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Executive Summary Reports

Overview

A project Executive Summary Report is required for all Business Affairs Initiatives and SGG projects and must be prepared and circulated/announced to the executive sponsors via email distribution list on the first and fifteenth of each month. For some projects, it may be advisable to route a draft summary to business owners and IT project sponsors for their input before releasing to executive sponsors.

Process

Executive Summary Reports on all Business Affairs Initiatives and SGG projects should be made available to executives on the same schedule as the project status reports; the first and fifteenth of each month. The following is a quick template for the weekly summary announcement to be sent to the CFO (Randy Livingston) and executive-level management.

  • Address the email to: Randy Livingston and other executive-level management
  • CCs should include project sponsors (could be several), including the applicable UIT AVP(s); the Practice Area Director; and the head of the PMO
  • Body of message:

    All,

    The current executive summary for the [project name] project as of [date] is now posted at [Confluence or Google Drive hyper link location].

    Highlights

    [1 - 3 bullets of distinctive highlights from the reporting period.]

    Link to your current Google Slides status report

    Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments.

    [Your name and contact information.]

In the report itself, best practices include the following:

  1. The CFO reads these, in detail. Write with that in mind.
  2. Building on the previous point, executives don't have the time or patience to read a novel-length report, so remember to keep your updates short and to the point. You don't need to repeat all of the information in your Google Slides status reports.
  3. Spell out any acronyms on first use, per report.
  4. Avoid the use of overly technical jargon.
  5. Be sure that any external applications you reference, whether links or, e.g., JIRA widgets or Smartsheets embedded in Confluence, can actually be accessed/viewed by the intended audience. Snapshot images are fail-safe.
  6. For multi-phase projects, consider adding phase and High-Level Scope columns to the Project Condition Summary table as a reminder for Executives.
  7. For "yellow" status, be sure to explain why the project is in that condition and the agreed mitigation that the team is employing to bring the project back to "green."
  8. For "red" status, as explained in more detail in Status Tracking, be sure the Project Sponsors have already been appraised of that and agree. Again, be sure to explain why the project is in that condition and what help or change in scope, schedule, or cost the Executives can assist with to bring the project back onto an acceptable path.