research progress report writing

Research Progress Report

Progress reports . You heard of them, you may even think they are useful or useless. You may also think that as a student, you don’t have to write them. However, this is not always the case. A research progress report is nothing short as one of the necessary reports you need to make. When it comes to writing reports, a lot of students may feel the need to complain due to the fact that writing reports can be boring or simply a waste of time. What they don’t know is that giving a report is useful for their professors, especially when it is used as a way to know the progress of their performance, school projects, or research activities. So take a good look at these examples to help you out with your research progress report.

10+ Research Progress Report Examples

1. research progress report template.

• Google Docs

2. Summer Stipend Research Progress Report

Size: 31 KB

3. Biomedical Research Progress Report

Size: 150 KB

4. Research Performance Progress Report

Size: 76 KB

5. Weekly Research Progress Report

Size: 103 KB

6. Printable Research Progress Report

Size: 681 KB

7. Research Fellow Progress Report

8. Human Research Progress Report

Size: 117 KB

9. Editable Research Progress Report

Size: 113 KB

10. Candidate Research Progress Report

Size: 290 KB

11. Annual Research Progress Report

What Is a Research Progress Report?

The progress of your research . Whether that progress will be a lot or not as much. The report consists of the detailed progress you give to your superior or for students’ cases to their professors on how their research assignment or research project is going. In addition to that, a research progress report not only consists of the exact progress, but it also consists of what you have been doing, how the research is going, and of course the information you are going to be giving or the evidence whether positive or negative. Everything is written there. A research progress report is a document that clearly states what it is supposed to state.

How to Write a Research Progress Report?

To write a research progress report , there are a lot of ways to do so. Regardless of how you plan it out, draft it out and finalize it, there are still some things you have to think about when you want to proceed. Here are some tips that will get you started with your research progress report.

1. Write the Title of Your Report

The title of your report should at least be about what your research is about. It does not have to be something too fancy that the whole point of the report is lost or too obvious that would make the report redundant.

2. State the Achievements That Have Been Done

Any achievement that has been done or recorded should be written down, no matter how minuscule or large these achievements are. Progress is progress and it should also be recorded.

3. State the Name of the Researchers

The researchers names should also at least be a part of the report, especially if it is a group research. It is always best to add the names of the people involved in helping you with the progress of your report or the progress of your research. Give them some credit.

4. Give the Expected Publication for the Research

There are some who may be asking for the expected publication of your research . If this were the case, at least give the expected date of the research; however, as for the report, when you are done writing it, you should immediately check if you have everything written for it to be presentable.

5. Add the Statistics and Evidence to Support Your Report

The statistics and evidence to support your report should also be present. The reason for having to add evidence for a progress report is to show your professors or your superiors enough to compare the previous progress reports to the current report, regardless if there is any progress or the lack of it.

What is a research progress report?

A research progress report is a document that summarizes the progress of a research made by students. In order for their professors to know the exact ongoing of their research, the students are tasked to write about what is going on with their report and how far are they to achieving it.

Are there other ways to write a research progress report?

There are other ways, but the most common is writing it in an essay form. Of course, you can also fill out a form that states a research progress report form. But it is usual to present it in paragraph form in order for your professors to see the details of the statistics given.

Is a research progress report short or long?

A general research progress report is expected to be a page long. However, this would depend on how much progress you have made throughout your research and how much reports you have done in order to compare from your previous ones.

We are taught to write progress reports while we are still in school, so when we are out there in the real world, we are able to understand the reason and the purpose of writing these kinds of reports. A research progress report is simply just another kind of progress report that we are taught to write. It helps your teachers know where your progress is at the moment and how long are they going to expect your research project to be completed.

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Progress Report: How to Write, Structure, and Make Project Progress Visually Attractive

Picture this: Days or weeks into a project, your supervisor asks for a progress report.

Depending on your experience with writing progress reports, you might respond with readiness, anxiety, or confusion. Where do you begin? How do you know you’ve created a satisfactory or even amazing final report? Fear not—the expert team here at Piktochart is here to help.

In this progress reporting guide, we’ll not only give you top tips on how to write a successful report but additionally provide you with progress report templates and checklists to keep you focused on the important stuff. We begin, of course, with the all-important question anyone from a newbie to even a seasoned professional might have: “What is a progress report?”

Table of contents:

What is a progress report, why is a progress report important.

• How to write a progress report
• How to structure a progress report
• Free progress report templates you can edit right away

Progress report checklist

In case you prefer watching over reading, feel free to check out the video summary of this blog post:

A progress report is exactly what it sounds like—a document using simple and straightforward language that explains in detail what has been achieved and what else is needed for project completion. Essentially this document is a status update before the final report, outlining tasks completed by a team member, project manager, or team, along with what else needs to be done.

W hether you need to provide daily progress reports or even quarterly progress reports, this asset outlines the activities you’ve carried out, the tasks you’ve completed, and the milestones you’ve reached vis-à-vis your project plan .

Depending on the scope and complexity of the project, you might need to give a progress report weekly or monthly or for every 25% project milestone.

In terms of audience, a progress report is typically written for a supervisor, colleague, or client. Progress reports can be written from the perspective of one person as well as an entire team or department.

Throughout your career, you’re likely to be creating more reports than you can count (challenge for you: count them and find how many resources you’re using!).

Perhaps you find yourself spending more time crunching data and plugging numbers into graphs than actually working.

Reports don’t have to be as time-consuming as they often are. Progress report templates are time-savers! Get your free Piktochart account so you can follow along as we share more templates below.

We also tapped into the brilliance of Kevan Lee of Buffer in this interactive content experience to help you with your progress report projects.

Dive right in here, and learn some reporting hacks from Kevan .

Sometimes it might feel like writing about your progress in detail is redundant, especially when you’ve been regularly communicating with your supervisor, teammates, and client throughout the course of the project. Like any project manager, you probably think there are more important things to work on.

But this type of professional report is actually quite useful for several reasons.

1. It gets everyone on the same page

Each person who receives a copy of the report will know what has been accomplished and what is remaining. This prevents confusion about what has been or has yet to be done. Additionally, it provides proof and data about the respective project that can be cited and sourced if and when questions arise in the future.

2. Writing progress reports facilitates collaboration

This is especially important when different teams or departments work together. Knowing what another team is prioritizing helps prevent working in silos and also reduces task redundancy. Additionally, progress reporting helps a team identify areas where it can offer help or collaborate with others.

When teams can track progress on where other teams are on the project timeline, project managers get a better idea of the current status. They can reassign resources to make sure everyone is on track to hit the deadline for the current project, which can be tricky if you’re managing remote teams .

If you’d like to learn more about how you can work together with your team on a report, sign up for a free Piktochart account and try our online report maker .

3. It improves transparency and accountability by providing a paper trail

When you submit your report, you’ve placed on record that you’ve accomplished a task or explained why your results were different than expected. Once the document has been accepted, it becomes part of the project’s official documentation.

So, just in case someone accuses you in the future of failing to accomplish a task or not reporting a problem, you can point to the progress report as proof that you did so.

On the flip side, if your project ever gets nominated for an award, you can be sure validators will come seeking documents that explain how the entire thing was accomplished.

4. It improves project evaluation and review

Next time you plan for a project, your team can examine documents, including progress reports, of previous projects to find out what was done right, what went wrong, and what can be improved.

Previous reports can shed light on systemic issues, loopholes, and other causes of delay or failure—both internal and external—that must be avoided or resolved.

5. It provides insights for future planning

When the supervisor knows what tasks have been accomplished, he or she can focus on monitoring progress toward the next stages of the project.

When a report shows that delays have occurred, the supervisor is able to investigate the problems that hindered progress and take steps to prevent them from happening again in the future.

The supervisor will also be able to adjust the project timeline if absolutely needed or instruct teams to double down.

Ultimately, all the valuable insights from the project documentation can increase the chance of success for future projects.

Here is a progress report format example:

How to write progress report s

Have you ever found yourself stuck tapping your pen or staring at a blinking cursor, unable to begin writing?

Writer’s block is not an unusual experience when creating progress reports, especially for those whose jobs typically don’t involve drafting a long document or creating a formal report.

One reason people may find it difficult to write these reports is the thought that they’re not ‘writers.’ Yet, this is simply a negative mindset.

Reports don’t require sophisticated language—in fact, the simpler, the better.

Here are some writing tips on progress reporting:

“Piktochart is my go-to tool when I’m looking for a way to summarize data that is easy for our upper management to review. Piktochart provides me with the tools to display data in a creative, visually appealing way.” – Erica Barto, Selection, Testing & Assessment Specialist at Valero Energy Corporation Create a report, presentation, infographic, or other visuals online with Piktochart. You don’t need any graphic design experience to make professional visual content. Sign up for free .

1. Think of it as a Q&A

Before you start worrying about your reporting frequency and whether you should provide monthly reports or weekly reports, take a step back and focus on the purpose of the report itself.

In essence, the reporting process comes down to Q&A; you’re answering key questions about your progress. Imagine your manager, colleagues, or client asking you their most important questions, and you’re simply providing them with answers on the project status.

For example, let’s say that you’re organizing a weekend fair with food stalls and music and that you’re put in charge of food concessions.

The project plan might require you to have secured letters of intent (LOI) from at least 10 businesses by the end of the first month.

Your progress report would then outline the companies or entrepreneurs who have sent LOIs, including a description of their businesses and plans for their food stalls. If talks are in progress with other businesses that haven’t yet sent LOIs, you can include that and explain when they’re expected to send in their letters.

On the other hand, if you haven’t met your target, you’d have to explain why but also narrate the efforts you have exerted and the expected timeline for achieving the desired results.

2 . Use simple and straightforward language

This doesn’t mean you can’t use technical jargon.

For example, if you’re in the construction business, you don’t have to avoid using terms like “tender” or “variation” or “risk management.”

But otherwise, speak plainly. Use clear and concise language.

One misconception in business writing is that complexity impresses. In truth, it only causes confusion. Fact is, being able to speak plainly about your subject indicates that you understand your subject matter inside out.

Let’s get specific. One thing that makes business documents dreary is the transformation of verbs into nouns—just like I did there.

If we had to rephrase that to keep the verb, we’d write, “transforming verbs into nouns.” It sounds simpler and gets to the point.

3 . Avoid using the passive voice where possible

Sometimes, you can’t avoid using the passive voice in formal documents that prohibit the first-person point-of-view. But when done well, it helps to make your progress reports more relatable.

Going back to the food concession example, a passive sentence would read: “Research on potential food concessionaires was carried out.”

To make that sentence active, give it an actor (which is the team in this case), as in: “The team researched on potential food concessionaires.”

4. Be specific

A study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience found that when you use concrete words, you tend to engage both the left and right parts of the brain, while the right region tends to remain unstimulated by abstract words.

While the jury is still out on exactly how word meanings are represented in the mind, we can agree that the phrase “a merry sound” doesn’t stir the imagination as much as “tinkling bells”.

“A hot day” doesn’t activate visual imagery as much as “a melting popsicle” does. When a reader’s mind is stimulated by words, it’s less likely to drift off.

Taking the previous example, “researched on potential food concessionaires” doesn’t evoke a visual image. Meanwhile, “built a list of 50 potential food concessionaires” is more concrete, especially when you add details of what food items might be sold.

5. Explain jargon if needed

This depends on who will be reading your progress reports, and if you’re using very specialized jargon that only members of your team would be familiar with.

For example, in a report written by a construction team addressed to the project manager , construction jargon could be used as the recipient obviously understands it.

6. Spell out acronyms when they first occur in the document

Don’t assume that every single person reading the report will understand all the acronyms you use without you spelling them out.

For instance, in construction work, SWMS should first be spelled out as “safe work method statement”. ‘Pre-starts’ should be spelled out as ‘pre-start checks’. So in your report, it would look like this: “safe work method statement (SWMS)”, then all subsequent references are free to just be SWMS.

7. Stick to facts

Avoid providing an opinion, unless it’s part of the project.

For instance, your task might be to analyze data and offer your interpretation and prediction. In that case, you can offer your speculation and point of view, as long as you have evidence to back you up.

8. Use graphics to supplement the text

Avoid writing down a long series of numbers in a sentence. Try using different types of graphs , tables or charts, especially when dealing with a series of numbers.

Here at Piktochart, we have many progress report templates, and the hiring progress report below is a great example.

When using graphs or charts, try out several types to determine which ones best present your data. You might use a bar graph , pie chart , line graph , or even scatter plot . When doing so, though, spend time distinguishing different data sets from the others by using labels and colors.

Don’t worry if this sounds daunting—there are plenty of software that can help you visualize data , including the most basic examples, MS Excel and Numbers for Mac.

How to structure progress report s

You may still be wondering about the exact process of how to write a progress report. Armed with all of these practical tips, how do you put the report together?

First, it depends on the type of report, as well as the intended reader. A progress report may be written daily, weekly, or monthly. It may be written for an individual or a team.

As you’ll see in the examples below, the main parts of a progress report are:

1. Introduction

This part provides an overview of the contents of the progress report. It’s best to write this after you’ve completed all the other parts of the report. That way, you’ll be able to provide an accurate summary.

Keep it short and simple. One or two paragraphs will do.

2. Accomplishments

Numbers and details are your friends, especially when writing this section of the progress report. The accomplishments you write should correspond to your goals.

What were your goals for the period covered by the report?

This could be a goal for the day, week, month, or quarter. On the other hand, it could be a team goal, too.

Be concrete when writing goals. For instance:

Avoid providing too much detailed information. The simpler this section is, the easier it is for stakeholders and the project team to see the project priorities.

4. Roadblocks

Explain what situations, if any, prevented you from achieving your goals, or may have hindered the project’s progress.

But don’t stop there. Be proactive and present an action plan and timeline for resolving the roadblocks. Include details, such as funds, materials, and human resources you may need to implement the solution.

Progress reporting templates you can edit right away

To guide you better, here are progress report template examples that are visually attractive and highly readable.

These templates are available if you sign up for a free Piktochart account . Once you log in, use any of the templates below and edit the elements and text to make it your own.

1. Daily progress report s

A daily progress report includes your goals for the day, as well as your accomplishments the previous day. It also explains challenges encountered in performing tasks and achieving goals.

Another section under the daily report is ‘lessons learned’. These need to be directly related to the day’s tasks and challenges, as well as to the previous day’s accomplishments.

2. Weekly progress report

Weekly progress reports provide a week-by-week breakdown of what has been accomplished and what tasks remain to be completed.

Just like a daily report, a weekly progress report may include challenges and lessons learned. Examples are included in the templates below.

To get a better idea of this, let’s go back to the events example:

• Many potential vendors were attending a week-long industry convention; couldn’t book meetings.
• Potential vendors didn’t read the entire email.

Lessons Learned

• Consider industry events when planning a timeline for contacting clients
• Introductory emails must be short and have readable formatting

3. Monthly progress report ing

A monthly report is necessary for projects with longer durations. The report may provide both monthly and quarterly data on project progress.

4. Team progress report s

Team progress reports provide information on both team and individual milestones and progress status. Now this one is more complicated, simply because it involves several people who may have worked on different tasks.

It’s not enough to just let one person make the report. Of course, one person can do the typing, but everyone must provide input and feedback.

One way to keep a record of different team members’ input is to keep track of edits they have made.

To do this, simply enable tracking of changes on a Word document, or on Pages for Mac users. When working on a collaborative tool like Google Docs , click the pencil icon on the top-right part of the window, and choose “Edits become suggestions” on the drop-down menu. Here’s what that looks like:

On the other hand, team members can insert comments or questions. Again, you can do this easily on a Word document, as well as on software that let you comment on shared documents, like Google Docs and Piktochart .

Here’s what it looks like in Piktochart (learn more about this feature in our guide to annotated comments for teams ):

Here’s one example of Piktochart’s many team project report templates .

One last thing… You’ve finally finished typing up your report—breathe a sigh of relief, but don’t hit ‘send’ just yet.

Go over it at least once (better to do it more than once, especially if it’s a team report). Re-read the article, edit the content as needed, then ask a teammate to proofread with a fresh pair of eyes.

Finish your progress report on time

Be more accountable and efficient with your progress reports using Piktochart’s professional-looking and editable progress report templates.

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Home » Research Report – Example, Writing Guide and Types

Research Report – Example, Writing Guide and Types

Table of Contents

Research Report

Definition:

Research Report is a written document that presents the results of a research project or study, including the research question, methodology, results, and conclusions, in a clear and objective manner.

The purpose of a research report is to communicate the findings of the research to the intended audience, which could be other researchers, stakeholders, or the general public.

Components of Research Report

Components of Research Report are as follows:

Introduction

The introduction sets the stage for the research report and provides a brief overview of the research question or problem being investigated. It should include a clear statement of the purpose of the study and its significance or relevance to the field of research. It may also provide background information or a literature review to help contextualize the research.

Literature Review

The literature review provides a critical analysis and synthesis of the existing research and scholarship relevant to the research question or problem. It should identify the gaps, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the literature and show how the current study addresses these issues. The literature review also establishes the theoretical framework or conceptual model that guides the research.

Methodology

The methodology section describes the research design, methods, and procedures used to collect and analyze data. It should include information on the sample or participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedures, and data analysis techniques. The methodology should be clear and detailed enough to allow other researchers to replicate the study.

The results section presents the findings of the study in a clear and objective manner. It should provide a detailed description of the data and statistics used to answer the research question or test the hypothesis. Tables, graphs, and figures may be included to help visualize the data and illustrate the key findings.

The discussion section interprets the results of the study and explains their significance or relevance to the research question or problem. It should also compare the current findings with those of previous studies and identify the implications for future research or practice. The discussion should be based on the results presented in the previous section and should avoid speculation or unfounded conclusions.

The conclusion summarizes the key findings of the study and restates the main argument or thesis presented in the introduction. It should also provide a brief overview of the contributions of the study to the field of research and the implications for practice or policy.

The references section lists all the sources cited in the research report, following a specific citation style, such as APA or MLA.

The appendices section includes any additional material, such as data tables, figures, or instruments used in the study, that could not be included in the main text due to space limitations.

Types of Research Report

Types of Research Report are as follows:

Thesis is a type of research report. A thesis is a long-form research document that presents the findings and conclusions of an original research study conducted by a student as part of a graduate or postgraduate program. It is typically written by a student pursuing a higher degree, such as a Master’s or Doctoral degree, although it can also be written by researchers or scholars in other fields.

Research Paper

Research paper is a type of research report. A research paper is a document that presents the results of a research study or investigation. Research papers can be written in a variety of fields, including science, social science, humanities, and business. They typically follow a standard format that includes an introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion sections.

Technical Report

A technical report is a detailed report that provides information about a specific technical or scientific problem or project. Technical reports are often used in engineering, science, and other technical fields to document research and development work.

Progress Report

A progress report provides an update on the progress of a research project or program over a specific period of time. Progress reports are typically used to communicate the status of a project to stakeholders, funders, or project managers.

Feasibility Report

A feasibility report assesses the feasibility of a proposed project or plan, providing an analysis of the potential risks, benefits, and costs associated with the project. Feasibility reports are often used in business, engineering, and other fields to determine the viability of a project before it is undertaken.

Field Report

A field report documents observations and findings from fieldwork, which is research conducted in the natural environment or setting. Field reports are often used in anthropology, ecology, and other social and natural sciences.

Experimental Report

An experimental report documents the results of a scientific experiment, including the hypothesis, methods, results, and conclusions. Experimental reports are often used in biology, chemistry, and other sciences to communicate the results of laboratory experiments.

Case Study Report

A case study report provides an in-depth analysis of a specific case or situation, often used in psychology, social work, and other fields to document and understand complex cases or phenomena.

Literature Review Report

A literature review report synthesizes and summarizes existing research on a specific topic, providing an overview of the current state of knowledge on the subject. Literature review reports are often used in social sciences, education, and other fields to identify gaps in the literature and guide future research.

