-: Now, if you've been following along
in this project management series,
you already know how to gather key inputs,
like meeting summaries, Gantt charts,
and things like resource allocation plans.
Now it's time to turn all of that
into something that your collaborators
and stakeholders actually want to read,
and that's gonna be a project report
and an executive summary.
So by the end of this lesson,
you'll know exactly how to generate
a full project status report,
condense it into an executive summary,
and then tailor both for different audiences
and different communication platforms.
So let's dive in.
Now, before we generate anything,
let's first walk through the key inputs
that are gonna help shape our report.
And if you've been following in the previous lessons,
you should already have some meeting notes, a Gantt chart,
and a resource allocation plan.
Now, a meeting summary should capture what was discussed,
key decisions and stuff like any roadblocks.
The Gantt chart lays out
a visual timeline of the project progress,
and the resource allocation plan
basically tells people how time and budget are being used.
Now, what exactly are we gonna be creating here?
Well, there's two things.
The first is a full project status report,
which will be detailed and structured,
and then an executive summary,
which condenses everything into a quick digestible update
for someone like senior management, let's just say.
And for that, we'll be using
the project management Copilot GPT.
So now let's actually hop into this.
And once we have our inputs ready,
what we're gonna do is add them
to our project management Copilot GPT.
And instead of a vague request,
let's try giving it some clear instructions here
and referencing the actual data
that we've previously reviewed.
Here's the exact prompt
that I want to use for this situation
along with the project inputs attached.
"I want you to generate a full project status report
using the following inputs,
meeting summary, Gantt chart and resource allocation plan.
The report should include key milestones,
current progress, challenges, risks, and next steps.
After that, create a concise executive summary
for senior management
that highlights only the most critical updates."
Once we have that,
let's check out what the output looks like.
Great, so we have a well-structured report
with clear different concise sections.
We've got a summary of the key milestones here
and current progress,
an overview of the risks
and different mitigation strategies,
a breakdown of resource allocation,
and the next steps to act on.
Below that, we have the executive summary,
which is short, straight to the point
and focuses on what senior management
should know for this example.
So this looks pretty solid,
but let's go ahead and tweak a couple things here
to see what else ChatGPT can do
to improve our example report.
And now that we have
both the full report and executive summary,
we need to do something like adapt them
for different communication channels, let's say.
So not everyone is gonna
open and read a full document as we know,
but I'm sure you never do that.
So we're gonna ask ChatGPT to format it for email and Slack
where people most likely will check for updates.
So instead of running multiple prompts,
we're gonna get both formats in one.
And here's what we're gonna say.
"Please summarize this executive summary into two formats.
First, an email update for leadership that is professional,
concise, and action driven.
And second, a Slack message for the project team
that is clear, concise, engaging, and easy to skim over."
Now let's check out our output.
This email version is structured well,
it's professional, straight to the point,
and it highlights here a little bit of the progress,
challenges, the next steps,
and of course, the key dates,
which is exactly what leadership in this scenario
would need to know without any unnecessary details.
Now, the Slack version on the other hand,
is a lot more concise
and formatted for much quicker reading,
which would make total sense.
It's shorter, more visual
and breaks things up with bullet points and short sentences,
making sure that the update is a lot easier to absorb
just at more of a quick glance.
Now, instead of manually reformatting everything,
AI's of course, doing the heavy lifting for us
and fine tuning our message for different platforms.
But now what I want to do is take things one step further.
The project report and executive summary
were originally written for management, of course.
But what if our audience is,
let's say, one of our technical team.
In this scenario, they wouldn't really need
high level updates,
they would need something
more about technical and implementation details.
So instead of rewriting everything from scratch,
we're just gonna tweak our prompt
to have the Copilot reframe the report itself
for a more technical audience.
And here's what our prompt can be.
"Adjust this project status report
and executive summary for a technical audience.
Focus on implementation details,
technical challenges and dependencies,
removing high level business language."
This time, the report still is including
an overview of progress and milestones
since that's useful context for any team.
But from there,
it's diving deeper into technical challenges,
breaking them down by issue, impact, and possible solutions.
We also get a little bit more details here
on technical dependencies, things like resource allocation
and a technical executive summary.
There's a risks section also
that focuses more on moving away from business impact
and instead focuses on
technical challenges and potential fixes.
So with just a few refinements,
we can now have a version of the report
that speaks directly to engineers, developers, IT teams,
and without really wasting our time
or other people's time on our team
with high level details that they just don't need.
And that is how to use AI
to generate and refine your project reports.
We started with raw inputs,
turned them into structured reports,
and then adapted it for email, Slack,
and a more technical audience as an example,
all without rewriting anything from scratch.
So try this on your next project,
and I will see you in the next lesson.