CHAPTER 5

Report writing
What is a report?

A report is a document that presents the results of an investigation, project or initiative. It can
also be an in-depth analysis of a particular issue or data set. The purpose of a report is to
inform, educate and present options and recommendations for future action. Reports are an
integral element of dozens of industries, including science, healthcare, criminal justice,
business and academia. Reports typically consist of several key elements, including:

 Detailed summaries of events or activities

 Analysis of the impact of the event
 Evaluations of the facts and data
 Predictions for what may happen as a result of an event
 Recommendation for next course of action
 Conclusion

Many occupations involve writing reports as a primary responsibility. Doctors must write
medical reports that present their analyses of certain patients or cases. Police officers write
reports that outline the details of interrogations and confrontations. Project managers write
regular reports that keep their supervisors updated on how a particular project is developing.
All of these reports must be well-written, accurate and efficient.

What is a closure project report?

The Project Closure Report is the final document produced upon the completion of a project.
The report details everything to do with the project is often used by the various stakeholders
involved in the project to assess the success of the project. Besides the assessment of the
project’s success, the document is also an invaluable tool to use for identifying the best
practices to ensure that all future projects go on smoothly.

There are 8 keys steps to be followed:

1. Give The Project Overview Including A Summary Statement

The first step to writing this project closing document is to give your general overview of the
whole project and the summary statement. An overview statement is a brief description of
what the project was about. It looks at the ‘what’ side of a project. It looks at what needed to
be done during the project and how it was actually done. In addition, an overview looks into
and describes things like the Opportunity/Problem, Goal, and Objective, Success Criteria and
any risks or assumptions about the project.

On the other hand, the summary statement of the project in a Project Closure report will be
looking at the overall summary of what’s in the report. One important thing to note is the key
difference between the project overview and the summary statement. The overview is about
the project, its scope, and the activities that were done and the summary statement is about
the report itself and things contained in the report.
2. Describe The Results And Outcomes Of The Project
Before you set out to do your project, chances are, you first wrote down your key
performance and indicators and key targets. In addition to the KPI’s, another thing you
probably had was outcome targets. On this section, the goal is to look at the whole project in
relation to the Key Performance Indicators that you would have set and see the outcomes
achieved from that.

What are the project outcomes? Project outcomes refer to the level of performance or
achievement that would have occurred due to the activities of the teams on the project.
However, measuring project outcomes correctly is not an easy task. There are
three metrics that you can use to determine if your project outcomes were positive or
negative. The metrics are stakeholder satisfaction, project cost, and overall quality of the
project.

3. Describe The Project Scope and Project Schedule

This step is closely related to the above but independent in its own way when it comes to
your project closure report. Defined, the project scope is the part of a project where you
document the specific goals, deliverables, features, deadlines, and the tasks of a project. It
looks at everything that’s needed to get a project through from beginning to completion.

4. Project Performance Analysis

The project performance analysis can easily qualify as the most important step of the whole
project closure report. The performance analysis expands on step 3 and really dives deep into
the budget and compare the actual costs and schedule of the project with the set baseline. To
be effective, the performance analysis has to be subdivided into three parts namely, the Goals
and Objective Performance, the Success Criteria Performance and the Schedule and Budget
Performance.

a. Goals and Objectives Performance

Before you began the project, in the project outline, what were the set goals and objectives
for the project? What did you hope to have achieved by the end of the project? How many of
those goals have actually been achieved? In addition, how many of those have had to be
revised as the conditions on the ground changed?

The questions above are some of the key questions that should be asked when looking at the
Goals and Objectives Performance Analysis of the project.

b. Success Criteria Performance

The success Criteria is the one that deals directly with the KPI’s. One thing great project
managers do before they embark on a new project is to define success before the project
begins. The definition of success for a project can differ from one project to the next.
Therefore, you have to look at how you defined the success of your project and check to see
whether you got there.

c. Schedule Performance
Lastly, under performance analysis, you will have to look at your Schedule and Budget
Performance. On your project Scope, what were the set deadlines? Did you meet those
deadlines? If not, what were the main reasons for the failure to meet the deadlines?

In any case, the key thing would be to analyse and compare your actual performance with
your set targets.

5. Project Highlights (Important Aspects Of The Project)

The project Highlight Section looks at the highlights of the whole project throughout the
whole timeline. It usually includes high-level project information such as the requests and
any other issues that arose within the project.

Compiling the highlight report and adding it to the project closure report should not be hard.
It is recommended that you should at least make a highlight report at the end of each week
throughout the course of a project updating the different stakeholders involved in the project
of the project’s current progress.

If you have those reports, then you can just refer to them and pick the key points from each of
the weekly reports to combine them into one master report to include in your final Project
Closure Report.

6. Write And Outline The Challenges Faced And Risks

Every Project has its challenges and risks. This section will enable you to highlight all the
challenges that might have been faced throughout the course of the project. One thing about
challenges especially in relation to projects and project management is that they can be
difficult to foresee. Apart from that, no matter how carefully you plan at the inception of the
project, you can never plan around every potential challenge.

For future reference and presentation to stakeholders, you should use this section to highlight
every challenge you faced throughout the course of the project. In addition to listing down the
challenges, you should also highlight how the challenge affected other aspects of your project
including your budget and schedule.

Besides the challenges, you should also highlight the risks faced. Risks can be anything from
the team member withdraws, poor time management or even miscommunication between
members. 

7. Write About The Lessons Learned During Implementation

One source of valuable lessons for any project are the challenges. When you overcome the
challenges faced when doing a process, chances are, you will learn one or two things. Use
this section of your Project Closure Report to highlight what you learned.

The reason why it’s important to note down the lessons learned in this project closing
document is that later on when doing another project, you can always reference the report of
your previous project to look for common pitfalls and how you can avoid those pitfalls.
8. Add Recommendations Based On Lessons Learned
The final part would be writing the recommendations. Recommendations can be anything
from the proposed improvements to the maintenance schedule for the final product. In
addition when writing the lessons learned, if there are some things on the lessons that affect
the project directly, then such lessons should go with their recommendations for easy
referencing.

Conclusion
A Project Closure Report is an important document that signifies the formal project closing.
One thing to remember when working on the report is to pay attention to detail especially on
performance analysis. Paying attention to detail will help you avoid falling into the same
pitfalls in the future.

Reference:
Project Practical. (n.d). Retrieved from https://www.projectpractical.com/eight-steps-to-writing-
a-project-closure-report/