Research Report Example

Following is a Research Report Example sample for Students:

Title: The Impact of Social Media on Academic Performance among High School Students

This study aims to investigate the relationship between social media use and academic performance among high school students. The study utilized a quantitative research design, which involved a survey questionnaire administered to a sample of 200 high school students. The findings indicate that there is a negative correlation between social media use and academic performance, suggesting that excessive social media use can lead to poor academic performance among high school students. The results of this study have important implications for educators, parents, and policymakers, as they highlight the need for strategies that can help students balance their social media use and academic responsibilities.

Introduction:

Social media has become an integral part of the lives of high school students. With the widespread use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, students can connect with friends, share photos and videos, and engage in discussions on a range of topics. While social media offers many benefits, concerns have been raised about its impact on academic performance. Many studies have found a negative correlation between social media use and academic performance among high school students (Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010; Paul, Baker, & Cochran, 2012).

Given the growing importance of social media in the lives of high school students, it is important to investigate its impact on academic performance. This study aims to address this gap by examining the relationship between social media use and academic performance among high school students.

Methodology:

The study utilized a quantitative research design, which involved a survey questionnaire administered to a sample of 200 high school students. The questionnaire was developed based on previous studies and was designed to measure the frequency and duration of social media use, as well as academic performance.

The participants were selected using a convenience sampling technique, and the survey questionnaire was distributed in the classroom during regular school hours. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlation analysis.

The findings indicate that the majority of high school students use social media platforms on a daily basis, with Facebook being the most popular platform. The results also show a negative correlation between social media use and academic performance, suggesting that excessive social media use can lead to poor academic performance among high school students.

Discussion:

The results of this study have important implications for educators, parents, and policymakers. The negative correlation between social media use and academic performance suggests that strategies should be put in place to help students balance their social media use and academic responsibilities. For example, educators could incorporate social media into their teaching strategies to engage students and enhance learning. Parents could limit their children’s social media use and encourage them to prioritize their academic responsibilities. Policymakers could develop guidelines and policies to regulate social media use among high school students.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, this study provides evidence of the negative impact of social media on academic performance among high school students. The findings highlight the need for strategies that can help students balance their social media use and academic responsibilities. Further research is needed to explore the specific mechanisms by which social media use affects academic performance and to develop effective strategies for addressing this issue.

Limitations:

One limitation of this study is the use of convenience sampling, which limits the generalizability of the findings to other populations. Future studies should use random sampling techniques to increase the representativeness of the sample. Another limitation is the use of self-reported measures, which may be subject to social desirability bias. Future studies could use objective measures of social media use and academic performance, such as tracking software and school records.

Implications:

The findings of this study have important implications for educators, parents, and policymakers. Educators could incorporate social media into their teaching strategies to engage students and enhance learning. For example, teachers could use social media platforms to share relevant educational resources and facilitate online discussions. Parents could limit their children’s social media use and encourage them to prioritize their academic responsibilities. They could also engage in open communication with their children to understand their social media use and its impact on their academic performance. Policymakers could develop guidelines and policies to regulate social media use among high school students. For example, schools could implement social media policies that restrict access during class time and encourage responsible use.

References:

• Kirschner, P. A., & Karpinski, A. C. (2010). Facebook® and academic performance. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(6), 1237-1245.
• Paul, J. A., Baker, H. M., & Cochran, J. D. (2012). Effect of online social networking on student academic performance. Journal of the Research Center for Educational Technology, 8(1), 1-19.
• Pantic, I. (2014). Online social networking and mental health. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 17(10), 652-657.
• Rosen, L. D., Carrier, L. M., & Cheever, N. A. (2013). Facebook and texting made me do it: Media-induced task-switching while studying. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(3), 948-958.

Note*: Above mention, Example is just a sample for the students’ guide. Do not directly copy and paste as your College or University assignment. Kindly do some research and Write your own.

Applications of Research Report

Research reports have many applications, including:

• Communicating research findings: The primary application of a research report is to communicate the results of a study to other researchers, stakeholders, or the general public. The report serves as a way to share new knowledge, insights, and discoveries with others in the field.
• Informing policy and practice : Research reports can inform policy and practice by providing evidence-based recommendations for decision-makers. For example, a research report on the effectiveness of a new drug could inform regulatory agencies in their decision-making process.
• Supporting further research: Research reports can provide a foundation for further research in a particular area. Other researchers may use the findings and methodology of a report to develop new research questions or to build on existing research.
• Evaluating programs and interventions : Research reports can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of programs and interventions in achieving their intended outcomes. For example, a research report on a new educational program could provide evidence of its impact on student performance.
• Demonstrating impact : Research reports can be used to demonstrate the impact of research funding or to evaluate the success of research projects. By presenting the findings and outcomes of a study, research reports can show the value of research to funders and stakeholders.
• Enhancing professional development : Research reports can be used to enhance professional development by providing a source of information and learning for researchers and practitioners in a particular field. For example, a research report on a new teaching methodology could provide insights and ideas for educators to incorporate into their own practice.

How to write Research Report

Here are some steps you can follow to write a research report:

• Identify the research question: The first step in writing a research report is to identify your research question. This will help you focus your research and organize your findings.
• Conduct research : Once you have identified your research question, you will need to conduct research to gather relevant data and information. This can involve conducting experiments, reviewing literature, or analyzing data.
• Organize your findings: Once you have gathered all of your data, you will need to organize your findings in a way that is clear and understandable. This can involve creating tables, graphs, or charts to illustrate your results.
• Write the report: Once you have organized your findings, you can begin writing the report. Start with an introduction that provides background information and explains the purpose of your research. Next, provide a detailed description of your research methods and findings. Finally, summarize your results and draw conclusions based on your findings.
• Proofread and edit: After you have written your report, be sure to proofread and edit it carefully. Check for grammar and spelling errors, and make sure that your report is well-organized and easy to read.
• Include a reference list: Be sure to include a list of references that you used in your research. This will give credit to your sources and allow readers to further explore the topic if they choose.
• Format your report: Finally, format your report according to the guidelines provided by your instructor or organization. This may include formatting requirements for headings, margins, fonts, and spacing.

Purpose of Research Report

The purpose of a research report is to communicate the results of a research study to a specific audience, such as peers in the same field, stakeholders, or the general public. The report provides a detailed description of the research methods, findings, and conclusions.

Some common purposes of a research report include:

• Sharing knowledge: A research report allows researchers to share their findings and knowledge with others in their field. This helps to advance the field and improve the understanding of a particular topic.
• Identifying trends: A research report can identify trends and patterns in data, which can help guide future research and inform decision-making.
• Addressing problems: A research report can provide insights into problems or issues and suggest solutions or recommendations for addressing them.
• Evaluating programs or interventions : A research report can evaluate the effectiveness of programs or interventions, which can inform decision-making about whether to continue, modify, or discontinue them.
• Meeting regulatory requirements: In some fields, research reports are required to meet regulatory requirements, such as in the case of drug trials or environmental impact studies.

When to Write Research Report

A research report should be written after completing the research study. This includes collecting data, analyzing the results, and drawing conclusions based on the findings. Once the research is complete, the report should be written in a timely manner while the information is still fresh in the researcher’s mind.

In academic settings, research reports are often required as part of coursework or as part of a thesis or dissertation. In this case, the report should be written according to the guidelines provided by the instructor or institution.

In other settings, such as in industry or government, research reports may be required to inform decision-making or to comply with regulatory requirements. In these cases, the report should be written as soon as possible after the research is completed in order to inform decision-making in a timely manner.

Overall, the timing of when to write a research report depends on the purpose of the research, the expectations of the audience, and any regulatory requirements that need to be met. However, it is important to complete the report in a timely manner while the information is still fresh in the researcher’s mind.

Characteristics of Research Report

There are several characteristics of a research report that distinguish it from other types of writing. These characteristics include:

• Objective: A research report should be written in an objective and unbiased manner. It should present the facts and findings of the research study without any personal opinions or biases.
• Systematic: A research report should be written in a systematic manner. It should follow a clear and logical structure, and the information should be presented in a way that is easy to understand and follow.
• Detailed: A research report should be detailed and comprehensive. It should provide a thorough description of the research methods, results, and conclusions.
• Accurate : A research report should be accurate and based on sound research methods. The findings and conclusions should be supported by data and evidence.
• Organized: A research report should be well-organized. It should include headings and subheadings to help the reader navigate the report and understand the main points.
• Clear and concise: A research report should be written in clear and concise language. The information should be presented in a way that is easy to understand, and unnecessary jargon should be avoided.
• Citations and references: A research report should include citations and references to support the findings and conclusions. This helps to give credit to other researchers and to provide readers with the opportunity to further explore the topic.

Advantages of Research Report

Research reports have several advantages, including:

• Communicating research findings: Research reports allow researchers to communicate their findings to a wider audience, including other researchers, stakeholders, and the general public. This helps to disseminate knowledge and advance the understanding of a particular topic.
• Providing evidence for decision-making : Research reports can provide evidence to inform decision-making, such as in the case of policy-making, program planning, or product development. The findings and conclusions can help guide decisions and improve outcomes.
• Supporting further research: Research reports can provide a foundation for further research on a particular topic. Other researchers can build on the findings and conclusions of the report, which can lead to further discoveries and advancements in the field.
• Demonstrating expertise: Research reports can demonstrate the expertise of the researchers and their ability to conduct rigorous and high-quality research. This can be important for securing funding, promotions, and other professional opportunities.
• Meeting regulatory requirements: In some fields, research reports are required to meet regulatory requirements, such as in the case of drug trials or environmental impact studies. Producing a high-quality research report can help ensure compliance with these requirements.

Limitations of Research Report

Despite their advantages, research reports also have some limitations, including:

• Time-consuming: Conducting research and writing a report can be a time-consuming process, particularly for large-scale studies. This can limit the frequency and speed of producing research reports.
• Expensive: Conducting research and producing a report can be expensive, particularly for studies that require specialized equipment, personnel, or data. This can limit the scope and feasibility of some research studies.
• Limited generalizability: Research studies often focus on a specific population or context, which can limit the generalizability of the findings to other populations or contexts.
• Potential bias : Researchers may have biases or conflicts of interest that can influence the findings and conclusions of the research study. Additionally, participants may also have biases or may not be representative of the larger population, which can limit the validity and reliability of the findings.
• Accessibility: Research reports may be written in technical or academic language, which can limit their accessibility to a wider audience. Additionally, some research may be behind paywalls or require specialized access, which can limit the ability of others to read and use the findings.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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How to Write a Progress Report

• 6-minute read
• 28th September 2021

A progress report is a business document that provides updates on a project’s progress toward meeting a goal. Typically, you’ll provide a progress report for a supervisor/manager, team member, or business client to summarize a project’s status and what still needs to be completed or improved.

But how do you write an effective progress report for your business’s projects ? In our guide below, we set out the typical structure of a progress report.

1. Header Information

A progress report should start with a header that includes key details about the report and the project. Typically, this will include the:

• Reporting period and/or the date of submission.
• Name(s) and position(s) of the report’s recipient(s).
• Name(s) and position(s) of the report’s author(s).
• Subject or title of the report/project.

This will help the recipient to understand the contents of the report at a glance.

2. Introduction

The introductory paragraph of a progress report should outline the purpose and timeframe of the project, plus any other important details or insights. 

You can also include an overview of what the rest of your progress report will cover.

3. Work Completed

The next section of your report should be titled “Work Completed.” Here, you can provide a chronological list of the project tasks that you have already completed and their corresponding dates. You can also include key findings from those tasks.

4. Problems Encountered

The next section should outline any problems encountered in the project so far. You should then explain either how those problems were solved or how they will be solved, and whether any extra help will be required to do so. You will also need to mention if those problems prompted any changes to the project.

5. Future Plans

To highlight the goals for the remainder of the project, the next section of your report should outline any future project tasks with their corresponding dates or deadlines, anticipated problems, and/or ideas for the project as you move forward.

End your progress report with a brief summary of key completed tasks, ongoing tasks, and major issues encountered. You don’t need to go into too much detail here, though. Stick to the essential details.

5 Tips on How to Write a Progress Report

We also have some helpful tips you can use when writing a progress report:

• Adapt the structure – While the structure outlined above will work for most projects, you can adapt it to suit your requirements. For instance, for a complex project with multiple goals, you may need to break it down into sections, detailing the progress, problems, and plans for each objective.
• Choose an appropriate frequency – For ongoing progress reports, think about whether to schedule daily, weekly, or monthly updates.
• Write clearly – Make sure to write clearly and concisely . Keep your sentences simple, straightforward, and easy to understand.
• Know your audience – If you’re writing a report for someone outside of your organization or team, explain any industry-specific language you use.
• Keep it professional – Make sure to use a formal tone , avoiding colloquial terms and phrases, slang, contractions, and other informal language.

Finally, to be sure your report looks and sounds professional, have it proofread. You can try our proofreading services by uploading a trial document for free today!

Example Progress Report

To see what a progress report might look like, check out our example report below:

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Date: September 24, 2021 To: J. Seymour, Head of Planning From: A. Boleyn, Planning Assistant Subject: Migration to new planning software

Since November 2016, Exemplar Inc. has used the PlanULike package to manage the company’s everyday operations. However, when we expanded to new territories in July 2021, the limitations of the software became evident, especially with regard to currency conversions when budgeting for projects in Europe. As a result, in August 2021, the decision was made to migrate to new planning software. This report covers the progress in this project made up until September 24, 2021.

Work Completed

• August 30 – Research completed into available planning software packages. The PlanZone software is selected based on its flexible budgeting capabilities.
• September 6 – A timeline is developed for installation and implementation of the new software package, with an initial deadline of September 30.
• September 10 – Head of Human Resources, Jack Thacker, begins developing in-house instructional materials for the new software.
• September 18 – Software is acquired and installed. Provisional version of internal training program is developed and tested with key staff members.
• September 21 – IT department identifies software compatibility problems with older hardware in operations department. New equipment purchased.
• September 24 – New computer hardware installed. After testing, training program is extended to heads of department in planning and operations.

Problems Encountered

The key problem encountered thus far has been a compatibility issue between the new software and some of the company’s existing hardware. Head of IT, Simon Robinson, reports that this was due to PlanZone including graphical features that Exemplar Inc. does not use and had not been factored into the initial planning.

Due to speedy delivery and installation of new hardware, this has not significantly affected the timeframe for the migration. But the unexpected expense does mean that the project is now significantly over budget.

In addition, the testing of the in-house training program took longer than anticipated to complete. Key staff are now familiar with the new software, but the deadline for company-wide training has been extended to November 15, 2021.

Future Plans

The improved training program will continue until November 15, 2021, when all relevant staff are expected to be familiar with the new software, after which all operational planning will use PlanZone, and the PlanULike systems will be deprecated by November 30, 2021. Due to exceeding the budget allocated for this project, a meeting will be scheduled for heads of department to discuss how the extra expenses may impact budgeting for other projects.

The company has acquired and installed new planning software (PlanZone), which is projected to enhance project planning and ease operations in new territories. However, unexpected hardware and training issues have slowed progress. Deadlines for the migration have thus been extended. Meanwhile, implications of the extra expenses will be factored into budgeting for upcoming projects.

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How to Write a Progress Report

Last Updated: May 11, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Ksenia Derouin . Ksenia Derouin is a Business Strategy Specialist, OBM, and Artist based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. With over ten years of professional experience, Ksenia works with wellness and social impact sector solopreneurs and organizations to support their business strategy, operations, marketing, and program development. Her mission is to support business owners in building thriving businesses and creating impact so that they can achieve a sense of purpose, career fulfillment, and financial independence. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 438,625 times.

Progress reports are an important part of project management, whether it's your dissertation or a project at work. You'll need to use these to keep your supervisors, your colleagues, or your clients updated about the project you're working on. You'll be focusing on what you've accomplished and what still needs to be done.

Beginning the Process

• Progress report for a research program or project is going to be slightly different than for a project at work. In this case you are more likely to need to cite information and are less likely to need to consider things like cost (although not always).
• A work report for a client is going to read somewhat differently than for a superior at work. You'll need to consider why you're writing this report for them.

• How are your readers connected to the project? How will the outcome of the project affect them? (The connection and how they're affected is going to be different for your superior than for the client, for example.)
• Consider what decision your readers are going to need to make after reading the progress report (what support, money, time are they investing, for example.
• Consider the information your reader is going to need to know to oversee and participate in the project effectively. What technical aspects of the project will they need to know. Are they comfortable with technical jargon?

• A progress report could be a brief oral report at weekly or monthly staff meetings.
• It could be periodic emails to colleagues.
• It could be formal or informal memos to supervisors.
• It can also be formal reports for clients or government agencies.

• When it comes to information for a client or government agency, or thesis review board, you err on the side of formality.
• No matter the formality or informality of your tone you want it to be clear, focused, and honest.

Writing Your Report

• You might choose to do a bulleted list. It's a very clear way to present the material and it's easy to skim and still get the needed information. However, it can be a slightly less formal way of writing a progress report so it might be better to use it for memos to supervisors and emails to colleagues.
• You may also consider adding in graphs or tables. This might be especially good if you're writing a progress report for a project in which you're trying to get funding, or show why you deserve the funding you've been given.

• Adding subheadings to your can make this even clearer, because it lets your readers or audience know what to expect in each subsection. If there is material that they are particularly interested in they'll be able to jump right to that part.

• The heading should include the date, when the report was submitted, the name and the position of the recipient, the writer’s name and position, and the subject of the report.

• Make sure to include: the purpose of the report, introduce the project, remind that this is an update on the progress of the project.

• Specify tasks that have been accomplished since the last report and what tasks are ongoing.
• Discuss problems that you’ve encountered, issues that need to be addressed, and potential solutions for those problems and issues.
• Address changes that have happened and why they needed to be made.
• You can also include things like personnel changes, difficulty in obtaining material, what cost overruns you may have encountered, any delays or problems with technology or security.
• It also helps to provide a timeline of the project with any relevant due dates.

• You really do want to make sure say whether the deadline for the project has changed or not.
• Avoid sugarcoating any problems for your audience, but don’t alarm them unnecessarily or promise anything you can’t deliver.

Avoiding Common Difficulties

• For example: if your project is about reigniting a local, nonprofit arts organization, it might be tempting to go off into a discussion of the deplorable state of arts funding, but it won't really help detail how your project is coming along.

• Depending on who you're writing the report for you might be cut down to a specific page limit. A good rule of thumb is to keep it as short as possible, while making sure that you fit in the appropriate information.

Community Q&A

• Try to judge your supervisor's style. She may have a preference for the types of reports she likes to see. Some may want to see more lists or bulleted information; others will like to know as little as possible to get by. Still others may prefer as much information as possible, no matter how many pages it takes. Thanks Helpful 36 Not Helpful 10
• Be specific throughout the progress summary, but try not to be overly wordy. Thanks Helpful 18 Not Helpful 6

• In order not to be caught unprepared when it's time for a progress report, it's a good idea to record information as you go along so it's easy to put all the information together. Thanks Helpful 8 Not Helpful 6

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Expert Interview

Thanks for reading our article! If you’d like to learn more about improving your business, check out our in-depth interview with Ksenia Derouin .

• ↑ https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/technicalwriting/chapter/progressreports/
• ↑ https://pressbooks.pub/coccoer/chapter/progress-reports/
• ↑ https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/feptechcomm/chapter/2-audience/
• ↑ https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/technicalwriting/chapter/figurestables/
• ↑ https://www.e-education.psu.edu/styleforstudents/c6_p10.html

About This Article

To write a progress report, start by deciding how you want to present your info, like with a bulleted list or a graph. You can also add subsections to your report, which can help keep things clear and easy to follow. Then, write your heading across the top of the paper and include relevant details like the date and subject of the report. Below that, add an introduction using italics to give a brief overview of the report. Next, include details in the body, like specific tasks you worked on, and conclude it by addressing what’s next for your project. To learn why considering your audience can help you write a progress report, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Writing a progress/status report

By michael ernst, january, 2010.

Writing a weekly report about your research progress can make your research more successful, less frustrating, and more visible to others, among other benefits.

