In the post, Planning for 2018 year end, it covered the steps to take to ensure you communicate all of the good progress for the year. A lot can happen in the year and you want the sponsor and stakeholders to remember all of the good work in Q1, Q2 and Q3 not just Q4 that is fresh in their mind.
This is important as most organisations conduct their performance reviews near the end of the year. Therefore, you want to make sure that all of your good work is remembered.
It is a good idea to prepare a year end report (see post Simple guide to creating a year end report). However, there is a risk that the report will not be fully read. Therefore, it is a good idea to include a summary of achievements in the final Project SteerCo or PMO meeting of the year.
The SteerCo should contain a number of core pages used to update stakeholders, including a high-level plan of significant milestones. So, it is only natural to show this view indicating the milestones that have been completed.
A very visually powerful message.
However, sometimes the true benefit can not be fully understood from the milestone name. This is where it is a good idea to compliment this with a summary of each of milestones and the outcome achieved.
Objective
To communicate what has been achieved by the project over the year, the benefits achieved and how this compares with what was planned for the year. Unfortunately, not all milestones and / or benefits will have been achieved.
Format
Most SteerCo’s will be in the form of presentation. Therefore, the content should follow the same format. It is important to utilise slides that regularly appear in the pack i.e. the milestone plan.
Minimum Content
As a SteerCo typically is made up of senior management, you should keep the number of slides to a minimum and include:
Executive summary – clearly communicates overall achievements if no other slide is read
Milestone Plan – single page view of timeline and status of milestones
Deliverables – what milestones have been delivered and outcome /benefit
These should allow the information to be communicated.
You can also include the full report in the appendix or a separate attachment when the meeting papers are published.
Free Template
If you are an existing member of PM Majik, you can download the PMO Report Template in the members area. Slides from within the report can easily be used for populating a SteerCo.
Add to Agenda
Don’t forget to add the year end summary to the agenda to ensure that you get the chance to communicate progress and take questions. It also means that the progress summary will be captured in the official minutes of the meeting.
Don’t Avoid Bad News
It is important that you are honest if items have not been achieved when they should have been. The report is a balanced view of the year. If items were not achieved, then they should be included.
Hopefully the positives far outweigh the negatives.
Summary
The end of year SteerCo offers an excellent platform to communicate achievements for the year.
It ensures that stakeholders receive the update as opposed to the risk of not reading a report that is simply emailed to them.
Using the approach outlined in the year end report will help in providing a concise, easy to understand update. One report can be created and then the content re-used including for the SteerCo.
