Project Reporting: examples (continued)
The example on the next page is a Functional Manager’s report. Reports by functional managers on the projects they are supporting shows that they clearly understand their roles and responsibilities in a matrix environment.

Liz Lowe is a functional supervisor at the New York City Transit Authority. Each month she submits a simple Gantt report to her stakeholders that shows “shaded bar” progress her employees are making on assigned projects. She meets regularly with her employees not only to check progress on each project, but also to provide coaching and mentoring on the quality of their technical work toward meeting the project’s objectives.

Notice that the “Strategies” project is ahead of schedule, and the “Forum” project is behind schedule. To show that Ms. Lowe understands her role in a project organization, she would probably ask Turner and Ferranella to come with her to talk with their project managers. She would ask the “Strategies” PM if Turner could be pulled from the project for a month (he is 4 months ahead of schedule), and would ask the “Forum” PM if Turner could work with Ferranella for a month to pull the work back on time (Ferranella is 1.5 months behind schedule due to a late start). As the “Forum” project manager, wouldn’t you love that?