One good format is to write your report in four parts:

• Quote the previous week's plan. This helps you determine whether you accomplished your goals.
• State this week's progress. This can include information such as: what you have accomplished, what you learned, what difficulties you overcame, what difficulties are still blocking you, your new ideas for research directions or projects, and the like.
• Give the next week's plan. A good format is a bulleted list, so we can see what you accomplished or did not. Try to make each goal measurable: there should be no ambiguity as to whether you were able to finish it. It's good to include longer-term goals as well.
• Give an agenda for the meeting. Some people like to send this as a separate message, which is fine.

The report need not be onerous. It can be a few paragraphs or a page, so it shouldn't take you long to write. Minimize details that are not relevant to your audience, such as classwork and the like, in order to keep the report focused; you will spend less time writing it, and make it more likely to be read.

Writing the progress report has many benefits.

Writing the report will make you more productive, because it will force you to think about your work in a manner concretely enough to write down. Any time that you spend organizing your thoughts will more than pay itself back in better understanding and improved productivity. When a project is complete, it is all too easy to forget some of your contributions. You can look back over your progress reports to remember what was difficult, and to think about how to work more productively in the future. You may be able to re-use some of the text when writing up your results.

Writing the report will make your meetings more productive. When you have a weekly research meeting, the report should be sent 24 hours in advance, to help everyone prepare. (Two hours is not an acceptable alternative: it does not let everyone — both you and others — mull over the ideas.) Don't delay your report because you want to wait until you have better results to report. Instead, send the report on schedule, and if you get more results in the next 24 hours, you can discuss those at the meeting.

Writing the report will give you feedback from a new point of view. The report enables others outside your research project to know what you are doing. Those people may respond with ideas or suggestions, which can help get you unstuck or give you additional avenues to explore. It also keeps you on their radar screen and reminds them of your work, which a good thing if you don't meet with them frequently. (For PhD students, a periodic report to the members of your thesis committee can pay big dividends.)

Writing the report helps explain (to yourself especially, but also to others) how you spent your time — even if there isn't as much progress as you would have preferred, you can see that you did work hard, and how to be more efficient or effective in the future.

If your meetings are more frequent than weekly, then the progress report should also be more frequent. If your meetings are less frequent, it's a good idea to still send a progress report each week.

Important tip: Throughout the day, maintain a log of what you have done. This can be a simple text file. You can update it when you start and end a task, or at regular intervals throughout the day. It takes only a moment to maintain the log, and it makes writing the report easy. By contrast, without a log you might forget what you have done during the week, and writing the report could take a long time.

Back to Advice compiled by Michael Ernst .

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Writing Progress Reports

Stacey Corbitt

Chapter Overview

It may seem like technical writing – indeed, many kinds of professional business writing – must be huge undertakings involving much effort and endless detail. With all the emphasis on being complete, accurate, and collaborative, do you wonder whether you can develop enough skill during college to compete as a writer in a technical or other business position? You may be hoping there’s an engineering or other professional position out there where you can stay under the radar and do your job without having to write anything important.

There is good news on this matter, and then there is great news.

First, the good news: virtually all entry-level professional positions present opportunities to practice writing in a variety of situations and for multiple types of readers. Writing in technical fields, as you may now realize, can require significant time commitment and collaboration, as well as various other “soft skills.” As a result, employees working to gain experience in the field may be tapped frequently to complete writing tasks.

Do you wonder exactly how the preceding paragraph is good news? Consider the great news: the day-to-day business of technical writing is largely short, direct reporting for specific purposes and audiences. While short reports aren’t necessarily easy to write, they do offer opportunities to practice crafting clear and concise documents. The progress report is one of several standard forms of short reports. This chapter aims to help students understand how to plan and write progress reports that meet the needs of their assignments as well as the standards of professionalism required by their fields of study and work.

What is the audience and purpose of a progress report?

Progress reports are typically requested and reviewed by one or more stakeholders in a project. Stakeholders is a general term for people who have a business interest in the subject project and may need progress reports because of fiscal, legal, financial, or other responsibility for the work in question. While progress reports may be required by the person or group at the next level of responsibility above your own, the readership and reach of your periodic progress reports can be greater than you know, sometimes applying to the top tier of an organization.

Put simply, stakeholders use progress reports to communicate about work on projects, including levels of completion and delays alike. These reports provide a number of opportunities for communication, including but not limited to

• reporting early research findings
• notifying stakeholders about problems
• discussing potential changes in planned work, schedule, and other project factors
• evaluating work completed

As with all technical writing opportunities, careful characterization of the audience and the context in which the report will be used is crucial to successfully achieving the purpose of a progress report. In addition to these standard considerations, other specific questions a writer should ask in preparation for writing a progress report include the following:

• Has the requestor specified a form you must use? If so, do you have the most up-to-date form and specifications to follow?
• What is the date of expected delivery for this report? What is the expected frequency of reporting? For example, do you need to report once weekly, or more or less frequently?
• Is supporting documentation necessary? If so, how should you include it?
• Is there an oral presentation component required with this report?
• Have you set aside enough time to complete this report and obtain a peer review?

In a word, the key to writing efficient, clear progress reports is preparation . Always take the time needed to ask these practical questions about the rhetorical situation in which you will be writing a progress report for any project.

What is the necessary content for a progress report?

Depending upon the information you collect through the questioning activity outlined in the previous section, the specific content your project progress report will need can vary. In general, though, you might think about the content required in a progress report in a specific way: that is, part of the content comes from the past; part of it discusses the work you are doing today; and the third part of the content represents the project’s future.

Activity: begin drafting a progress report

Begin with an individual or group project in which you are currently involved, whether for your writing course or another class. Proceed by making notes in response to the following directions.

• Next, a brief discussion of the work you are doing today or this week will address the present tense portion of your discussion.
• Third, from the same point of view in the present moment, look ahead of you at all the project-related work you want to address between now and the next reporting milestone. Write a quick description of what plans you have for the project’s future, using the future tense to describe what you and your team will begin, what you will complete, and so on.
• Finally, build a draft timeline that displays the entire list of tasks for your project, whether completed, ongoing, or to begin at a point in the future. You may consider developing a Gantt chart , like the one presented in Figure 11.7, shown below and adapted from Exploring Business, published by University of Minnesota (2016) .

Use the notes you have prepared in this activity to complete the Homework at the end of this chapter.

What are the important stylistic considerations for a progress report?

If you put yourself in the position of the typical audience for a progress report, you can identify the characteristics that are most important for that reader’s use of the document. As you know, writing that is clear, concise, complete, and correct is vital to the success of any technical document in reaching its audience and accomplishing its purpose. With regard to progress reports, particularly those written in business, one additional quality critical to success is brevity . The progress report is an ideal demonstration of writing that should include only significant details and nothing extraneous. To the extent a progress report for your work can be accomplished in one single-spaced page, do not make it longer.

Use active construction

Because they constitute a direct communication from the writer to one or more identified readers, progress reports are frequently presented in one of the common business correspondence formats: namely, an email, memo, or letter report. Correspondence is a genre of writing that lends itself to the use of personal pronouns like I , we , and you in particular. Being able to use a first-person voice with personal pronouns gives writers an advantage toward writing progress reports: personal pronouns make it easier to use active constructions.

Using the active voice, or active construction , essentially means that you construct sentences and passages in which the following characteristics are evident:

• The subject performs the action of the verb rather than receiving the action of the verb.
• The use of forms of “to be,” also known as state of being verbs, is minimized.
• The emphasis of an active sentence is on the subject and verb, rather than on an object.

Consider the following examples:

Notice that the nouns first written in each sentence – my sister, the carpool, and my glasses – are all receiving the action of the verbs in the sentences.

Notice also that each of those verb phrases includes a form of to be : was bitten, is being organized, and have…been seen .

Finally, notice that the same word follows the verb phrase in each sentence – by – creating a prepositional phrase that indicates the noun or pronoun performing the action in each sentence.

Now examine the same three statements below, written in the active voice:

Notice the change in arrangement of words in each statement. You can identify the subject that appears at the beginning of each sentence; followed by the verb or verb phrase that indicates the action being performed by the subject; and finally the direct object of the sentence that receives the action of the verb. The numbers in parentheses in both sets of examples indicate the total number of words in each sentence.

What are your thoughts about converting sentence construction from passive to active for purposes of being clear in a progress report? Discuss the question with a partner in class and make some notes about your observations. Do you think the active construction has advantages over passive construction? Does active construction have disadvantages?

Near the beginning of this section, you read “… personal pronouns make it easier to use active constructions.” Do you think that statement is true? Discuss why or why not.

Stick to the facts

Your goal is to write an excellent progress report by making your work clear and complete while keeping the document brief. In the previous section, you practiced revising sentences from passive to active construction, a tactic that increases clarity while usually decreasing overall sentence length. Another useful practice in writing short reports – particularly those for the workplace – is to resist sharing your opinions, suggestions, and other unrequested content. Concentrate on reporting the facts and responding to exactly what the reader has requested.

What organizational structure should be used for a progress report?

Recall that one of your earliest tasks in preparing to write a progress report is to discover what information you must report and whether a specific form is required. In the event these details are not part of the assignment you receive, you may need to determine the clearest and most efficient way to organize the body of your report. Consider the following possibilities.

As is the case with structural considerations for any technical report, the most important point in choosing an organizational pattern is to make that pattern clear to the reader. Keep in mind that the structures delineated in the previous table are intended to guide the development of the body of your report in the event you do not receive specific guidance from the project manager or your instructor. Similarly, you may have to decide whether the report should be submitted as a letter, a memo, an email, a presentation, or another format that may be preferred by your reader.

In her 2019 book Technical Writing Essentials: Introduction to Professional Communications in the Technical Fields , author Suzan Last provides the following suggested outline of elements to include in a progress report generally (pp. 178-179):

Progress Reports: a Structural Overview

1. Introduction

Review the details of your project’s purpose, scope, and activities. The introduction may also contain the following:

• date the project began; date the project is scheduled to be completed
• people or organization working on the project
• people or organization for whom the project is being done
• overview of the contents of the progress report.

2. Project status

This section (which could have sub-sections) should give the reader a clear idea of the current status of your project.  It should review the work completed, work in progress, and work remaining to be done on the project, organized into sub-sections by time, task, or topic. These sections might include

• Direct reference to milestones or deliverables established in previous documents related to the project
• Timeline for when remaining work will be completed
• Any problems encountered or issues that have arisen that might affect completion, direction, requirements, or scope.

3.  Conclusion

The final section provides an overall assessment of the current state of the project and its expected completion, usually reassuring the reader that all is going well and on schedule. It can also alert recipients to unexpected changes in direction or scope, or problems in the project that may require intervention.

4.  References section if required.

Chapter conclusion

Progress reports are an ideal example of workplace technical writing for science and engineering students to study. Progress reports represent short, clear documents with a specific purpose. These reports use typical business correspondence formats to communicate detailed technical information to a known audience. A successful progress report’s other characteristics include

• sentences constructed in the active voice
• factual information without opinions, speculation, or extraneous content
• an appropriate pattern of organization

Use the notes and project schedule you prepared in the Activity earlier in this chapter to write a progress report for your current research project. Address all of the following considerations, but do not use this list to organize your report:

• Confirm with your instructor the required report format – email, letter, memorandum, or presentation
• Determine the appropriate organizational pattern – chronological, priority, or topic – for the body of the report
• summarize and evaluate research findings to date
• present the project schedule
• problems, changes, delays, and questions

Last, S. (2019, January 1). Technical writing essentials . BCcampus OpenEd: University of Victoria. License: CC-BY-4.0 . https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/technicalwriting

University of Minnesota. (2016, April 8). Exploring business . University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing. License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 . https://open.lib.umn.edu/exploringbusiness/

Mindful Technical Writing Copyright © 2020 by Stacey Corbitt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Write a Solid Progress Report for Project Success

Progress reports are like project status updates that help everyone involved understand how things are going. Writing a solid progress report is crucial for keeping your project on track and ensuring its success. In this guide, we’ll break down the process of creating a great progress report, making it easy for you to communicate your project’s progress effectively. We have also included progress report templates for you to get started right away.

Progress Report Template

What is a Progress Report

A progress report is a document that provides an overview of the status, advancements, and achievements of a project or task. It typically outlines what has been accomplished, what is currently in progress, and any challenges or obstacles encountered. Progress reports are commonly used in various settings, such as work, education, or personal projects, to keep stakeholders informed about the project’s developments and to ensure everyone is on the same page regarding the current state of affairs.

Progress Report Templates to Keep Track of Project Progress

Daily Progress Report Template

Project Status Report Template

Project Status Summary

Project Dashboard Template

Project Status Summary Template

Why You Need to Use a Progress Report

A progress report promotes a culture of collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement in project management. Here are several reasons why a progress report is important.

Clear communication: Keeps everyone on the same page by sharing what’s happening in a project.

Tracking achievements: Highlights what has been successfully completed, boosting team morale.

Problem-solving: Identifies and addresses challenges, helping to find solutions and stay on track.

Decision-making: Provides real-time information for informed decision-making during the project.

Accountability: Holds team members responsible for their tasks and deadlines.

Learning and improvement: Creates a record of progress, facilitating learning for future projects.

Efficiency: Keeps the team working efficiently by preventing confusion and misunderstandings.

Collaboration: Encourages collaboration and coordination among team members.

Key Components of a Progress Report

The following components of a progress report collectively provide a comprehensive view of the project’s progress, challenges, and future plans, enabling effective communication and decision-making.

• Introduction : Brief overview of the project, including its purpose and objectives.
• Work completed : Summary of tasks or milestones achieved since the last report.
• Work in progress : Description of current activities, tasks underway, and their status.
• Challenges and issues : Identification and discussion of any problems, roadblocks, or challenges faced.
• Achievements : Recognition and celebration of significant accomplishments and milestones.
• Upcoming tasks : Outline of the next steps, tasks, or milestones planned for the future.
• Timeline and schedule : Review or adjustment of the project timeline or schedule, if necessary.
• Budget overview : Overview of the project’s financial status, including spendings and any budget changes.
• Recommendations : Suggestions for improvements or changes to improve project efficiency.
• Conclusion : A brief summary and conclusion, often including an overall project status assessment.

Challenges of Creating and Using a Progress Report

While project reports are handy for keeping track of project progress, they can pose some challenges.

Time-consuming: Writing a progress report can take time away from actual project work.

Communication issues: Making sure that everyone understands the report may be challenging.

Data accuracy: Getting accurate information for the report can sometimes be difficult.

Overlooking details: Important details may be unintentionally left out.

Balancing detail and brevity: Finding the right level of detail without making the report too lengthy can be tricky.

Tracking complex projects: Managing and reporting progress for complex projects may pose a challenge.

Ensuring regular updates: Getting everyone to consistently update progress can be a hurdle, especially in dynamic work environments.

Best Practices for Creating an Effective Progress Report

Creating an effective progress report involves following some best practices:

• Keep your report clear and straightforward, avoiding jargon or overly complex language.
• Highlight the most important information, emphasizing achievements and addressing challenges.
• Use a consistent format and structure for easy comprehension.
• Submit reports on time to make sure that the information is relevant and up-to-date.
• Provide enough detail to convey the message, but avoid unnecessary information that may overwhelm.
• Use charts or diagrams to visually represent data and trends for better understanding.
• Include potential solutions when discussing challenges, promoting a proactive approach.

Create Your Next Progress Report with Creately

Simplify the process of creating progress reports and streamline project management, communication, and improve overall project success with Creately ’s visual collaboration platform.

Task tracking and assignment

Use the built-in project management tools to create, assign, and track tasks right on the canvas. Assign responsibilities, set due dates, and monitor progress with Agile Kanban boards, Gantt charts, timelines and more. Create task cards containing detailed information, descriptions, due dates, and assigned responsibilities.

Notes and attachments

Record additional details and attach documents, files, and screenshots related to your tasks and projects with per item integrated notes panel and custom data fields. Or easily embed files and attachments right on the workspace to centralize project information. Work together on project documentation with teammates with full multiplayer text and visual collaboration.

Real-time collaboration

Get any number of participants on the same workspace and track their additions to the progress report in real-time. Collaborate with others in the project seamlessly with true multi-user collaboration features including synced previews and comments and discussion threads. Use Creately’s Microsoft Teams integration to brainstorm, plan, run projects during meetings.

Pre-made templates

Get a head start with ready-to-use progress report templates and other project documentation templates available right inside the app. Explore 1000s more templates and examples for various scenarios in the community.

Comprehensive shape libraries

Create any visual aid from flowcharts to timelines with comprehensive shape libraries for over 70 types of diagrams including icons. Illustrate or make annotations easily with freehand drawing and format text without leaving the keyboard with markdown shortcuts.

Progress reports are indispensable in project management. They foster communication, accountability, and a culture of continuous improvement. Make use of the progress report templates we have provided to track your progress and stay organized.

Join over thousands of organizations that use Creately to brainstorm, plan, analyze, and execute their projects successfully.

More Related Articles

Amanda Athuraliya is the communication specialist/content writer at Creately, online diagramming and collaboration tool. She is an avid reader, a budding writer and a passionate researcher who loves to write about all kinds of topics.

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Blog Business

How to Write a Professional Progress Report 

By Daleska Pedriquez , Jun 28, 2022

The first time I had to do a professional progress report, I panicked. I always thought I was an organized, big-picture person. I thought I had each step of the project, each stakeholder’s task mapped in my mind. But I found myself at a loss… 

I didn’t know where to begin my report or what to include. So I did some research and asked my co-workers for advice. 

I’m glad I did because they shared some useful tips on  how to use visual communication  in a progress report. They also pointed me towards a ton of templates to use as a starting point.

Now, I’ve filled out countless progress reports and learned some valuable lessons along the way. So, gather around everyone! I’ll show you the magic of using progress reports for your business, including how to incorporate data visualization.

(Most importantly, you’ll find a generous list of templates you can use with our  report maker  to get the job done!)

Click to jump ahead:

What is a progress report, why are work progress reports important, how do you write a progress report, 3 tips to write great reports, faqs about writing a professional progress report.

Let’s start with the basics. A progress report includes a detailed description of the current status of a project, as well as forecasts for the future. You can use this type of report to share insights on project status and performance. You may also project results and timelines based on the milestones your team has achieved and the challenges you’ve faced so far.

These reports often contain a summary of communications between a team member and a project manager. This helps stakeholders get a snapshot of how a project is progressing. 

Keep in mind: a progress report may be for your team alone, your company as a whole or your board of executives. Depending on the audience, you may want to include more or less granular information.

Return to Table of Contents

This may seem obvious, but reporting on progress is key for keeping your team on track. Consistent  project updates  will ensure everyone is working on the right tasks, at the right time. These reports also provide an opportunity for reflection…

What’s going well? What isn’t? Do the project objectives still make sense? Do they need adjusting? By taking the time to reflect  before  a project is finished, you’ll be able to catch any problems, adjust and increase your chances of success. 

Sounds good? But wait, there’s more… 

Here’s a closer look at the benefits of creating a professional progress report: 

Improves team collaboration 

As I mentioned, progress reports are all about keeping teams on the same page. Generally, everyone on your team would receive a copy of the report. That way, everyone can see what’s done and what remains to be done. 

This is also a good way to keep your team motivated during long projects. By reporting on everything that’s been accomplished, they can see just how far they’ve come.

In the initial phases of a project, your progress report may be as simple as a timeline. This type of report works well during the planning stages, too. For example, check out this weekly reporting template: 

You can customize this template however you need. Style the text, swap out the colors, add in your logo and voilà… you have a professionally branded report.

Guides decision-making throughout a project

Again, if you wait until the end of a project to reflect, you may miss opportunities to course-correct along the way. No  project plan  is perfect. There will always be unforeseen circumstances. A task that requires more time. A team member that drops out of the race… 

A progress report can help you deal with these hiccups. By proactively checking in on a project, you can make decisions about the best use of resources. Or even, whether you need to switch lanes entirely! 

