far, no change in counterwasher performance has been observed. Production statistics at the end of this month (February) should give us a clearer idea of the effect of this modification.

Next period. Depending on the continued performance of the screen in its current position in relation to the top of the pack, we may move the screen to within 3 feet of the top of the pack in the next period of testing. Although the wash ratio was greater with greater screen height, the washing efficiency seems to remain relatively constant; the production vs. compressor KW data for all screen locations so far has seemed to follow the same linear curve.

 

Formal Progress Reports

Formal progress reports add sections to the project status: introduction, project description, conclusion.

Introduction

The introduction briefly reviews the purpose, scope, and activities of the project, to aid recipients who are unfamiliar with the project, who do not remember certain details, or who want to double-check your approach to the project. The introduction may contain the following:

  • Purpose/objectives and scope of the project
  • 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
  • Brief overview/summary of the project status

Project Description

The project description provides fuller detail about the project and its history. You may incorporate the project description into the introduction, or you may make it into a separate section of the project report if the project is relatively lengthy or complex, requiring more explanation than you can provide in a short introduction.

Conclusion

Since this is a progress report, conclusions usually consist of 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. The conclusion can also alert recipients to unexpected changes in direction or scope, or problems in the project that may require intervention.

Sample Progress Reports