97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know

Chapter 92. Developers Hate Status Reports, Managers Love Them

PMP. Pavel Simsa

WORKING IN THE BIGGEST SOFTWARE COMPANY IN THE WORLD, I can attest that developers hate status reports. It makes them spend hours each week writing down what seems to them to be obvious, redundant information.

For you as a software project manager, however, this is data used to get a bigger picture of your project progress, and then passed on to upper management. On average, a project manager helms five to seven projects at a time. Both you and your senior management team need you to collect and pass on this project data.

Here are tips to make developers less resistant to sending their "whatever-frequency-you-need" status reports:

• Help them understand why this report is important to other team members or other departments that need to plan based on team progress. People work harder to help their peers.

• If the project progress was slow, know what the team was doing. Was it learning a new tool or language? Were there unexpected problems and challenges this week? When you compile the status reports, add the explanatory information to help others interpret the numbers.

• Give proper recognition. If you know what the problems and challenges were, you'll be able to make sure that no significant achievement is masked by the progress report metrics. For those who have made helpful, unplanned contributions, offer a latte ...