Creates a detailed audit trail for all projects

While a progress report  isn’t  an audit, it does provide a record of all the work undertaken during a project. In other words, it’s useful if you or your company need to create an audit trail using project execution records.

Of course, progress reports are also useful if you’re answering to execs, giving updates to your fellow execs or simply referring back to the next time around. 

Take this quarterly project status report as an example. Using this template, you can share a high-level overview of a project with a simple progress bar featuring a clear percentage, or swap in any chart to depict progress. With Venngage’s editor, you just have to double-click on the chart and input the appropriate value.

Promotes transparency and accountability

Transparency and accountability are buzzwords in business, but with good reason. Without transparency, there’s no accountability. And without accountability, well, your project is going to be a slog. 

Progress reports are a great way to maintain transparency and accountability throughout a project. Not only can you see exactly who’s done (and doing) what, but you can also highlight the allocation of funding and resources, as well as results. 

Now that we’ve talked about the perks of using a progress report to  visualize your company’s projects , let’s dig into the good stuff. Here’s how to write a detailed progress report: 

Determine your report’s objectives

Of course, your report will have different objectives depending on the format. If you’re putting together a weekly report, those objectives may be tasks accomplished. You may also include notes about roadblocks or problems solved. 

A monthly or quarterly report will likely look at larger milestones instead and give a broader overview of the progress made on a project. This type of regular project evaluation may also compare progress to previous months. 

Pro tip: while designing in Venngage, you can create a new color scheme, or use one of the many automated color palettes available. If you’re on a business plan, you’ll also have access to  My Brand Kit , which allows you to upload logos, choose fonts and set color palettes. Then, you can easily apply your visual branding to every design.

Collect all your data

Once you’ve established your objectives, you can gather the necessary data to report on them. 

For example, with a weekly report, you may need to check in with your team members to get a status update on their tasks. With a monthly report, you may be able to pull results, in addition to a broader status update. 

Whatever claims you include in your report, just make sure you can back them up with data. If you’re saying a project is 90% complete, that percentage should be calculated based on real numbers, not estimates. 

In general, you’ll share a broader progress update on the first page of your report. Then, the following pages will show the supporting data. 

Perform a detailed data analysis

Now for the fun part. (Yup, I’m a data nerd.) 

Analyzing your data is the logical next step. I like to start by organizing my data into buckets. For example, I might have a bucket for tasks accomplished, outstanding tasks, blockers, budget and key learnings to date. 

Often, I’ll include a bucket for outstanding questions. And I analyze all of the above to identify patterns and make informed predictions.

Once you have all this information, make a note of which pieces of data can be visualized. Graphs, charts and other visuals help simplify complex data and reduce the amount of text you’ll need in your report. (More on visualizing your data in just a sec!) 

Pro tip: when creating a report in Venngage on a  Business Plan , you can collaborate in real-time with your team members and invite them to work on a design. You can also leave comments and get feedback, right on the platform. Alternatively, you can share your design online, via email or download a high-resolution PNG, PDF or interactive PDF. 

Outline and edit your report

Ah, the outline. I create an outline for everything I write, whether it’s a blog, business plan, or yes, a progress report. In my experience, it’s the best way to avoid writer’s block. With a detailed outline, you’ll never get stuck staring at a blank screen again. 

At this point, you know your objectives. You’ve collected and analyzed all your data. All that’s left is to  turn it into a story . 

I like to start with objectives and work my way backward. In my outline, I’ll cover objectives on the first page. Each one gets its own heading with supporting data underneath. I’ll also include a high-level description of my project on the first page. 

I like to organize the following sections by objective, too. This creates a natural hierarchy while keeping goals and objectives top of mind. 

Nail down the length of your report

Keep in mind that you don’t want your report to be the length of a bible! No one has the time or attention span for that. Here’s a quick rule of thumb: a progress report should be around two to three pages.

This should give you enough space to state your objectives, present supporting data, showcase progress and make any predictions. If your outline is more than three pages, have another look and see what you can trim. As all good writers know, sometimes you have to  kill your darlings . 

Design your report using visuals 

A picture is worth a thousand words — there’s a reason we’ve all heard this saying a thousand times! 

Engaging visuals  are the perfect way to turn dry data into meaningful, digestible statements. But you don’t have to create these visuals from scratch or hire a designer for that matter. By starting with one of  Venngage’s templates , you can simply customize the visuals to suit your needs.

For example, this project management status report template includes several images, charts and icons. You can swap out the images with your own or browse over three million high-quality, royalty-free photos to find something suitable. 

You can also change the icons to reflect your data. With Venngage, you get access to over 40,000 icons with thousands of diverse options to reflect a range of skin tones and cultural backgrounds. Plus, you can change the  charts to best represent your data . 

By using visuals in your design, you’ll break up walls of text and make your report both aesthetically pleasing and easy to understand. In the end, this will help you improve communication and impress any stakeholders involved. 

With Venngage’s  report maker , the design process is quick and easy. And best of all, you can do it all yourself — exactly the way you envisioned.

Related : 5 Best Report Creators for Businesses in 2022

Get feedback from your team 

Before sharing your final report, consider getting feedback from your team. 

They may have additional insights to share on a project’s progress. They can also help spot faulty data and prevent any embarrassing retractions down the line. This is also just good for morale. The more involved your team feels in a project, the more invested they’ll be. 

Finalize your report

Last step: proofreading.

Make sure to double-check everything, from spelling and grammar to project details and data visualizations. This step ties in with my point above. Getting a second pair of eyes to proofread your report is always a good idea. 

When you’ve been staring at something for weeks, it can be hard to catch mistakes. Your team members can look at your report with fresh eyes and share fresh insights.

In the data-heavy example above, a misplaced comma or rogue denominator could make all the difference. So don’t skip that final once over! At the end of the day, the goal is to create a report that’s as accurate as possible.

I’ve talked a lot about how to use visuals to create an engaging, full-featured progress report. But what about words, you ask? 

Keep these three quick tips in mind to breeze through the writing part, too: 

• Stay focused

And I mean hyper-focused. 

Remember the first step in this guide: determine your report’s objectives. By staying focused on your objectives, you’ll avoid unnecessary tangents. Plus, you’ll have a lot less editing to do when it comes time to kill your darlings! 

If a point doesn’t tie back to your objectives, skip it. This will give your entire report a sense of direction. It will also help your team members digest and retain the information.

• Discuss your objectives in a balanced manner

If you have multiple objectives, make sure you give each one its due. 

It’s true, one objective may be more important than the other. For example, you might dedicate more real estate to outlining project tasks than predicting future progress. Just make sure to weigh positive and negative data fairly. 

You don’t want a rose-colored report, so to speak. This will set unrealistic expectations and be more harmful than helpful down the line. Instead, use all the available data to share a balanced perspective in your progress report. 

• Use a consistent reporting style

Reports are no place for flowery language. 

To make your report as effective as possible, use straightforward, simple language. Make sure to define any acronyms or technical terms at the beginning of your report. And remember the three Cs while you’re writing: be clear, concise and compelling.

What are the three types of progress reports?

There are three types of reports based on the time span they cover:

• Weekly: These reports typically cover a team member’s individual progress and how it affects the entire project.
• Monthly: These progress reports typically provide a broader overview of a project, including team member progress, methods and projections. Monthly reports are usually data-dependent and require more visuals than weekly reports.
• Quarterly: These detailed reports cover a three-month period. Quarterly reports include a lot more data and will require more visuals to make them digestible and engaging as a result. 

What are the qualities of a good progress report?

The qualities of a good progress report are: 

• Comprehensiveness: Provide a total overview of a project using clear objectives, simple language and a balanced ratio of text and images in your layout.
• Data-backed: Make sure your report includes accurate data that you’ve double-checked for any discrepancies.
• Rich in visuals: Leverage engaging visuals to break up the text in your report and turn your data into a compelling, easily digestible story.

Write a detailed professional progress report and achieve your goals

I know from personal experience that writing a progress report can be daunting at first. 

But with these tips and templates, I’m confident you can do it. So go ahead, give it a try.  Create a beautiful, raise-winning report  with Venngage for free. Just remember to clearly define your objectives first… and don’t skimp on visuals!

• About Grants

Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR)

The RPPR is used by recipients to submit progress reports to NIH on their grant awards. This page provides an overview of the annual RPPR, the final RPPR and the interim RPPR and provides resources to help you understand how to submit a progress report. 

Types of RPPRs

Progress reports document recipient accomplishments and compliance with terms of award. There are three types of RPPRs, all of which use the NIH RPPR Instruction Guide .

Annual RPPR – Use to describe a grant’s scientific progress, identify significant changes, report on personnel, and describe plans for the subsequent budget period or year.

Final RPPR – Use as part of the grant closeout process to submit project outcomes in addition to the information submitted on the annual RPPR, except budget and plans for the upcoming year.

Interim RPPR – Use when submitting a renewal (Type 2) application. If the Type 2 is not funded, the Interim RPPR will serve as the Final RPPR for the project. If the Type 2 is funded, the Interim RPPR will serve as the annual RPPR for the final year of the previous competitive segment. The data elements collected on the Interim RPPR are the same as for the Final RPPR, including project outcomes.

Submitting the RPPR

Only the project director/principal investigator (PD/PI) or their PD/PI delegate can initiate RPPRs. For multi-PD/PI grants only the Contact PI or the Contact PD/PI’s delegate can initiate the RPPR.

Signing Officials typically submit the annual RPPR, but may delegate preparation (Delegate Progress Report) to any PD/PI within the organization on behalf of the Contact PD/PI. Additionally, a Principal Investigator (PI) can delegate “Progress Report” to any eRA Commons user in their organization with the Assistant (ASST) role. This delegation provides the ASST with the ability to prepare Annual,  Interim and Final RPPRs on behalf of the PI. However, only a Signing Official (SO) or PI (if delegated Submit by the SO) are allowed to submit the Annual, Interim, and Final RPPRs.

Follow the instructions in the RPPR User Guide to submit the RPPR, Interim RPPR or Final RPPR. The User Guide includes instructions for how to submit your RPPRs in the eRA Commons, how to complete the web-based forms, and what information is required. Instructions for completing the scientific portion of the report (see the elements below) may be found in Chapters 6 and 7.

The following resources may help with RPPR initiation and submission:

Annual RPPR Due Dates:

• Streamlined Non-Competing Award Process (SNAP) RPPRs are due approximately 45 days before the next budget period start date.
• Non-SNAP RPPRs are due approximately 60 days before the next budget period start date.
• Multi-year funded (MYF) RPPRs are due annually on or before the anniversary of the budget/project period start date of the award.
• The exact start date for a specific award may be found in grants status in eRA Commons.

Interim and Final RPPR Dues Dates:

• 120 days from period of performance end date for the competitive segment

The RPPR requests various types of information, including:

Accomplishments

What were the major goals and objectives of the project?

What was accomplished under these goals?

What opportunities for training and professional development did the project provide?

How were the results disseminated to communities of interest?

What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals and objectives?

publications, conference papers, and presentations

website(s) or other Internet site(s)

technologies or techniques

inventions, patent applications, and/or licenses

other products, such as data or databases, physical collections, audio or video products, software, models, educational aids or curricula, instruments or equipment, research material, interventions (e.g., clinical or educational), or new business creation.

Participants and Other Collaborating Organizations

Changes/Problems (not required for Final or Interim RPPR)

Changes in approach and reasons for change

Actual or anticipated problems or delays and actions or plans to resolve them

Changes that have a significant impact on expenditures

Significant changes in use or care of human subjects, vertebrate animals, biohazards, and/or select agents

Budgetary Information (not required for Final or Interim RPPR)

Project Outcomes (only required on Final and Interim RPPR)

• Concise summary of the outcomes or findings of the award, written for the general public in  clear and comprehensible language, without including any proprietary, confidential information or trade secrets

This page last updated on: November 2, 2022

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How to write an effective progress report

As someone who has written hundreds of progress reports, I know that writing a good progress report can keep people in the loop about how your project or product is moving. Additionally, it helps build trust by actively letting everyone know how things are going, what may have changed, and where you may need support. It can be a very helpful tool.

Getting started with writing progress updates can be a little tricky. There are some key steps you’ll want to navigate to ensure that your progress reports are effective, helpful, and meeting the needs of your team and stakeholders.

In this article, we’ll talk about what a progress report is, why they’re important, the elements of a progress report, and more.

What is a progress report?

A progress report is a document, usually in the form of a weekly email, that lets key stakeholders and team members who are involved in your project stay up-to-date on how things are going.

These updates can include the progress from this week, whether or not the project is on track, and if any additional leadership support is necessary to keep the project going smoothly and eliminate blockers or challenges.

Why are progress reports important?

Progress reports are important because they help build trust in the project team by keeping stakeholders in the loop with clear communication. A good progress report ensures that stakeholders don’t sit and wonder how a project is going.

Another benefit? They can help you spot issues and elevate them before problems stack up and take your project off course. You can also use a progress report to escalate blockers, or potential blockers, to the stakeholders who may be able to assist you in clearing them. Need approval before you move forward with a key part of the project? You can outline that in your update and let everyone know to expect this before it happens.

Progress reports also help keep a pulse on the pace of the project. If you know that you have important dates coming up, knowing that you have a regular time you’ll need to check in on the progress of the project can help you know if you’re on schedule.

If things start to get off track, you’ll be able to course-correct easier. And, since a progress report keeps your stakeholders in the loop, there are no big surprises to anyone if something doesn’t go according to plan.

What’s included in a progress report?

The first important thing is to really understand what your stakeholders want to see in an update. Are there particular parts of the project they might be concerned about and want more detailed insights into how that part of the project is going? If so, you may want to come up with a list and build your outline from there.

A comprehensive progress report typically includes:

• A summary of activities completed by the team
• What progress was made, and how the team is tracking toward their goals
• What challenges there were, if any
• Action items and any next steps

Activity summary

In the activity summary, you can be as detailed as is helpful to communicate to stakeholders. Ask if your stakeholders want either an in-depth or high-level summary of the work that was completed by the team.

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For example, some stakeholders want to be able to see each individual item the team completed. Some stakeholders think that a high-level summary of features is enough information. You can customize the level of detail in your activity summary for your stakeholders and team.

Progress update

Your activity summary and progress updates might sound similar, but activities are usually more task-oriented while progress is usually either an outcome or progress toward a specific outcome.

For example, let’s say that your progress update outlines that your engineering team spent time writing code for a new feature this week. Your progress report may include details about customer feedback about the new feature that your UX designer gathered.

Challenges and obstacles

While it may not be easy to talk about challenges or difficulties during a project, your stakeholders will want to know what challenges came up, how they were handled, if they’ve changed the timeline of the project, and if the team needs any help.

A great way to talk through the challenges section of your progress report is to follow a simple format:

• A brief description of the challenge encountered. This should be no longer than 2–3 sentences.
• A brief outline of how the challenge was addressed
• A clear statement of whether or not the challenge is still being resolved
• A clear ask for help, if help or support is needed

For example, here’s how this might sound in an actual progress report:

Dealing with API challenges with VendorX

This week, we had an outage in production due to a breaking API change that was made by VendorX. The customer impact was that our app was unavailable for 30 minutes. Customers saw an error message. To resolve the issue, we reached out to VendorX tech support and let them know the issue was impacting our app. They were able to resolve it, and our customers no longer have this issue.

Next steps and action items

At the end of the progress report, you’ll want to give a brief description of what the team plans to do next on the project to keep momentum. This can include the upcoming tasks or activities the team intends to tackle and how this keeps the project moving forward.

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If you are dealing with a challenge, this section may also include the challenge’s impact on progress and how you may need to plan accordingly.

If you’re thinking that sounds like a lot to keep up with, there’s a great way to make it easier — use a template.

Using a template to make progress reports that are quick and easy to read

Progress report templates are easy to create and iterate over time as the needs of the project change. Templates can make writing your progress report faster and easier. Another key benefit of using a template? It’s easier to ask for help from your teammates to help fill in the key details because you can ask them to fill out key sections.

Templates also help your stakeholders know what to expect each week. By sending the same format each week, it can make it easy to know where the relevant information they need will be located in the progress report.

Here is a very simple template on Google Docs that you can use as a weekly progress report. Go to File > Make a copy to download it and, as we’ll go over next, you can customize it how you like to fit the needs of your project:

Tips for customizing a template

Progress reports aren’t one-size-fits-all. In fact, they should be customized to fit the needs of your project! Here are some tips to help customize a generic template:

• Make sections clear — Clearly outline the sections of your progress report, and let everyone know what you’ll be addressing in each section. Remember the key sections: activities, progress made, challenges or blockers encountered, and actions and next steps. You may want to include other sections, but you’ll want to include at least those four
• Include other sections as needed for your project — Depending on the type of project, you may also include area-specific updates. If you are building a new software product, you may also include an update on KPIs or customer feedback. If you work on an engineering team, you may need to update on code quality or test coverage metrics. Remember, this is for you and for your stakeholders to communicate, so customizing it to everyone’s needs is important
• Add some fun — Maybe you highlight new learnings, a fun fact, or a customer research anecdote as a part of your update
• Use emojis — Another way to make sections stand out is to add emojis. On a Mac, you can use Control + Command + Space to pull up the emoji keyboard. On a Windows machine, you can use the Windows Key + Period . Add emojis to your sections to add a little fun, and make each section’s purpose stand out visually. Adding an emoji can help visually call out sections. You can also use emojis for whether or not something is on track by using colors and color coding.
• Make updating and reading metrics easy by using tables  — If you’re reporting on a lot of metrics , make those easy to update by utilizing tables when and where you can. On the left side, include the name of the metric. On the right, include the number. Voila, an easy-to-read and easy-to-update metrics table

Once you’ve got the template, where do you store it? Ideally, put the template where you can quickly and easily access it and send it. Do you use a document repository like Sharepoint or Confluence? You can create a page that you can duplicate and edit. If you use something like Notion, you can save the page as a template that you can quickly and easily apply to any page within Notion.

Another thing to consider is how you plan to send the update each week. One option is to link to a document repository that has all of the updates linked and just schedule an automated email to send to key stakeholders with a link to the homepage. Another option? Copy and paste the text from your update into an email and link to older updates that live elsewhere.

When to update your template

If you feel trapped using a template, know that you can customize them and change them over time. As the project changed and evolved, so did our progress updates. It’s okay to change them! In fact, sometimes it’s necessary. So how do you know when it’s time to change your template?

• You regularly get questions from stakeholders about aspects of your project that are not answered in the current template
• The project has taken on a completely new direction but you haven’t updated your progress report to capture these new aspects of the project
• You’ve added another team or aspect to the project but their work is not reflected in the template

All of these are signs that it’s time to update the template to include more or different information. This can be a great time to pause and ask your stakeholders what new information would be helpful for them to read about in the progress report.

Incorporating progress report comments

Your stakeholders may have follow-up questions or comments about your progress report. This is great news because it means that your stakeholders are involved and staying up to date! Of course, they may have positive feedback or negative feedback. How do you handle either situation?

Handling negative feedback about your progress report from stakeholders

You’ve sent out the progress report, and you’re excited to hear all of the positive comments on how much progress the team is making. Then the comments start rolling in, and they are disappointingly not positive. How do you address negative comments from stakeholders?

There is negative feedback about the formatting

Sometimes, stakeholders may have negative feedback about how the progress report looks instead of commenting on the contents of the report itself. This can be a good thing — they have an interest in the process!

Take their feedback into consideration and potentially make updates to the template to make incorporating their feedback easier from week to week. If there’s a way to make the report easier to read, make those adjustments. If data is missing that would help make decisions — and if the data is available — consider adding it to subsequent progress reports.

There is negative feedback about the progress being made

Sometimes, stakeholders will have questions or comments related to how quickly the project is moving or the challenges the team is encountering. Here are some steps on how to handle this when it comes up.

