What’s the difference between project management and project reporting?

Some smart alec somewhere will say that project reporting is a part of project management. After all, we do project reports periodically when we’re managing projects, right? That's not what I mean

To me, someone who is project reporting spends their time telling people how the project is doing, instead of shaping how the project is doing. Someone who is project managing still needs to tell people how the project is doing, but they spend most of their time proactively dragging the project to a better place.

A Project Manager makes a project better. A Project Reporter goes through the administrative mechanics of running a project.

This nuance is significant. The very best project managers, project manage. I’m exploring some common scenarios below and show how a Project Reporter and a Project Manager deal with the scenario.

Risk Management

In our periodic risk management meetings we review the risks in-flight. Do they all have a remediation plan? Is that plan progressing? Has the likelihood or the impact of the risk changed? Do we need to escalate the risk to the governance committee? Are there any new risks that we need to log? This is the typical process that the Project Reporter goes through.

The Project Manager doesn’t check if there are new risks to be logged. New risks get logged every minute of every day as stuff happens. The Project Manager doesn’t check if the impact or likelihood of the risk has changed, because they are so attentively aware of the status of every risk, they are making that determination constantly, not at the risk meeting. The Project Manager doesn’t use the risk meeting to review in-flight risks, the Project Manager motivates, galvanises and moves the team to massive action. The Project Manager holds people to account for why the risk occurred and what we can do about it. The Project Manager runs a retrospective on every risk in real time. The Project Manager has their finger on 20 risks no one else has even thought about yet. The Project Manager is active, not passive.

Planning

Let’s assume we’re doing quarterly planning, since many of us are in institutions where that is the standard these days. A good planning meeting identifies what we want to do in the quarter ahead, checks for dependencies and the capacity for dependencies to be executed. A good planning meeting sequences the work, makes sure the work is ready to be pulled into execution and builds the visual plan for the work we’ll do in the quarter ahead. Project Reporters run great planning meetings.

Project Managers do something different. A Project Manager is not thinking of the work for the next planning cycle. A Project Manager knows that there’s a discipline (quarterly planning) that will manage that process. A Project Manager is looking ahead to the cycle after this one and thinking about what needs to be true to make that cycle the best it can be. What needs to happen now, so that the planning cycle in 6 months time succeeds. What actions do I take now, to make the planning cycle in 6 months time more effective than today’s cycle? A Project Manager does not need to plan for the quarter ahead. The plans for the quarter ahead are already built, change in real-time every day as stuff happens and are ready to “drop in” to the quarterly planning ritual with little thought. Dependencies have already been discussed with teams and capacity negotiated months ago. A Project Manager is using the planning cycle to perfect the plan for 6 months from now.

Steering Committee or Governance

It’s our monthly Steering Committee coming up next week. We’re starting to work on the content for the pack to be shared with the committee. We have various reviews of the pack scheduled and we have various team members contributing to the content. This is a reporting-heavy time, even for the Project Manager. Everyone knows the dates the drafts need to be ready. We discuss which risks and issues will be notified to Steering. This is what a typical Project Reporter does. But a Project Manager does something different.

The status of the project needs to be recorded and reported in the Steering pack. Even the Project Manager knows that. But the Project Manager doesn’t care so much about the status information. Probably doesn’t even review it. The Project Manager knows that the Steering Committee won’t care too much about the status either. Because the Project Manager is constantly updating Steering and other stakeholders, in real time as events unfold between Steering Committees. When a project has a Project Manager, the stakeholders know the project status before the project report tells them. A Project Manager uses Steering to get organisational support for things happening 6 months from now. The Project Manager uses Steering to change the standard organisational norms or processes that are hampering effective project delivery - be that the timing of funding cycles, or the excessive bureaucracy that slows down innovation, or the unwillingness of certain business areas to embrace taking a risk. The Project Manager uses Steering to tackle the endemic organisational issues that effect project delivery, not to review the current project.

Which are you?

Many people who think they are Project Managers, are not. Only when they actually see a Project Manager in motion, do they realise that there’s a difference between a Project Manager and a Project Reporter. A job title doesn’t make you a “thing”. Actions make you a “thing”. Everyone with a CEO job title is not a CEO. You can see that from the organisations that you’ve worked in. Everyone with Project Manager as a job title is not a Project Manager. Report less, Manage more.