CHAPTER 8

Reports

Objectives

On completion of this chapter, you should be able to

1. Understand the types and relevance of various reports in software projects
2. Understand various reports available in MS-Project
3. Learn how we can generate and customize reports native to ­MS-­Project

Once the baseline of a project gets set and the project execution begins the primary focus of the project manager shifts to collecting, updating, analyzing, and disseminating project information. The project status–related information has to be communicated to various project stakeholders like customers and sponsors in a project. This shall help various stakeholders to monitor and control various project tasks.

Software projects can fail for many a reason. One of the reasons can be a lack of good communication during project execution. Project reports are used to communicate the status of a project to various stakeholders. A good project-reporting system facilitates effective management decision making and also provides the ability to drill down by layer. Here is a list of important project reports that are used in big information technology projects.

1. Project Dashboard Report: Contains project metrics represented on a single page. It presents quick, meaningful, and actionable information.
2. Summary Management Report: These are prepared monthly or fortnightly and summarize the cost- and work-related information, quality issues, and so on.
3. Summary Cost Report: Prepared by consolidating cost data from several sources. It is the most challenging task to prepare this report.
4. Milestone and Upcoming Tasks (look ahead report): The milestone report helps us to understand the project status quickly and the look-ahead report gives project managers information about upcoming activities.

MS-Project Professional facilitates you to generate various reports. These can be broadly classified into two categories. One category of reports is Visual reports, which is supported by MS-Excel and MS-Visio. The other category (which has been added in the recent past) is to generate reports that are native to MS-Project. We will not discuss much about the generation of reports in MS-Excel and MS-Visio in this chapter. The discussion will be much focused on native reports of MS-Project. To generate Visual reports in MS-Excel or Visio, click on the Report Tab and Select Visual Reports from the Export Group. This will bring up the Visual Reports dialog, which can be used to select various reports, using check-boxes and different tabs as shown in Figure 8.1. When you click View in the dialog, an OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) cube file gets built and results are displayed in MS-Excel Pivot-chart or MS-Visio Pivot-table as shown in Figure 8.2. All such reports have been listed for your reference in Table 8.1.

Figure 8.1 Use visual reports dialog to select the required reports

Figure 8.2 An example of visual report

Table 8.1 Various visual reports available in MS-Project

Microsoft Excel	Microsoft Visio (available in metric and US units)
Baseline cost report Baseline work report Budget cost report Budget work report Cash flow report Earned value over time report Resource cost summary report Resource remaining work report Resource work availability report Resource work summary report	Baseline report Critical task status report Cash flow report Resource availability report Resource status report Task status report

Example Problem: Generating Native Reports and Customizing Reports

Generating Native Reports

Generating native reports does not require additional office software like MS-Excel or MS-Visio. It uses readymade templates to generate reports related to resources, costs, and so on.

Let us consider the example project that we used for earned value analysis. We have two tasks: UI Design and DB Design. The work done by two resources has been recorded. Let us see how we can generate various reports and customize reports in this chapter. For this, you copy bank_app_desn_complete.mpp from the Practice-Files/Ch08 folder to your working directory.

1. In MS-Project 2016, Click on the File Tab. Select Open and then click on the Computer and select bank_app_desn_complete.mpp from the appropriate (your working) folder. The file will open in MS-Project, showing two tasks in the Gantt Chart.
2. From the Reports tab, View Reports group, click Dashboards. From the pull-down menu, select Project Overview and you will get the project overview report, with bars indicating percentage completion as shown in Figure 8.3.

Figure 8.3 Project overview report: An example of dashboard report

This is an example of Dashboard report, which is generated at the click of the mouse.

Generating a Custom Report

We can customize available reports. However, in many situations, we may have to generate a customized report that has a mix of different data elements, charts, and tables. For this, we will continue working with the earlier example file bank_app_desn_complete.mpp.

1. On the Report tab, in the View Reports group, click New Report. Select Blank to start with a blank report. (You may display Entry Table in the Gantt Chart if required.)
2. In the Report Name dialog box that appears, enter the name that should be displayed as title at the top of the report. Enter consolidated-cost-report (Figure 8.4). Later on, you may access the customized report using Report tab, View Reports Group, Custom menu.

Figure 8.4 Enter a title for your customized report

3. At first, you will add a chart to the report. One interesting way to express the cost of this plan is a pie chart, with each task (like UI Design and DB Design) of the plan represented as a slice of the pie chart. In a large project, it can be a summary task or phase, which may be of interest. You will label each slice of the pie chart with details like the name, cost, and percentage of the total cost for further clarification. This gives you a view of the project cost breakup.

   On the Report Tools Design tab, in the Insert group, click Chart. The Insert Chart dialog box appears (see Figure 8.5). Click and select Pie from various charts available like Bar, Line. Click OK to add a pie chart.

Figure 8.5 Select a chart type and add it to the report

4. You will observe that the default pie chart does not contain the values you need. You will have to change those using the Field List pane displayed (on the right-hand side). Click on the pie chart if the pane is not displayed. In the Field List pane, in the Select Fields box, click the expand/collapse arrow next to Cost to expand the Cost field list, and then under Custom, select the Cost check-box. In the Select Fields box, under the Work fields list, under Baseline, clear (deselect) the Work check-box (as you do not want this field). You can also clear other work-related fields (say, e.g., Remaining Work) that you do not want. You will see a pie chart representing the costs of the two tasks (Figure 8.6).

Figure 8.6 Add relevant fields to display the values in the default pie chart

5. Now add data labels to the slices. (If the Chart Tools tabs are not visible, click on the pie chart.) On the Chart Tools Design tab, in the Chart Layouts group, click Add Chart Element, point to Data Labels, and then click More Data Label Options.

   The Format Data Labels pane appears on the right-hand side as shown in Figure 8.7 (ignore the Field List pane for now). Select Category Names and Percentage using the appropriate check-boxes (and leave other check-boxes as they are). Category names of slices appear. Close the Format Data Labels pane.

Figure 8.7 Use Format Data Labels pane to pick, position, and format required data labels suitably

6. Now that the Data Labels are visible and Legends are not necessary any more. You may hide the same. For that, on the Chart Tools Design tab, in the Chart Layouts group, click Add Chart Element, point to Legend, and then click None.
7. Next you will be adding a table below the chart to reflect CPI (Cost Performance Index, discussed in earlier chapters) and also the cost of the task. Initially, you will add the table with the default fields. For that, click anywhere outside of the chart to deselect it. On the Report Tools Design tab, in the Insert group, click Table. Drag the table below the pie chart (by using the cursor and holding the border) once added.
8. The table may not contain the task list (even the top-level summary tasks). Two tasks, Wall A and Wall B, have to be added. Click on the table and view the Field List Pane on the right-hand side). For that, at the Outline Level (on the lower side of the Field List Pane) use the pull-down menu and add Level 1.
9. You have to add the two fields for the table and remove fields that are not required. For that, in the Field List Pane, click on the arrow mark Date and Expand Date. Under Custom clear Start and Finish. Expand Cost and then Custom and select Cost. Similarly, expand the Number and select Custom and then CPI. You may have to clear fields like Percent Complete by selecting Custom under Number if required. With this, you have completed customizing the table (Figure 8.8). Close the Field List Pane and save the file.

Figure 8.8 Add a table with cost and CPI fields, to the custom report using the Field List Pane

10. Now you see that, under Reports tab, View Reports group, when you click the Custom, the consolidated-cost-report is available. Close the project file.

To conclude, we did take a quick look at various reports that are relevant to Information Technology projects and also the available visual reports in MS-Project. Through a guided example, we studied how to customize native reports in MS-Project.