• First, try to understand where the stakeholder is coming from. Are they curious about why a challenge arose? Are they concerned about the progress so far? Are they nervous about missing a critical deadline? You may need to reach out to that stakeholder to understand their concerns or feedback better so that you know how you can help
• Once you understand where the concern is coming from, now you can work to address the stakeholder’s feedback or criticism. If they address a challenge that has come up, it may be a good time to escalate the support you need in clearing the blocker. If they’re addressing that it seems like the project is off-track, reiterate what you or the team are doing to ensure that the project stays on track
• Sometimes, negative feedback occurs because someone is missing context or does not have all the information. In this case, it can be helpful to ensure that the stakeholder understands

Handling positive feedback about your progress report

When you get positive feedback about the progress you’re making, this is a great time to share that feedback with the entire team and celebrate. There are ways to incorporate this kind of feedback into your team’s rhythms.

One way is to surface positive feedback at a daily standup or weekly team meeting, letting them know that the leadership team or external stakeholders are happy with the progress are cheering you on. If appropriate, inviting a stakeholder to a team meeting and letting them know they’re excited about the progress can be a fun addition.

Conclusion and key takeaways

Progress reports can help keep your stakeholders in the loop, build trust, and keep them up to date about what’s happening within your project. Remember that good progress reports adapt and change as you get feedback from your stakeholders and as the project needs change. Templating your progress reports can help you save time and allow others to contribute as you assign segments to other members of the team.

Remember that you can also keep it fun by adding your touch to it. If negative feedback arises, incorporate what you can. And when positive feedback comes up, remember to pass it on.

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Progress Report: What is it & How to Write it? (Steps & Format)

Want to create a progress report to highlight the project’s achievements? No worries, we have got you covered! Read on…

A quick question – on a scale of 1 to 10, how important is it to regularly keep track and provide project updates to your supervisors, colleagues, or clients? The answer is 12! Simply, because nobody likes being left in the dark!

For any project in a company, people around it need to be well-informed about the project status, the research being done by the project team, their decisions, and the scope for improvement. These updates are an integral part of project management and ensure that every team member is operating efficiently with their goals being met on time.

One way to showcase the status of your project and keep track of it is to write a powerful  progress report!

In fact, the American Society for Training and Development shows that having a specific place to check your progress increases the probability of  meeting a goal by 95%.

Progress reports are a great place for project managers to inform and engage their supervisors, clients, or associates, about the progress they have made on a project over a certain period.

If executed well, progress reports provide a quick overview of how things are humming along, offering valuable insights to increase productivity, provide the necessary guidance, and quickly solve emerging difficulties.

However, writing a progress report can be a little daunting, especially, when you have a diverse team and various sub-projects to manage. Well, don’t fret! We’re going to fix that. In this blog post, we’ll teach you everything about progress reports, why they are important, and how you can write one that will make everyone say ‘wow’!

  What is the Progress Report? (Definition)

A progress report is a document that explains in detail how much progress you have made towards the completion of your ongoing project.

A progress report is a management tool used in all types of organizations, that outlines the tasks completed, activities carried out, and target achieved vis-à-vis your project plan.

In a progress report, you explain any or all of the following:

• The amount of work complete?
• What part of the work is currently in progress?
• The problems or unexpected things that have occurred?
• What work is pending?
• How the project is going in general?

Read more:  How To Write An Impressive Project Proposal?

Why are Progress Reports Important?

No project manager wakes up thinking “ I wish I could make reports for my supervisor and team all day” ! We get it. Writing progress reports are not very fun.

However, you know that writing progress reports are part of the deal. Progressive reporting demands talking with your team or client to understand the goals and showcase the information that closely relates to the said goals.

Whether the report is about updating the investors, marketing performance, or resource management. These reports let everyone see what’s going well and what isn’t.

It also assists managers to see the overall success or failure of projects. Furthermore, progress reports help to:

1. Make Information Transparent

The glue that holds together any relationship is visibility and transparency. A well-defined progress report directly presents how your work affects the project’s bottom line and showcases the rights and wrongs!

By adding transparency to your project plan, you can build an unmatched level of credibility and trust with your team and clients.

2. Encourage Constant Interaction

Creating and discussing progress reports results in constant communication and keeps everyone in the loop. Being in constant contact with others on a weekly or monthly basis ensures a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities.

3. Improve Project Evaluation and Review

Previous progress reports will help you in clarifying loopholes, and systemic issues, and examine documents to find out what went wrong, what can be done right, and which area needs improvement.

4. Provides Insight for Future Planning

When a progress report shows all the delays that have occurred, the supervisor or a project manager can monitor and investigate the issue that hindered progress and take additional steps to prevent them from happening in the future.

Read more:  How to Write Project Reports that ‘Wow’ Your Clients?

How to Write a Progress Report with 4 Simple Steps?

Progress reports are essential documents for tracking project plans and initiatives, but if the readers and writers are not in sync, these reports can be a hit-or-miss exercise for everyone involved.

Therefore, here are some steps to help you deliver the right information to the right people at the right time.

Step 1. Explain the purpose of your report

There are many reasons for someone to write a progress report. Obviously, for many of them, it’s to brief the progress and status of the project.

Readers might also want to know detailed information about the project’s purpose, its duration, and other important insights.

Step 2. Define your audience

Once you have sorted out the purpose of writing the progress report, consider the type of audience you will be targeting and the details that your readers are going to acknowledge in the report.

These can be, what decisions your readers are going to need to make after reading the progress report, the information they are going to need to know to oversee and participate in the project effectively, etc.

Step 3. Create a “work completed” section

In this section, you should describe everything that has already been done and the best way to do this is to mention the completed tasks chronologically.

You can specify dates, tasks you and your team were working on, information on key findings, etc.

Step 4. Summarize your progress report

In the summary section, provide the essential details about the to-do and completed work. Also, add a short description of the problems your team encountered, recommendations from your supervisor for their resolution, and whether any assistance on the project is required.

Read more:  Business Report: What is it & How to Write it? (Steps & Format)

Creating a Progress Report that Stands Out with Bit.ai !

If you are planning to show a progress report that looks exactly like any other bland report, chances are your readers are just going to skim it along the way or won’t read it at all.

Well, to lure your reader’s attention and proudly display the work you have done on the project, you have to make the progress report irresistibly compelling!

How about awesome visuals, accompanied by quality content that could grab the reader’s interest and encourage them to read the whole thing? No doubt, everybody likes reading something easy to grasp and visually stunning!

Luckily, we have got the perfect tool for you that will provide a reading experience like never before and bring your grey-scale progress reports to come alive! A solution like  Bit.ai

Bit is a new-age cloud-based document collaboration tool that helps teams create, share, manage, and track interactive workplace documents.

Bit helps you make sure your reports are more than just plain bland text and images. Thus, apart from allowing multiple users to collaborate on reports, Bit also allows users to share any sort of rich media like campaign video, tables, charts, One Drive files, Excel Spreadsheets, GIFs, Tweets, Pinterest boards, etc. Anything on the internet with a link can be shared and Bit will automatically turn it into visual content.

Bit has a very minimal design aesthetic which makes every design element pop, awesome readability, and rich features that will prevent collaborators from messing up any documents and help them rethink the way they work!

Besides writing progress reports, you can easily create other beautiful documents like the statement of work , project documentation, operational plan , roadmap, project charter , etc. in a common workplace for other team members to collaborate, document, share their knowledge, brainstorm ideas, store digital assets, and innovate together.

The best part is that this knowledge is safely secured in your workspaces and can be shared (or kept private) with anyone in your organization or the public!

All-in-all Bit is like Google Docs on steroids! So, no more settling for those boring text editors when you have an excessively robust solution to walk you through!

Still, not sure how Bit can help you create that perfect progress report to woo your readers? Let’s see some more of Bit’s awesome capabilities!

Key Benefits of Creating Your Progress Reports on Bit.ai

Simple, clean UI:  Bit has a very minimal design aesthetic to it, allowing a newbie to quickly get on board with the platform. Even though the platform is feature-rich, it does a great job as to not overwhelm a new user and provides a systematic approach to work.

Organization of information:   Information is often scattered in cloud storage apps, emails, Slack channels, and more. Bit brings all your information in one place by allowing you to organize information in workspaces and folders. Bring all your documents, media files, and other important company data in one place.

Brand consistency:  Focus on the content and let Bit help you with the design and formatting. Bit documents are completely responsive and look great on all devices. With amazing templates and themes, Bit docs provide you with the type of brand and design consistency that is unheard of in the documentation industry

Smart search:  Bit has very robust search functionality that allows anyone to search and find their documents swiftly. You can search workspaces, folders, document titles, and the content inside of documents with Bit’s rich-text search.

Media integrations:  Companies use an average of 34 SaaS apps! No wonder why most of our time is spent hopping from one app to the next, looking for information. This is why Bit.ai integrates with over 100+ popular applications (YouTube, Typeform, LucidChart, Loom, Google Drive, etc) to help teams weave information in their documents beyond just text and images.

Multiple ways of sharing : Bit documents can be shared in  three different states :

• Live state : A live state meaning that all changes that you make to the document will update in real-time. If you are sharing your documents with clients, partners, or customers they will always get your most up-to-date changes.
• Embeds : You can embed Bit documents on any website or blog. Bit docs are fully responsive and render perfectly on your website.
• Tracking : You can track your documents and gather real-time insights to understand how users interact with your content. See how much time users spend viewing documents, scroll ratio, user information, and more.

Our team at  bit.ai  has created a few more templates to make your business processes more efficient. Make sure to check them out before you go, y our team might need them!

• Training Manual Template
• Brainstorming Template
• Meeting Minutes Template
• Employee Handbook Template
• Transition Plan Template
• Customer Service Training Manual Template
• Employee Contract Template
• Performance Improvement Plan Template

A well-defined progress report is like the pulse of a project! It determines your relationship with your readers, highlights all the updates- big or small, and keeps everyone on the same page. Remember, depending on the complexity and scope of the project, you might need to share your progress report on a weekly or monthly basis for better efficiency!

Once you follow all the steps that are mentioned above, your reports are surely going to feel like a breeze of fresh air to your readers, making you look credible and professional. So what are you waiting for?

Do you write such reports in your organization, if yes, which tool do you use? Let us know in the comments below or tweet us @bit_ai

Further reads:

• Technical Report: What is it & How to Write it? (Steps & Structure Included)
• 11 Amazing Goal Tracking Apps and Tools! (Free & Paid)
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• Performance Report: What is it & How to Create it? (Steps Included)
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Progress Report: What is it & How to Write it? (+Examples)

Picture this: You're a project manager juggling multiple tasks, deadlines, and team members. Keeping the balance between different tasks is hard but very important.

Enter the progress report, your secret weapon in conquering chaos and ensuring smooth sailing.

But what exactly is a progress report, and how do you craft one effectively? In this blog post, I'll demystify progress reports and guide you through the process of writing one.

From daily progress reports to weekly progress reports, using practical progress report templates and a tried-and-true format.

What is a Progress Report?

A progress report is a vital tool in project management , designed to keep different types of stakeholders informed about the ongoing status of a project.

It's a concise document highlighting current achievements, challenges, and goals, allowing the project manager to track progress and make necessary adjustments.

Project progress reports are one of the most important types of project management reports . They help maintain transparency, communication, and accountability within a team, ensuring everyone is on the same page. They also provide valuable insights for decision-makers, helping them gauge the project's overall health and success.

Here's what you can expect to find in a typical progress report:

• Project Overview: A brief summary of the project's objectives and scope.
• Current Status: A snapshot of where the project stands regarding completed tasks, milestones reached, and overall progress.
• Challenges and Issues: Any technical difficulties, resource constraints, or personnel issues.
• Next Steps: The immediate tasks and goals on the horizon and how the team plans to tackle them.
• Progress Report Format: The layout of the report can vary depending on the organization's preferences or industry standards.

Writing a progress report can seem daunting, but it doesn't have to be. You'll create a valuable document that keeps everyone informed and aligned by breaking it down into manageable sections and using clear, concise language.

Embrace the progress report writing skill and watch your team's productivity and communication soar.

Why are Progress Reports Important?

Progress reports play a vital role in project management, serving as a communication tool to keep stakeholders updated. Let's delve into why progress reports are crucial for the success of any project or business.

Transparency and Accountability

Progress reports eliminate ambiguity and promote transparency. By regularly sharing project updates with stakeholders, the project team is held accountable for their work. This accountability ensures everyone is on track to meet the project milestones and objectives.

Identify Potential Issues Early

Progress reports help identify potential problems before they escalate. Team members can spot bottlenecks, delays, and other issues by examining project data and analyzing the progress report.

Early detection enables the team to take prompt action and prevent these issues from derailing the project.

Effective Decision-Making

Armed with accurate and timely information from progress reports, project managers and stakeholders can make informed decisions.

When a project progresses smoothly, management can allocate resources more efficiently or plan for future phases. On the other hand, if a project encounters challenges, swift decisions can be made to reallocate resources or change course.

Maintaining Momentum

A progress report's important aspect is maintaining momentum. When team members see their progress documented and shared, it fosters a sense of accomplishment and motivation.

This positive reinforcement encourages teams to keep pushing forward and maintain their productivity.

Improved Communication and Collaboration

Progress reports facilitate better communication and collaboration among team members. By sharing updates and insights, the entire team stays informed, reducing the chances of miscommunication or misunderstandings.

Moreover, progress reports provide a platform for team members to ask questions, provide feedback, and offer support.

Performance Tracking

Business progress reports, such as quarterly, monthly, or annual progress reports, help track performance over time.

By comparing past reports, management can gauge the business's overall health and identify trends or patterns. This historical data can inform future strategies and drive continuous improvement.

How to Write a Progress Report

Step 1: define the purpose.

The first step in writing a progress report is understanding its purpose. Progress reports inform stakeholders about the project's status, including what has been accomplished, any challenges encountered, and future planning. This allows project managers to keep everyone in the loop and make informed decisions.

The purpose of this monthly progress report is to update the management team on the project's status. It presents an overview of completed tasks, in-progress tasks, upcoming tasks, and any challenges faced during the reporting period. This report will also provide insight into key performance metrics and future planning .

Step 2: Know Your Audience

Determine who will read the progress report. Is it for higher-ups, clients, or team members? Tailor the language, tone, and level of detail accordingly.

Step 3: Set the Timeframe

Decide the reporting period – weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Choose a timeframe that best suits your project's pace and stakeholder expectations.

Step 4: Collect Information

Gather data on tasks completed, team members involved, and any obstacles faced. Consult previous progress reports, project documentation , and team members for accurate information.

Step 5: Organize Content

Break down the report into logical sections. Here’s what we suggest:

• Summary: A brief overview of the report's contents.
• Completed Tasks: List tasks accomplished during the reporting period.
• In-Progress Tasks: Describe ongoing tasks and their current status.
• Upcoming Tasks: Outline tasks scheduled for the next reporting period.
• Challenges: Discuss any obstacles encountered and how they were addressed.
• Key Metrics: Highlight key project performance indicators and progress towards goals.
• Future Planning: Discuss plans for the next reporting period and any adjustments needed.

Step 6: Write the Summary

Craft a concise summary that provides a snapshot of the report. Mention key achievements, challenges, and plans for the future. Keep it brief but informative.

This progress report covers our team's accomplishments during Q1, with a particular focus on the completion of the website redesign and the initiation of our social media marketing campaign. We've encountered some challenges in coordinating with external vendors, but we've implemented solutions to overcome those obstacles .

Step 7: Detail Completed Tasks

List all tasks completed during the reporting period. Include the following information:

• Task description
• Team members involved
• Start and end dates
• Any relevant metrics (e.g., hours spent, budget used)
• Task 1 – Implement a user login system.
• Team members: Jeff and Sarah.
• Start date: January 1st.
• End date: January 15th.
• Metrics: 98% successful login rate.

Step 8: Discuss In-Progress Tasks

Outline ongoing tasks, their current status, and expected completion dates. Explain any delays and their impact on the project timeline .

• Task 2 – Develop a mobile app.
• Current status: 70% completed.
• Expected completion date: February 15th.

Step 9: Describe Upcoming Tasks

Identify tasks scheduled for the next reporting period. Provide details such as:

• Assigned team members
• Estimated start and end dates
• Dependencies on other tasks
• Task 3 – Launch marketing campaign.
• Assigned team members: Anas and Mark.
• Estimated start date: February 16th.
• Estimated end date: March 1st.
• Dependencies: Completion of mobile app development.

Step 10: Address Challenges

Discuss any challenges encountered during the reporting period. Describe how they were resolved or any plans to address them in the future.

• Challenge 1 – Unforeseen technical issues causing delays.
• Resolution: Increased resources and adjusted project timeline to accommodate the additional time required.

Step 11: Present Key Metrics

Highlight key project management performance indicators and progress toward project goals. Use visuals like charts or graphs to make the data more digestible.

• Metric 1 – User registration rate.
• Current status: 500 new users per week.
• Target goal: 1,000 new users per week.

Step 12: Plan for the Future

Discuss plans for the next reporting period, including any adjustments required. This may involve reallocating resources, revising timelines, or redefining objectives.

In the next reporting period, our focus will shift to improving user retention and engagement. We plan to implement new features based on user feedback and optimize the onboarding process.

Step 13: Proofread and Revise

Review the report for clarity, accuracy, and readability. Ensure all information is presented in a clear, concise manner.

Step 14: Submit the Report

Submit the progress report to the relevant stakeholders, ensuring they have ample time to review and provide feedback.

Example Progress Report Template

Use this template as a starting point for your progress report:

By following these steps and guidelines, you'll be well-equipped to write an effective progress report that keeps stakeholders informed and drives project success. Clear communication is key to maintaining momentum and ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Examples of Progress Reports

1. business progress report.

A business progress report helps track company growth, accomplishments, and areas for improvement. It includes:

• Revenue and sales figures.
• Market trends and competition.
• Operational efficiency.
• Employee performance.
• Goals and milestones achieved.

2. Quarterly Progress Reports

These reports offer a snapshot of a project or business every three months. They cover:

• Major achievements.
• Challenges faced and solutions.
• Key performance indicators (KPIs).
• Updated project timeline.
• Budget status.

3. Monthly Progress Reports

Monthly progress reports provide more frequent updates on projects or departments. They highlight:

• Accomplishments and setbacks.
• Progress towards monthly goals.
• Resource utilization.
• Issues and risks.
• Action items for the upcoming month.

4. Project Status

Project status reports focus on a specific project's progress. They showcase:

• Project documentation updates.
• Completed tasks and upcoming deliverables.
• Risks and issues encountered.
• Team members' performance.
• Changes to project scope or timeline.

5. Personal Progress

Personal progress reports help individuals track their growth and development. They include:

• Personal goals and objectives.
• Achievements and lessons learned.
• Skill development and training.
• Performance feedback.
• Areas for improvement and action plans.

Best Practices for Writing Progress Reports

Know Your Target Audience

When you create a progress report, start by identifying your target audience . Project stakeholders, team members, and future decision-makers should all benefit from your report.

Write in such a way that it is easy for them to understand. Avoid technical jargon and explain industry-specific language so everyone stays on the same page.

Reporting Frequency and Dates

Establish a reporting frequency for your progress reports. Whether weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, maintain consistency. Include report dates and the expected completion date of the current project to provide a clear timeline.

Stick to the Project's Scope

Focus on the project's scope and stay within the project's purpose. Don't digress or include unrelated details. A concise report ensures that readers remain engaged and informed.

Review Previous Reports

Refer to the previous report to identify any changes or developments. Highlight the work completed, project deliverables , and any updates to the project plan. Doing so will maintain continuity and keep stakeholders informed about the department's progress.

Prioritize and Organize

Arrange project priorities logically, focusing on the most critical aspects first. Organize the information in a clear, easy-to-follow format. Use headings, subheadings, and bullet points for better readability.

Be Transparent About Problems

Don't shy away from discussing problems or challenges. Addressing issues helps stakeholders understand the project's status and any hurdles that may affect successful completion. Offer potential solutions or workarounds to demonstrate proactive thinking.

Back Up Progress with Relevant Data

Use relevant data to support your progress. Figures, charts, and percentages can provide a quick overview of the project's status. Make sure your data is accurate, up-to-date, and presented in an easy-to-understand format.

Highlight Team Member Contributions

Acknowledge team members who have made significant contributions to the project. This recognition boosts morale and encourages continued excellence.

Include Future Projections

Discuss what's next for the project, such as upcoming tasks or milestones. This helps stakeholders understand the trajectory of the project and anticipate the work ahead.

Keep it Simple and Actionable

Present complex ideas in a simple, easy-to-understand language. Break down complicated concepts into manageable chunks. Offer actionable insights and practical takeaways, so stakeholders can quickly grasp the project details.

Establish a Database

Create a database to store all progress reports. This repository helps stakeholders access past reports and provides valuable insights for future projects. It also ensures that information is preserved and easily accessible when needed.

Proofread and Edit

Before sharing your progress report, proofread and edit for clarity, consistency, and accuracy. This step ensures that your report is polished, professional, and easy to understand.

Progress Reporting FAQs

A progress report is most valuable when you're working on a long-term project. It's a way to keep stakeholders updated on progress and share important insights.

The primary purpose of a progress report is to provide a clear and concise overview of a project's status. This includes: – Communicating progress toward goals – Identifying potential issues and solutions – Demonstrating accountability and commitment to the project – Providing a step-by-step guide of completed tasks and upcoming work – Offering visual aids, like charts and graphs, to illustrate data A well-crafted progress report keeps stakeholders informed and fosters collaboration. It's also valuable for maintaining momentum and motivation throughout the project.

Writing Progress Reports Does Not Need to Be Hard

So, you've reached the end of this blog post. You're now equipped with the knowledge and tools to make progress report writing a breeze. Remember, it doesn't have to be a daunting task.

Keep it simple, stick to the facts, and let your progress shine. Talk about what you achieved, any challenges you faced, and how you overcame them. Use a clear, concise, structured format to ensure your message is easily understood.

To simplify the process, check out our guide on project reporting tools .

Ask yourself:

• What are the key takeaways from this period?
• How can I best communicate the status of the project?
• Are there any challenges that need addressing?

Considering these questions will make your progress report informative, actionable, and engaging. And don't forget, practice makes perfect. The more progress reports you write, the easier and more efficient the process will become.

Explore Further

• Essential Components of Project Management
• Best Project Management Software 2023
• The Inspiring History of Project Management. How Did It Begin?
• 9 Essential Roles In Project Management

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Martin luenendonk.

Martin loves entrepreneurship and has helped dozens of entrepreneurs by validating the business idea, finding scalable customer acquisition channels, and building a data-driven organization. During his time working in investment banking, tech startups, and industry-leading companies he gained extensive knowledge in using different software tools to optimize business processes.

This insights and his love for researching SaaS products enables him to provide in-depth, fact-based software reviews to enable software buyers make better decisions.

How to Write a Progress Report: Full Guide

Table of contents, what is a project outline.

In this article, we'll explore everything you need to know to create a progress report and the perfect reporting structure for your business.

We'll help you build a business case for introducing progress report writing into your workflow, as well as share optimal reporting timeframes, how to write them, and how to structure progress reports with your team. We'll close out with some best practices for writing progress reports, and help you find your feet in this massively beneficial working style.

What is a progress report?

First up, we're guiding you through a progress report, but what is it? The spoiler's in the name "progress," which means 'forward or onward movement towards a destination'. Since most projects usually have a final target destination, the journey getting there has to be described in some way to apprise other people of the status.

A progress report is a type of business writing designed to update someone on various tasks of someone else . It's written for managers, project stakeholders, leadership, or company-wide updates. It doesn't merely show progress or successes but also drawbacks, obstacles, and recommendations for improvement.

Reporting project progress is a formal, documented, and structured way of keeping people in the know. There are many types of progress reports out there, email wrap ups, memos, PDFs, business letters, project summaries , Google docs, and the list goes on.

Why are progress reports important for business?

If your team members aren't big on report writing, this section of the guide will help you build a formal case to introduce progress reporting to your workflow— time to get away from lost email chains or messy PDFs.

Whether you're a manager looking for ways to get a better overview of your team, or you're a team player looking to increase business efficiency— the below is why creating a working progress report is so essential for any business.

1. Align your team

Staying in sync as a busy team with lots of subtasks can be painfully difficult sometimes. Especially with a distributed workforce, important information gets lost in a mass of slack messages, email chains, and 1-1 catch-ups. It can get really overwhelming when juggling holidays, sick leaves, and meetings with external stakeholders.

Project progress reports effectively summarize your teams' achievements, milestones covered, and challenges encountered in one place. Use a progress report as a one-stop-shop for any team member that needs an update on a particular project or initiative. Progress reports eliminate the need for managers and team members to repeat themselves, allowing everyone to catch up quickly on their schedule.

2. Showcase wins

Progress reports are a fantastic tool for managers and leadership to credit and acknowledge an individual's efforts and progress towards company goals. When annual or bi-annual reviews come around, these progress reports can serve as the backbone for someone's performance record and enable a fair assessment of work ethic based on factual progress rather than feelings, bias, or solely major projects.

At the same time, reporting progress on a project gives employees an opportunity to celebrate their wins and have a notch on their belts when promotions are in consideration.

3. Give stakeholders updates on projects

An easy win, and an obvious point but certainly not one to be overlooked. The primary aim of writing progress reports is to give stakeholders the updates they need and bring them up to speed on the status of everything . The stakeholders can be anyone in the business or externally. They just need to be known by the reporter when writing the report, so the reporter can include the necessary information they know a particular person will require.

4. Document work for future reference

If a business is ever looking to repeat a project or strategy, your progress reports are essential for learning and improving processes. These reports allow a company to optimize a strategy or process based on learnings. Writing a progress report on projects regularly is an excellent way of documenting workflow and in the future, the workforce will have a solid and practical reference point to draw ideas, motivation, and innovation from.

5. Identify common roadblocks

While a progress report primarily highlights the positive advancements in the project, it's also important to highlight the bad - roadblocks. These can come in many forms; maybe it's technology, maybe it's a vendor, maybe it's team capabilities or a particular team member. Managers should collate progress reports and identify common roadblocks that need addressing.  In doing so, they'll work towards making the business an operationally smoother workplace.

When to write a progress report

A progress report can be put together at many different times, depending on the goal of the report. Different types of companies and businesses would tackle progress report writing differently. A crop progress report in agriculture can be written weekly or quarterly according to the stages in farm processes, but a sales report aimed for a year cumulative target might have to be written as frequently as everyday. Here's a breakdown of the different types of progress reports according to frequency and how to create them.

Daily progress reports

These progress reports are short, straight-to-the-point, and usually between a manager and a team member. There's no spectacular detailing here, just a quick overview of daily tasks achieved, any problems that came up, and progress made towards larger goals. A daily progress report should be delivered at the same time everyday, preferably at the end of work to summarize the day's activities, or at the beginning of work hours to relay the previous day's progress.

Weekly progress reports

This type of report is best between a manager and a team member. It should dive into what a team member had planned to achieve at the start of the week, what they eventually achieved, and how they were able to pull things off.

The weekly progress report is best delivered on a Friday afternoon, so managers and team members have time to chat it over and make an action plan for the following week.

Monthly progress reports

Monthly progress reports are usually reasonably detailed, written to update a small business or team on a particular individual's or department's progress towards goals. Writing a progress report every month is a great opportunity to highlight particular individuals who worked exceptionally hard in the month and give other departments an idea on how your team is performing.

Quarterly progress reports

Every business - well, every serious business - sets quarterly goals and KPIs. It's extremely important to follow up on those goals in an appropriate period of time. Quarterly progress reports can be of two kinds. First, there's the in-depth one that is usually several pages long and goes into details about everything that is achieved by the company in the past quarter. It highlights all the major wins, obstacles, and team member's opinions on workflow improvement. The second one is simply an overview, a brief report that checks whether the key performance indicators and OKRs (objectives and key results) are being met. Progress report comments are super-useful in explaining or summarizing sections of information in quarterly reports, to help the reader grasp the ideas quickly and efficiently.

Annual progress reports

The final report of the year is the ultimate progress report. The annual project progress report has to be as detailed as possible, and it's often such a big deal that it's printed out and handed out to every company member. It's a central knowledge base for everyone to stay apprised of the company's progress in the past year. This report is usually aimed at company-wide or towards leadership. What did your department achieve across the entire year? What can you celebrate, what lessons have you learned, and what are you hoping to change for the next period?

How to write a progress report

Progress report writing can be tricky, especially for someone doing it for the first time. Also, it's common knowledge that project reports might be different for different companies. A construction progress report might need to be more pictorial and diagrammatic, and in this type of report, it's okay to be technical. A sales project report, however, should be concise and easy to understand at a glance. Follow these steps to ensure your reports are as legible as possible.

Be clear and specific

It's not always going to be easy keeping off technical jargon in project progress reporting, but you must try to keep it simple with language and sentence structure; it can be the make or break of any progress report. Try to use short sentences and proofread any report before submitting them. Most times, the readers of the reports are too busy with other things to have the time for dramatic writing. The report can be detailed and in-depth without being complicated.

Explain industry-specific language

Sometimes, it will be entirely impossible to keep the jargon out when writing progress reports. If you're reporting for people outside of your team, then it's important to explain any abbreviations or lingo that may only be common knowledge within your department; it prevents miscommunication.

Number & title projects

As a general rule of thumb, get a reference number and title to every project you cover; this will help people discuss them online afterward.

Stay formal

An informal report remains limited to peers only. To report project progress in a formal environment, an appropriately toned report gives a manager the option to keep it to herself or to share it with a broader audience with no need to amend. Avoid doing the double work of writing a scrappy report and having to write another one when the higher-ups want a peek.

Progress reports step-by-step

The following is a step-by-step guide to creating useful progress reports. Learning how to write a progress report is a process, and the more you write, the better you become at organizing your details into clean, easy-to-understand sections.

Follow this 8 step format for progress report writing to ensure you include all the important details:

1. Place identifying details at the top

The first step to creating a killer progress report document is to title your report by placing the identifying details at the top of the page. Each report must be clearly distinguished from all the others for easy documentation. Untitled reports seem rushed with little attention to some of the most important details.

These details should be written in clear, bold fonts of varying sizes. They include:

- Title of the report - Date of submission - Department/division - Reference number - Handling/supervising officer

2. Project details

Following the identifying details of the report are the details of the project itself. It doesn't matter how many progress reports are submitted in a period of time; the details of the project must be included in each one. The higher-ups probably have a long list of reports being submitted by various departments, so they'd always require a refresher of what each team is working on.

After the title, you should write one or two sentences generally describing the project. After this, you can list out the details of the project. The best practice in a working progress report would be to put the information in a tabular form. These include:

- The project name/title - Project ID - Starting date - Expected date of completion - Current status - Team members involved - Project manager - Supervising officers

3. Summary of the report

This should be a short paragraph between 100 and 150 words, briefly describing the project details and current status of the project. It gives an overview of everything that's currently going with the project, and it's written for the sole purpose of providing a quick glance-over within the report. Do not include any negative details or complaints here - keep it short and simple.

4. Core activities

Following the summary is an in-depth description of all core activities going on within the scope of the project, you have to describe the sub-tasks and how the teams are getting on with their roles. Tabulation is also a great way to represent this information.The table labels include and are not limited to title of the subtask/activity, small description, relevant dates (start and expected completion), current status, team member assigned, and relevant file links. Progress report comments from the supervising officer can also be included here. The overall section is already a detailed input, so keep all secondary details brief and straight-to-the-point.

5. Current quantifiable results

This is an optional table, especially for projects that are still beginning and are yet to yield reports. When writing progress reports for ongoing projects, this section can be written as a list of or a three-column table containing the name of the task holder, subtask name, and brief details of the result achieved. Make sure the results are mentally quantifiable and reasonable. If there's nothing to write, leave this section undone and don't bother with fluffy or unnecessary information. Doing this will essentially reduce the transparency of your report.

6. Challenges encountered

Most times, teams would encounter problems and obstacles with implementing the overall project plan. When creating progress reports, it's important to make a section where you outline the challenges encountered in a list, and highlight the subtask(s) where the problem actually occurred. Describe how this has affected the completion of the project or the overall results as a whole.Hot tip: Avoid using strong negative language here. You can describe in detail but keep the tone professional.

7. Recommendations and suggestions

If you need to consult members of your team for their input in this section, great idea! Here, you're required to recommend improvements that could possibly fix the problems outlined above or improve the situation. This is best written as a list. You can expand briefly on any point that needs further details. Ensure to mention how your suggestions directly affect the results.

8. Concluding paragraph and signatures

In progress report writing, the conclusion is simply a re-hash of everything discussed in the report. The trick is to compress all the information into one to two sentences, or a maximum of three. Let it quickly capture the main point of that report, how it intertwines with the previous report and your expectation for the next report.

Also, leave a couple of lines for your signature as the project manager and another for the supervising stakeholder.

Best practices for writing a progress report

Writing a progress report in project management is a solid sign of dedication and commitment from any team or division. Even if it's not a company-wide mandate to write these reports, sometimes, it's actually useful to write them for in-team benefits. It keeps everyone motivated and inspired. We'll close this guide out with some best practices for creating your progress reports and introducing them to your team's workflow.

Whether you're putting together a business progress report, a research progress report, or any other - here are 13 tips to help it really stand out:

1. Use data

Where you can, always use data to showcase progress or lack of it. Think about ways you can generate data with the progress reporting tools you have and display the data in a clear way; always try to show movement toward the greater goal.

2. Use visual aids if necessary

Don't be afraid to support your report submission with visuals. There's no point in wasting paragraphs of text explaining a situation when you can explain it with a screenshot. Writing a progress report isn't merely about passing information but also engaging the reader to absorb your headway with a project. If there are any stonewalls, your visual aids make them easier to identify.

3. Be transparent

Transparency is invaluable if you want your reporting structure to be productive and positively contribute towards moving forward. Highlight to staff that progress reports call for transparency. No one needs to hide behind fluff or try to optimize the status of a report for fear of looking bad. Address every project as it is. There's no need for fluff pieces or grossly unnecessary information. If your report is too short and there are not enough details to create a solid progress report document, you can ask for an extension or simply turn in your document the way it is. As long as you stay honest and write appropriately, you'd have successfully done your job.

4. Make sure everything is dated

Due dates, report dates, task deliveries, the lot. Earlier in this article, we mentioned how these project progress reports would be the backbone of research for any similar project in the company's future. If you date everything, someone can dive into systems to pull metrics they may need from correct dates, and better understand the tools and talent the company had at that particular time.

5. Include company and department goals

If your progress reports are for inter-departmental use, then it's useful to share the goals that you personally, or your department, are working towards. Double-check what you can and can't share with human resources if you’re ever unsure. In doing so, you'll give the reader greater insight into your logic and actions.

6. Discuss problems and progress

Every report is a platform for discussing problems and progress. When writing progress reports, kick conversations off via the content you provide and ask any questions you'd like answered from the reader. Write in a cordial, formal, and neutral tone.

Tip: Your reader is there to help you, no matter what role they're in within the company; you'll be surprised by the innovative ideas you can get from other departments. 💡

7. share it wisely.

Think wisely about who needs to see this document, especially the special progress report comments included by a top-level supervisor. Is it more than management? Perhaps other departments or even external stakeholders, like funding agencies, will benefit from reading this report. Try to identify those who need the report before writing it and then share it so that everyone has easy access.

8. Structure storage

You can store reports, no problem. However, think of the architecture around your report storage system. Try to build a map to guide people through reports and how they're stored. You want people to find a report quickly.

Figure out what someone needs to search for reporting project progress at any time, or the path they need to follow. This process will save a lot of time in the future and empower employees to use the reports at any time, not just when they're first delivered. That's a wrap!

9. Add a call-to-action

This is a great opportunity to get instant help for the reader or your superiors. Call-to-actions are useful when there are uncertainties, confusions, or problems with the project. These could include task differentiation, unclear milestones, or shortage of funds. A call-to-action could be asking the superior to supply clarification or some feedback in an email or a communication channel. You could also ask for a budget review or anything else your team might need to follow through to the successful completion of the project.Note that when writing a progress report, you should still limit the use of CTAs to extreme necessities.

10. Get all hands on deck

Always consult your team members when working on progress reports. If you're the team leader, you can invite everyone to pitch in and submit informal reports of their personal progress with milestones in the project. If you're a team member assigned the role of progress report writing, you could reach out to everyone individually for their input.

One of the best ways to write a solid progress report is to include the personal overviews of the members of the team pushing the project forward. This may not exactly be possible with frequent progress report schedules, such as daily and weekly, but with longer timelines, team members are invaluable to the process.

11. Ditch the passive voice

Let's be honest - a lot of your superiors don't have the time to read all the reports that come their way. Using a lot of passive voice while writing a progress report reduces readability and most times, the reader will not engage with the content.

Instead of writing: "We were instructed by our manager to restart the milestone..." You can write: "Our manager instructed us to restart the milestone..."

While you won't always be able to avoid the passive voice, make a solid effort to report actively. You can check out the Grammarly and Hemingway Apps for passive-to-active voice detection and correction. Also, progress report comments should never be re-written to the passive voice. You may correct and edit grammatical/typographical errors, but do not rephrase or entirely rewrite.

12. Keep the length optimal

A tricky line to walk.

If your progress report is abnormally short, no one will take you seriously. If it's too long, you can be certain your managers aren't going to read it. They'd probably skim it and move on to something else. It'll be really hurtful to spend so much time working on a lengthy and detailed progress report only to have it skimmed and dumped - also, it's simply not efficient.

It's important to keep the length of your report reasonable. If you can fit everything you have to report into one page, go for it. This also depends on the frequency of the report. If it's a daily progress report, keep it as short as half a page. A weekly progress report can be longer, quarterly reports can be a couple of pages while the annual report is the only one where it makes sense to have several pages in the document.

13. Always edit and proofread

Obviously. It's important to maintain great writing standards to communicate efficiently and impress your readers. No one will enjoy reading a report with grammatical and typographical errors. Always read through your report at least twice and use software such as Grammarly to pick the less-subtle errors out.

Enjoy Progress Reporting with Slite

Slite isn't just any regular project management tool, it's a robust and feature-packed collaboration platform that can super-charge your team's organization to the highest levels of efficiency. It's amazing how much difference the right tool can make in your operations.

Slite has tons of amazing pre-developed templates for all project management activities. Our template for progress report writing will certainly take the tedium and unnecessary boredom out of updating statuses at any frequency. It's available for free download when you sign up on our app, and you should enjoy our templates' useful new features. Below are some of the most awesome things to love about Slite:

1. Doc collections

Organizing documents can easily become a mess. Slite has a super-sweet doc collection feature, stacking them into well-organized color-coded lists with zero room for annoying sidebar clutter. We provide an easy filtering and sorting feature, quick cycling and embedding features, and you can reference your docs anywhere within the app. You can also arrange into column types and choose different views for each team! The doc is a really helpful feature when writing a progress report. All documents relevant to the current project can be easily sorted and referenced in your report.

2. A range of super-useful collaboration tools

This is why Slite is an absolute breath of fresh air. Slite has a wide range of super-useful features and extra tools to make collaboration easy for your team: - Communication tools - Quick decision updating tab - Quick reactions - Doc embeds for progress reports - Rich-text formatting - Quote and reply function

3. Vast integration range

Slite external app integration allows you to directly import documents from applications such as G-docs or Evernote. There's no hassle switching between docs. Slite integration also accommodates applications such as Slack, Google Drive, Miro, Pitch, Github, and social media applications. If the details you need to write your progress report are stored in another application, Slite makes retrieval easy and straightforward.

Manage Progress Reporting with Slite

If you’re looking to build a progress report into your team’s work schedule then we’ve already done the heavy lifting for you.Use Slite's free progress report template , and build on it.Hopefully, you’re walking away from this guide fully-equipped to introduce progress reporting to your business and start benefiting from this fantastic process— continuing to make great things happen.

Christophe Pasquier is Slite’s co-founder and CEO. Chris’ goal is to help teams do incredible work in better environments, by helping them embrace remote work and async communication. He currently lives in Berlin with his wife and baby Noé. Find him @Christophepas on Twitter!

Working remotely? So are we since 2016. Slite may be the right communication tool for you!

Managing projects remotely discover our list of the best softwares to use in 2021..

• FRONT MATTER
• TABLE OF CONTENTS

Sample Progress Report

The following short progress report, written by a student in geology, provides an excellent example of how concrete and affirmative a progress report can be. Note the specificity even in the title, and how sections such as "Remaining Questions" and "Expected Results" demonstrate that the writer, even though he is two months away from the completion of his thesis, is thinking about the work in a professional manner.

Progress Report

"Stratigraphic Architecture of Deep-Ramp Carbonates: Implications for Deposition of Volcanic Ashes, Salona and Coburn Formations, Central Pennsylvania" by John Lerner

SCOPE AND PURPOSE

The Late Middle Ordovician-age Salona and Coburn formations of central Pennsylvania show cyclic patterns on a scale of tens of meters.  Little research has been done on sequence stratigraphy of deep-water mixed carbonate/siliciclastic systems, and a depositional model for this environment is necessary to understand the timing and processes of deposition. The stratigraphic position of the bentonites at the base of the larger cycles is significant because it indicates that they accumulated during a time of non-deposition in a deep water environment.

To date, I have described five lithofacies present in the Salona and Coburn formations. Two lithofacies are interpreted as storm deposits and make up the limestone component of the thinly-bedded couplets. Some trends were observed in the raw data; however, because of the "noisy" nature of the data, a plot of the five-point moving average of bed thickness was created to define the cycles better.

ADDITIONAL WORK

Two key tasks are to be completed in the coming weeks. With the results of these tests and the field observations, I will create a model for deposition of a deep-ramp mixed carbonate/siliciclastic system in a foreland basin environment. The model will include depositional processes, stratigraphic architecture, and tectonic setting.

REMAINING QUESTIONS

Questions remain regarding the depositional processes responsible for the featureless micrite at the base of the Salona Formation. . . . How rapid was the transition? What record (if any?) remains of the transition?  Were bentonites not deposited, or were they selectively removed at certain locations by erosive storm processes?

EXPECTED RESULTS

I expect to find that the large-scale cycles represent parasequences. Flooding surfaces are marked by bentonites and shales, with bentonites removed in some locations. If the cycles are true parasequences, the implication is that eustatic sea level changes and not tectonic influences controlled the depositional changes over the interval.

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7. COMMON DOCUMENT TYPES

You write a progress report to inform a supervisor, associate, or client about progress you have made on a project over a specific period of time. Periodic progress reports are common on projects that go on for several months (or more). Whoever is paying for this project wants to know whether tasks are being completed on schedule and on budget. If the project is not on schedule or on budget, they want to know why and what additional costs and time will be needed.

Progress reports answer the following questions for the reader:

•  How much of the work is complete?
• What part of the work is currently in progress?
• What work remains to be done?
• When and how will the remaining work be completed?
• What changes, problems or unexpected issues, if any, have arisen?
• How is the project going in general?

Purpose of a Progress Report

The main function of a progress report is persuasive:  to reassure clients and supervisors that you are making progress, that the project is going smoothly, and that it will be completed by the expected date — or to give reasons why any of those might not be the case. They also offer the opportunity to do the following:

• Provide a brief look at preliminary findings or in-progress work on the project
• Give your clients or supervisors a chance to evaluate your work on the project and to suggest or request changes
• Give you a chance to discuss problems in the project and thus to forewarn the recipients
• Force you to establish a work schedule, so that you will complete the project on time.

Format of a Progress Report

Depending on the size of the progress report, the length and importance of the project, and the recipient, a progress report can take forms ranging from a short informal conversation to a detailed, multi-paged report. Most commonly, progress reports are delivered in following forms:

• Memo :  a short, semi-formal report to someone within your organization (can range in length from 1-4 pages)
• Letter :  a short, semi-formal report sent to someone outside your organization
• Formal report:  a long, formal report sent to someone within or outside of your organization
• Presentation :  an oral presentation given directly to the target audience.

Organizational Patterns for Progress Reports

The recipient of a progress report wants to see what you’ve accomplished on the project, what you are working on now, what you plan to work on next, and how the project is going in general. The information is usually arranged with a focus either on time or on task, or a combination of the two:

• Focus on time:   shows time period (previous, current, and future) and tasks completed or scheduled to be completed in each period
• Focus on specific tasks:   shows order of tasks (defined milestones) and progress made in each time period
• Focus on larger goals :  focus on the overall effect of what has been accomplished.

Information can also be arranged by report topic. You should refer to established milestones or deliverables outlined in your original proposal or job specifications. Whichever organizational strategy you choose, your report will likely contain the elements described below.

1. Introduction

Review the details of your project’s purpose, scope, and activities. The introduction may also contain the following:

• date the project began; date the project is scheduled to be completed
• people or organization working on the project
• people or organization for whom the project is being done
• overview of the contents of the progress report.

2. Project status

This section (which could have sub-sections) should give the reader a clear idea of the current status of your project. It should review the work completed, work in progress, and work remaining to be done on the project, organized into sub-sections by time, task, or topic. These sections might include

• Direct reference to milestones or deliverables established in previous documents related to the project
• Timeline for when remaining work will be completed
• Any problems encountered or issues that have arisen that might affect completion, direction, requirements, or scope.

3.  Conclusion

The final section provides an overall assessment of the current state of the project and its expected completion, usually reassuring the reader that all is going well and on schedule. It can also alert recipients to unexpected changes in direction or scope, or problems in the project that may require intervention.

4.  References section if required.

Technical Writing Essentials Copyright © by Suzan Last and UNH College of Professional Studies Online is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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What Is a Progress Report And How Can You Make Them More Effective?

What is a progress report and how can you effectively manage your progress reporting process as projects become bigger and more complex?

At ScrumGenius , a tool to facilitate and automate status reporting and reduce communication overhead, we understand the value of a great reporting process.

As your company and teams grow, your projects also increase in scope and complexity. Various types of reporting, previously done ad-hoc, need to be more systematic and standardized to be manageable.

If you’re a manager, keeping track of progress reports from increasingly larger projects through email can quickly become overwhelming. How can you get meaningful information from your progress reports? Moreover, how can you prevent delays in progress report submission, especially when your team is distributed?

In this article, you'll learn:

• What a progress report is 
• Why a progress report is important
• Best practices on structuring progress reports, from using the PPP methodology to setting deadlines
• Progress report format and template
• Why you should automate and standardize your progress reporting process

As you will read, automating your progress reports can drastically reduce the time spent in meetings, help you get meaningful answers, and make your reporting process much more efficient. 

What Is a Progress Report?

A progress report is a document that shows the progress that your team is making towards completing a project.

Progress reports give an overview to either a supervisor, a manager, a team leader, a colleague or a client on:

•  The status of the project
• The milestones achieved
• Responsibilities of each employee or team member
• The issues faced by various team members
• ...and other important factors that affect project completion

This report is essentially a project management mechanism to prevent issues before they happen, to ensure that the project will be finished on-time, and to keep those involved informed of the project's progress.

How often the progress report should be submitted (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) will heavily depend on the project's scope and complexity.

In general, you want your progress reports to provide meaningful insights. Setting a daily reporting schedule for a long-term project may lead to progress reports with surface-level answers.

Therefore, you may want to set a reasonable schedule and give a progress report template with standardized questions on project progress and key issues. 

Giving these questions in advance will encourage your team members to think about their responses more thoroughly before handing in the report.

Why Is a Progress Report Important?

The importance of progress reports lies beyond keeping track and managing your different projects happening simultaneously. Progress reports also provide valuable insights on how your team can finish projects more effectively.

Aside from giving an overview of the projects taking place, a well-structured progress report template also allows the project manager to identify key issues affecting the team's productivity and a project's progress toward completion.

These insights can then be fed into a knowledge base, which contains best practices on how to manage and execute future projects.

With the ScrumGenius progress report template, you can effectively track each team member's blockers. You can also see how often they report these blockers affecting project completion.

Of course, a progress report also helps foster collaboration. Simply put, knowing about each other's tasks helps prevent people from doing the same things and reduce task redundancy. 

Best Practices On How To Write a Progress Report

1. treat a progress report like a q&a.

A simple way to start learning how to write a progress report is by treating the progress report format as a question and answer sheet on the project's progress. You need answers on the progress, the blockers and the next tasks to do that lead to project completion. Nothing more. Nothing less.

2. Include questions on progress, plans and problems (PPP)

PPP is a management technique for status reporting that focuses on project progress toward completion. Questions related to PPP lead to specific and meaningful answers, instead of generic ones with unnecessary details. It's used by many people at Skype and Apple to get useful and relevant project facts.

As Cleve Gibbon puts it, PPP is "rich in stuff, low in fluff." Here's what each P means:

• Progress - These include milestones, goals achieved, finished tasks and validated items  that contribute to project completion.
• Plans - These include things to do, short- and long-term objectives, and other plans that affect project completion.
• Problems - These are blockers and issues that affect project completion.

Each P should have answers with 3-5 items. If your team is having a hard time filling out the progress reports because they're too frequent, you might want to change the frequency they're submitted. 

3. Allow meaningful completion of the progress report

An often-neglected aspect of the progress reporting process is ensuring that the information acquired is at a high quality. Two things help achieve this: setting the right schedule and encouraging specific answers.

Setting appropriate deadlines is key. People doing long-term projects that last for a year or more may not want to submit daily progress reports. A wrong schedule might lead to unsatisfactory answers. That said, make sure that you set actual dates for submission. Otherwise, people may always put them as a last priority task.

Moreover, you should encourage formulating specific answers. For example, this can be emphasizing for answers to include relevant metrics, instead of vague descriptions. This helps you track progress more meaningfully. 

4. Use section headings to make reading and writing simpler

Add section headings in your progress report format to make the process of writing and reading the report a lot easier. When learning how to write a progress report, section headings help you focus on providing valuable information about the progress, in itself.

The purpose of a progress report is to give clarity on the progress of a project, not to describe every single aspect about what's currently happening in the project.

Plus, the project manager reading the project will have an easier time reading and remembering key elements in it.

With ScrumGenius, the progress report templates are structured in such a way that each progress report has clearly-defined headings.

5. Use simple and straightforward language

Learning how to write progress reports means using a progress report format with a language that's clear and straight to the point. Unless your project requires you to use jargon and technical language, keep your sentences simple, straightforward and easy to understand. 

Progress Report Format Template Example Using PPP

Using PPP, a progress report format structure should have the following sections:

• Introduction - This helps understand what project this report is about. Simply ask what they're working on to start the progress report.
• PPP section - This is the main body of the progress report, and it should give enough information on the overall status of the project. As you will read in the next section, ScrumGenius allows you to have an overview of the goals and blockers reported in the status reporting process to derive important insights from.
• Anything else to add? -  This section may also provide more holistic comments on how this project is being done.

How to Facilitate Your Progress Reporting Process Through Automation and Standardization

As your projects become larger in scope and complexity, you will need a status reporting tool like ScrumGenius to track and manage your progress reporting process.

Relying on standard communication tools like email and manually sending your team members follow up can quickly become unmanageable. Not only that, manually sifting through progress reports can take time from getting more meaningful work done.

1. Standardize and iterate on your progress report template to gain meaningful insights

To identify patterns affecting project completion and other important project management insights, you will have to standardize the sections/questions in your progress reports. This means sending out the same progress report questions on a project for your team members to answer.

Having progress report templates means that your team can invariably produce answers within the PPP framework. It also allows you to identify outlier responses affecting project progress. With ScrumGenius, you can create custom progress reports or choose from various templates. 

Some team members might have run into blockers that you need to urgently address. Or someone might have found a way to more efficiently finish their tasks. Either way, these can be important project management insights for future reference.

Plus, using a template will save you and your team previously spent on formulating a structure for these reports.

2. Automate progress reporting submission

Manually doing check-ins and follow-ups via email or chat is not only cumbersome, but it's also not sustainable in the long-run as your teams grow bigger and your projects more complex.

Set teamwork on autopilot. With ScrumGenius, you can automate your whole progress reporting process by setting automatic regular deadlines on submitting progress reports.

ScrumGenius is integrated with all major chat platforms including Slack, Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex Teams. Depending on the schedule you've set them, a bot will automatically send them these questions for people to answer within a window of time.

You can also set the check-in reporting window to cater to different time zones. Read more about this here . This is especially important for globally-distributed teams.

3. Have an overview to see your team's overall progress on various projects

Having an overview of the progress reports helps you identify various patterns affecting project completion. ScrumGenius has a dashboard that allows you to see:

• Participation - How many completed the progress report.
• Goals - How many participants reported their goals and progress.
• Blockers - How many participants are experiencing blockers.

This overview can help you deduce important insights on the aforementioned metrics. For example, you can see what the participation rates are for the various submission windows and act accordingly. 

4. Spend less time in meetings by using progress reports

Some studies suggest that executives spend up to 23 hours per week in meetings . With ScrumGenius, our clients have reported a reduction in meeting times by up to 300% ( read the case study here).

Our status reports have provided valuable information that has helped meetings become more efficient and focused. 

5. Create a knowledge base for your project managers, teams and new hires

Finally, these project management insights can contribute to building a knowledge base. This is a great way to set up best practices on how to manage and execute future projects more effectively.

It will also be a great resource for new hires to figure out the best processes for your company and how to achieve key metrics that they're supposed to hit (based on past successes).

Take Your Progress Reporting Process To The Next Level With ScrumGenius

A progress report allows you to get important information on project completion. ScrumGenius is a simple, yet powerful, tool that can improve your progress reporting process through automating and standardizing these reports.

Once activated, the ScrumGenius bot sends reminders to your team at a specific time each day to fill out their progress reports.

If you want to make your progress reporting process more efficient, try out ScrumGenius today.

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Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Assignments

• Annotated Bibliography
• Analyzing a Scholarly Journal Article
• Group Presentations
• Dealing with Nervousness
• Using Visual Aids
• Grading Someone Else's Paper
• Types of Structured Group Activities
• Group Project Survival Skills
• Leading a Class Discussion
• Multiple Book Review Essay
• Reviewing Collected Works
• Writing a Case Analysis Paper
• Writing a Case Study
• About Informed Consent
• Writing Field Notes
• Writing a Policy Memo
• Writing a Reflective Paper
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Generative AI and Writing
• Acknowledgments

The purpose of a field report in the social sciences is to describe the deliberate observation of people, places, and/or events and to analyze what has been observed in order to identify and categorize common themes in relation to the research problem underpinning the study. The content represents the researcher's interpretation of meaning found in data that has been gathered during one or more observational events.

Flick, Uwe. The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection . London: SAGE Publications, 2018; Lofland, John, David Snow, Leon Anderson, and Lyn H. Lofland. Analyzing Social Settings: A Guide to Qualitative Observation and Analysis. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2022; Baker, Lynda. "Observation: A Complex Research Method." Library Trends 55 (Summer 2006): 171-189.; Kellehear, Allan. The Unobtrusive Researcher: A Guide to Methods . New York: Routledge, 2020.

How to Approach Writing a Field Report

How to Begin

Field reports are most often assigned in disciplines of the applied social sciences [e.g., social work, anthropology, gerontology, criminal justice, education, law, the health care services] where it is important to build a bridge of relevancy between the theoretical concepts learned in the classroom and the practice of actually doing the work you are being taught to do. Field reports are also common in certain science disciplines [e.g., geology] but these reports are organized differently and serve a different purpose than what is described below.

Professors will assign a field report with the intention of improving your understanding of key theoretical concepts by applying methods of careful and structured observation of, and reflection about, people, places, or phenomena existing in their natural settings. Field reports facilitate the development of data collection techniques and observation skills and they help you to understand how theory applies to real world situations. Field reports are also an opportunity to obtain evidence through methods of observing professional practice that contribute to or challenge existing theories.

We are all observers of people, their interactions, places, and events; however, your responsibility when writing a field report is to conduct research based on data generated by the act of designing a specific study, deliberate observation, synthesis of key findings, and interpretation of their meaning.

When writing a field report you need to:

• Systematically observe and accurately record the varying aspects of a situation . Always approach your field study with a detailed protocol about what you will observe, where you should conduct your observations, and the method by which you will collect and record your data.
• Continuously analyze your observations . Always look for the meaning underlying the actions you observe. Ask yourself: What's going on here? What does this observed activity mean? What else does this relate to? Note that this is an on-going process of reflection and analysis taking place for the duration of your field research.
• Keep the report’s aims in mind while you are observing . Recording what you observe should not be done randomly or haphazardly; you must be focused and pay attention to details. Enter the observation site [i.e., "field"] with a clear plan about what you are intending to observe and record in relation to the research problem while, at the same time, being prepared to adapt to changing circumstances as they may arise.
• Consciously observe, record, and analyze what you hear and see in the context of a theoretical framework . This is what separates data gatherings from reporting. The theoretical framework guiding your field research should determine what, when, and how you observe and act as the foundation from which you interpret your findings in relation to the underlying assumptions embedded in the theoretical framework .

Techniques to Record Your Observations Although there is no limit to the type of data gathering techniques you can use, these are the most frequently used methods:

Note Taking This is the most common and easiest method of recording your observations. Tips for taking notes include: organizing some shorthand symbols beforehand so that recording basic or repeated actions does not impede your ability to observe, using many small paragraphs, which reflect changes in activities, who is talking, etc., and, leaving space on the page so you can write down additional thoughts and ideas about what’s being observed, any theoretical insights, and notes to yourself that are set aside for further investigation. See drop-down tab for additional information about note-taking.

Photography With the advent of smart phones, an almost unlimited number of high quality photographs can be taken of the objects, events, and people observed during a field study. Photographs can help capture an important moment in time as well as document details about the space where your observation takes place. Taking a photograph can save you time in documenting the details of a space that would otherwise require extensive note taking. However, be aware that flash photography could undermine your ability to observe unobtrusively so assess the lighting in your observation space; if it's too dark, you may need to rely on taking notes. Also, you should reject the idea that photographs represent some sort of "window into the world" because this assumption creates the risk of over-interpreting what they show. As with any product of data gathering, you are the sole instrument of interpretation and meaning-making, not the object itself. Video and Audio Recordings Video or audio recording your observations has the positive effect of giving you an unfiltered record of the observation event. It also facilitates repeated analysis of your observations. This can be particularly helpful as you gather additional information or insights during your research. However, these techniques have the negative effect of increasing how intrusive you are as an observer and will often not be practical or even allowed under certain circumstances [e.g., interaction between a doctor and a patient] and in certain organizational settings [e.g., a courtroom]. Illustrations/Drawings This does not refer to an artistic endeavor but, rather, refers to the possible need, for example, to draw a map of the observation setting or illustrating objects in relation to people's behavior. This can also take the form of rough tables, charts, or graphs documenting the frequency and type of activities observed. These can be subsequently placed in a more readable format when you write your field report. To save time, draft a table [i.e., columns and rows] on a separate piece of paper before an observation if you know you will be entering data in that way.

NOTE:   You may consider using a laptop or other electronic device to record your notes as you observe, but keep in mind the possibility that the clicking of keys while you type or noises from your device can be obtrusive, whereas writing your notes on paper is relatively quiet and unobtrusive. Always assess your presence in the setting where you're gathering the data so as to minimize your impact on the subject or phenomenon being studied.

ANOTHER NOTE:   Techniques of deliberate observation and data gathering are not innate skills; they are skills that must be learned and practiced in order to achieve proficiency. Before your first observation, practice the technique you plan to use in a setting similar to your study site [e.g., take notes about how people choose to enter checkout lines at a grocery store if your research involves examining the choice patterns of unrelated people forced to queue in busy social settings]. When the act of data gathering counts, you'll be glad you practiced beforehand.

YET ANOTHER NOTE:   An issue rarely discussed in the literature about conducting field research is whether you should move around the study site while observing or remaining situated in one place. Moving around can be intrusive, but it facilitates observing people's behavior from multiple vectors. However, if you remain in one place throughout the observation [or during each observation], you will eventually blend into the background and diminish the chance of unintentionally influencing people's behavior. If the site has a complex set of interactions or interdependent activities [e.g., a play ground], consider moving around; if the study site is relatively fixed [e.g., a classroom], then consider staying in one place while observing.

Examples of Things to Document While Observing

• Physical setting . The characteristics of an occupied space and the human use of the place where the observation(s) are being conducted.
• Objects and material culture . This refers to the presence, placement, and arrangement of objects that impact the behavior or actions of those being observed. If applicable, describe the cultural artifacts representing the beliefs [i.e., the values, ideas, attitudes, and assumptions] of the individuals you are observing [e.g., the choice of particular types of clothing in the observation of family gatherings during culturally specific holidays].
• Use of language . Don't just observe but  listen to what is being said, how is it being said, and the tone of conversations among participants.
• Behavior cycles . This refers to documenting when and who performs what behavior or task and how often they occur. Record at which stage this behavior is occurring within the setting.
• The order in which events unfold . Note sequential patterns of behavior or the moment when actions or events take place and their significance. Also, be prepared to note moments that diverge from these sequential patterns of behavior or actions.
• Physical characteristics of subjects. If relevant, document personal characteristics of individuals being observed. Note that, unless this data can be verified in interviews or from documentary evidence, you should only focus on characteristics that can be clearly observed [e.g., clothing, physical appearance, body language].
• Expressive body movements . This would include things like body posture or facial expressions. Note that it may be relevant to also assess whether expressive body movements support or contradict the language used in conversation [e.g., detecting sarcasm].

Brief notes about all of these examples contextualize your observations; however, your observation notes will be guided primarily by your theoretical framework, keeping in mind that your observations will feed into and potentially modify or alter these frameworks.

Sampling Techniques

Sampling refers to the process used to select a portion of the population for study . Qualitative research, of which observation is one method of data gathering, is generally based on non-probability and purposive sampling rather than probability or random approaches characteristic of quantitatively-driven studies. Sampling in observational research is flexible and often continues until no new themes emerge from the data, a point referred to as data saturation.

All sampling decisions are made for the explicit purpose of obtaining the richest possible source of information to answer the research questions. Decisions about sampling assumes you know what you want to observe, what behaviors are important to record, and what research problem you are addressing before you begin the study. These questions determine what sampling technique you should use, so be sure you have adequately answered them before selecting a sampling method.

Ways to sample when conducting an observation include:

• Ad Libitum Sampling -- this approach is not that different from what people do at the zoo; they observe whatever seems interesting at the moment. There is no organized system of recording the observations; you just note whatever seems relevant at the time. The advantage of this method is that you are often able to observe relatively rare or unusual behaviors that might be missed by more deliberately designed sampling methods. This method is also useful for obtaining preliminary observations that can be used to develop your final field study. Problems using this method include the possibility of inherent bias toward conspicuous behaviors or individuals, thereby missing mundane or repeated patterns of behavior, and that you may miss brief interactions in social settings.
• Behavior Sampling -- this involves watching the entire group of subjects and recording each occurrence of a specific behavior of interest and with reference to which individuals were involved. The method is useful in recording rare behaviors missed by other sampling methods and is often used in conjunction with focal or scan methods [see below]. However, sampling can be biased towards particular conspicuous behaviors.
• Continuous Recording -- provides a faithful record of behavior including frequencies, durations, and latencies [the time that elapses between a stimulus and the response to it]. This is a very demanding method because you are trying to record everything within the setting and, thus, measuring reliability may be sacrificed. In addition, durations and latencies are only reliable if subjects remain present throughout the collection of data. However, this method facilitates analyzing sequences of behaviors and ensures obtaining a wealth of data about the observation site and the people within it. The use of audio or video recording is most useful with this type of sampling.
• Focal Sampling -- this involves observing one individual for a specified amount of time and recording all instances of that individual's behavior. Usually you have a set of predetermined categories or types of behaviors that you are interested in observing [e.g., when a teacher walks around the classroom] and you keep track of the duration of those behaviors. This approach doesn't tend to bias one behavior over another and provides significant detail about a individual's behavior. However, with this method, you likely have to conduct a lot of focal samples before you have a good idea about how group members interact. It can also be difficult within certain settings to keep one individual in sight for the entire period of the observation without being intrusive.
• Instantaneous Sampling -- this is where observation sessions are divided into short intervals divided by sample points. At each sample point the observer records if predetermined behaviors of interest are taking place. This method is not effective for recording discrete events of short duration and, frequently, observers will want to record novel behaviors that occur slightly before or after the point of sampling, creating a sampling error. Though not exact, this method does give you an idea of durations and is relatively easy to do. It is also good for recording behavior patterns occurring at a specific instant, such as, movement or body positions.
• One-Zero Sampling -- this is very similar to instantaneous sampling, only the observer records if the behaviors of interest have occurred at any time during an interval instead of at the instant of the sampling point. The method is useful for capturing data on behavior patterns that start and stop repeatedly and rapidly, but that last only for a brief period of time. The disadvantage of this approach is that you get a dimensionless score for an entire recording session, so you only get one one data point for each recording session.
• Scan Sampling -- this method involves taking a census of the entire observed group at predetermined time periods and recording what each individual is doing at that moment. This is useful for obtaining group behavioral data and allows for data that are evenly representative across individuals and periods of time. On the other hand, this method may be biased towards more conspicuous behaviors and you may miss a lot of what is going on between observations, especially rare or unusual behaviors. It is also difficult to record more than a few individuals in a group setting without missing what each individual is doing at each predetermined moment in time [e.g., children sitting at a table during lunch at school]. The use of audio or video recording is useful with this type of sampling.

Alderks, Peter. Data Collection. Psychology 330 Course Documents. Animal Behavior Lab. University of Washington; Emerson, Robert M. Contemporary Field Research: Perspectives and Formulations . 2nd ed. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2001; Emerson, Robert M. et al. “Participant Observation and Fieldnotes.” In Handbook of Ethnography . Paul Atkinson et al., eds. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001), 352-368; Emerson, Robert M. et al. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes . 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011; Ethnography, Observational Research, and Narrative Inquiry. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Hazel, Spencer. "The Paradox from Within: Research Participants Doing-Being-Observed." Qualitative Research 16 (August 2016): 446-457; Pace, Tonio. Writing Field Reports. Scribd Online Library; Presser, Jon and Dona Schwartz. “Photographs within the Sociological Research Process.” In Image-based Research: A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers . Jon Prosser, editor (London: Falmer Press, 1998), pp. 115-130; Pyrczak, Fred and Randall R. Bruce. Writing Empirical Research Reports: A Basic Guide for Students of the Social and Behavioral Sciences . 5th ed. Glendale, CA: Pyrczak Publishing, 2005; Report Writing. UniLearning. University of Wollongong, Australia; Wolfinger, Nicholas H. "On Writing Fieldnotes: Collection Strategies and Background Expectancies.” Qualitative Research 2 (April 2002): 85-95; Writing Reports. Anonymous. The Higher Education Academy.

Structure and Writing Style

How you choose to format your field report is determined by the research problem, the theoretical framework that is driving your analysis, the observations that you make, and/or specific guidelines established by your professor. Since field reports do not have a standard format, it is worthwhile to determine from your professor what the preferred structure and organization should be before you begin to write. Note that field reports should be written in the past tense. With this in mind, most field reports in the social sciences include the following elements:

I.  Introduction The introduction should describe the research problem, the specific objectives of your research, and the important theories or concepts underpinning your field study. The introduction should describe the nature of the organization or setting where you are conducting the observation, what type of observations you have conducted, what your focus was, when you observed, and the methods you used for collecting the data. Collectively, this descriptive information should support reasons why you chose the observation site and the people or events within it. You should also include a review of pertinent literature related to the research problem, particularly if similar methods were used in prior studies. Conclude your introduction with a statement about how the rest of the paper is organized.

II.  Description of Activities

Your readers only knowledge and understanding of what happened will come from the description section of your report because they were not witnesses to the situation, people, or events that you are writing about. Given this, it is crucial that you provide sufficient details to place the analysis that will follow into proper context; don't make the mistake of providing a description without context. The description section of a field report is similar to a well written piece of journalism. Therefore, a useful approach to systematically describing the varying aspects of an observed situation is to answer the "Five W’s of Investigative Reporting." As Dubbels notes [p. 19], these are:

• What -- describe what you observed. Note the temporal, physical, and social boundaries you imposed to limit the observations you made. What were your general impressions of the situation you were observing. For example, as a student teacher, what is your impression of the application of iPads as a learning device in a history class; as a cultural anthropologist, what is your impression of women's participation in a Native American religious ritual?
• Where -- provide background information about the setting of your observation and, if necessary, note important material objects that are present that help contextualize the observation [e.g., arrangement of computers in relation to student engagement with the teacher].
• When -- record factual data about the day and the beginning and ending time of each observation. Note that it may also be necessary to include background information or key events which impact upon the situation you were observing [e.g., observing the ability of teachers to re-engage students after coming back from an unannounced fire drill].
• Who -- note background and demographic information about the individuals being observed e.g., age, gender, ethnicity, and/or any other variables relevant to your study]. Record who is doing what and saying what, as well as, who is not doing or saying what. If relevant, be sure to record who was missing from the observation.
• Why -- why were you doing this? Describe the reasons for selecting particular situations to observe. Note why something happened. Also note why you may have included or excluded certain information.

III.  Interpretation and Analysis

Always place the analysis and interpretations of your field observations within the larger context of the theoretical assumptions and issues you described in the introduction. Part of your responsibility in analyzing the data is to determine which observations are worthy of comment and interpretation, and which observations are more general in nature. It is your theoretical framework that allows you to make these decisions. You need to demonstrate to the reader that you are conducting the field work through the eyes of an informed viewer and from the perspective of a casual observer.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when analyzing your observations:

• What is the meaning of what you have observed?
• Why do you think what you observed happened? What evidence do you have for your reasoning?
• What events or behaviors were typical or widespread? If appropriate, what was unusual or out of the ordinary? How were they distributed among categories of people?
• Do you see any connections or patterns in what you observed?
• Why did the people you observed proceed with an action in the way that they did? What are the implications of this?
• Did the stated or implicit objectives of what you were observing match what was achieved?
• What were the relative merits of the behaviors you observed?
• What were the strengths and weaknesses of the observations you recorded?
• Do you see connections between what you observed and the findings of similar studies identified from your review of the literature?
• How do your observations fit into the larger context of professional practice? In what ways have your observations possibly changed or affirmed your perceptions of professional practice?
• Have you learned anything from what you observed?

NOTE:   Only base your interpretations on what you have actually observed. Do not speculate or manipulate your observational data to fit into your study's theoretical framework.

IV.  Conclusion and Recommendations

The conclusion should briefly recap of the entire study, reiterating the importance or significance of your observations. Avoid including any new information. You should also state any recommendations you may have based on the results of your study. Be sure to describe any unanticipated problems you encountered and note the limitations of your study. The conclusion should not be more than two or three paragraphs.

V.  Appendix

This is where you would place information that is not essential to explaining your findings, but that supports your analysis [especially repetitive or lengthy information], that validates your conclusions, or that contextualizes a related point that helps the reader understand the overall report. Examples of information that could be included in an appendix are figures/tables/charts/graphs of results, statistics, pictures, maps, drawings, or, if applicable, transcripts of interviews. There is no limit to what can be included in the appendix or its format [e.g., a DVD recording of the observation site], provided that it is relevant to the study's purpose and reference is made to it in the report. If information is placed in more than one appendix ["appendices"], the order in which they are organized is dictated by the order they were first mentioned in the text of the report.

VI.  References

List all sources that you consulted and obtained information from while writing your field report. Note that field reports generally do not include further readings or an extended bibliography. However, consult with your professor concerning what your list of sources should be included and be sure to write them in the preferred citation style of your discipline or is preferred by your professor [i.e., APA, Chicago, MLA, etc.].

Alderks, Peter. Data Collection. Psychology 330 Course Documents. Animal Behavior Lab. University of Washington; Dubbels, Brock R. Exploring the Cognitive, Social, Cultural, and Psychological Aspects of Gaming and Simulations . Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2018; Emerson, Robert M. Contemporary Field Research: Perspectives and Formulations . 2nd ed. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2001; Emerson, Robert M. et al. “Participant Observation and Fieldnotes.” In Handbook of Ethnography . Paul Atkinson et al., eds. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001), 352-368; Emerson, Robert M. et al. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes . 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011; Ethnography, Observational Research, and Narrative Inquiry. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Pace, Tonio. Writing Field Reports. Scribd Online Library; Pyrczak, Fred and Randall R. Bruce. Writing Empirical Research Reports: A Basic Guide for Students of the Social and Behavioral Sciences . 5th ed. Glendale, CA: Pyrczak Publishing, 2005; Report Writing. UniLearning. University of Wollongong, Australia; Wolfinger, Nicholas H. "On Writing Fieldnotes: Collection Strategies and Background Expectancies.” Qualitative Research 2 (April 2002): 85-95; Writing Reports. Anonymous. The Higher Education Academy.

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How to Optimize Your Research Process: A step-by-step guide

For researchers across disciplines, the path to uncovering novel findings and insights is often filled with uncertainties. From conceptualizing a viable research question to navigating through the vortex of data and information available today, the research process can be a bit daunting.

However, through these challenges lies a path of unparalleled intellectual growth and self-discovery. This path of research process, when approached with diligence and systematic thinking can refine your logical reasoning, organizational abilities, and capacity for critical analysis. Each correct step on this road makes you one step closer to your discovery.

Understanding the Research Process

The research process is a structured approach to acquiring knowledge and generating new insights. It is a methodical journey that begins with identifying a research problem or question and leads to dissemination of findings that contribute to the existing body of knowledge.

The research process serves multiple purposes, including advancing understanding, solving real-world problems, fostering critical thinking, and establishing credibility.

The skills acquired during the research process such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and effective communication become invaluable assets that further propels the growth of a researcher.

Steps of a Research Process

The research process unfolds in a meticulous, step-by-step manner, with each stage informed by the preceding one. Ensuring the efficacy of your research demands unwavering attention to detail, diligent execution at each stage, and a commitment to learning, irrespective of the challenges that may arise.

1. Identify and Define the Research Question

The foundation of any successful research endeavor lies in the formulation of a compelling research question. Starting strong at this important stage will set the tone for your entire project’s journey.

It involves:

i. Identifying a specific area of interest that pique your curiosity or align with your research goals.

ii. Refining it into a focused and researchable query. Remember, that a well-crafted research question should be clear, concise, and answerable within the constraints of your resources and timeline.

2. Literature Review

The next step is to immerse yourself in the existing body of knowledge. Conducting a comprehensive literature review is an indispensable component of the research process, as it provides a solid theoretical foundation. By examining previous research, theories, and methodologies, you gain a deeper understanding of the current state of knowledge within your area of interest.

It further reveals gaps and inconsistencies that have been overlooked or insufficiently explored, highlighting opportunities for new insights.

In today’s digital age, AI-powered tools like Enago Read can be used for research summarization . Such tools help streamline this process, enabling you to efficiently summarize vast literature sources to find relevant information.

3. Design a Robust Research Plan

This step is like laying the blueprint for your intellectual journey. Without a plan you would be lost. Crafting a robust research plan ensures that your research is built on a solid foundation of sound methodology and rigorous inquiry. It encompasses determining your research methodology, identifying the appropriate data collection techniques, and laying down a clear analytical framework.

4. Streamlining Data Collection and Analysis

This phase lies at the heart of your research endeavor, where you transform your theoretical constructs into tangible findings.

i. Meticulously gathering data from various sources depending on your research design. Regardless of the source employed for data collection, it is essential to adhere to strict protocols and maintain rigorous standards throughout this process. This will ensure the validity and reliability of your data.

ii. Subjecting the gathered data to rigorous analytical techniques that aligns with your research design and objectives.

iii. Leveraging advanced data analysis tools and statistical software to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of your analyses. These powerful resources can streamline complex calculations, visualize patterns, and uncover insights that may be difficult to discern through manual processes alone.

Throughout this phase, it is essential to maintain meticulous documentation and adherence to ethical guidelines, ensuring that your research practices are transparent, replicable, and respectful of human subjects or other considerations.

5. Interpreting Results and Drawing Conclusions

You can now embark on the exciting task of interpreting your results and drawing meaningful conclusions. This step requires a delicate balance of critical thinking, objectivity, and a keen ability to synthesize your findings within the broader context of your research question and existing literature.

i. Approach your results with a critical mindset. Challenge your assumptions and consider alternative explanations or interpretations.

ii. Identify how your findings corroborate, contradict, or expand upon previous research, and explore the implications for your field.

iii. If your research involved the formulation of hypotheses, this is the stage where you assess whether your data supports or refutes them. Be prepared to embrace unexpected or counterintuitive findings, as they often pave the way for groundbreaking discoveries.

iv. Remember, no research is perfect, and it is crucial to acknowledge the limitations of your study. It will pave the way for future investigations to build upon your findings.

6. Writing the Research Paper

The culmination of your research journey is the writing of the research paper . This step demands a delicate balance of precision, clarity, and adherence to established academic conventions.

i. Your research paper should effectively convey the essence of your study, articulating your research question, methodology, results, and conclusions in a logical and compelling manner.

ii. Each discipline has its own set of writing conventions, including specific formatting guidelines, citation styles , and structural expectations. Familiarize yourself with these conventions and ensure that your paper adheres to them rigorously.

iii. A well-crafted research paper should seamlessly weave together the various components of your study, creating a cohesive narrative that guides the reader through your intellectual journey.

Follow the tips given below to write an effective research paper:

Throughout the writing process, seek feedback from peers, mentors, or professional editing services to ensure that your work is polished, well-reasoned, and accessible to your intended audience.

7. Proofreading and Editing

Before submitting your research paper for publication or evaluation, it is crucial to meticulously proofread and edit your work. This step ensures that your research is presented in the most professional and polished manner possible, free from errors or inconsistencies that could detract from the clarity and impact of your message.

Carefully review your paper for any typos, spelling mistakes, or deviations from the prescribed formatting guidelines. These seemingly minor errors can undermine the credibility of your work.

Ensure that your writing is concise, unambiguous, and effectively conveys the nuances of your research. Avoid jargon or convoluted language that could obscure your findings.

Tools like Trinka can proofread and check your entered text for grammatical errors , thus enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of this process. These advanced algorithms can identify and correct a wide range of errors, allowing you to polish your work to perfection.

Maintaining a spirit of curiosity, perseverance, and adherence to ethical practices is key throughout this journey. By embracing these steps and leveraging the power of AI-assisted tools, you can navigate the research process with confidence, ultimately contributing to the advancement of knowledge within your field of study.

Sharing your research findings in a journal marks a notable achievement in your academic journey. Yet, enhancing your visibility as a researcher can be achieved by communicating your work through simplified summaries. Consider submitting your plain language research summary to our Open Platform , allowing your work to reach a wide and diverse audience within the academic community.

Frequently Asked Questions

The purpose of the research process is to advance understanding, solve real-world problems, foster critical thinking, and establish credibility of the research findings.

Optimizing your research process enhances efficiency, improves research quality, increases the likelihood of producing meaningful insights, and enhances your credibility as a researcher

Assessing the reliability of a source for research involves several factors. These include looking for peer-reviewed publications from reputable journals or academic publishers, checking the credentials of the author or organization to gauge their expertise and credibility, and evaluating the relevance of the information to ensure it aligns with your research goals. Furthermore, cross-reference the source with other reputable sources to verify its accuracy and validity.

Staying organized during the research process is essential for efficiency and effectiveness. Start by clearly defining your research question and objectives. Furthermore, create a detailed timeline, maintain thorough records, use citation managers and databases, establish a filing system, and regularly review progress to stay organized and address challenges promptly.

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