19.10. COMMUNICATING WITH YOUR TEAM AND MANAGEMENT

We began this chapter by pointing out that Project is a database. One of the benefits of a database is that it makes reporting easy. Project includes some basic reports already formatted for you (accessible from the Reports menu on the toolbar). Here are a few of the most useful reports:

• Project Summary Report: This report provides an overview of the entire project. It's useful for providing the team a snapshot at the highest level.

• Cash Flow Report: Analyze your predicted versus actual costs over each time period in the project. This is a good planning and management tool.

• Overbudget Tasks Report: This is one example of an exception report. It identifies the tasks that have costs exceeding the baselined costs.

• Slipping Tasks Report: An exception report focusing on schedule problems. It identifies the tasks that have a start date later than their baseline start date.

• Earned Value: If you've followed all the planning and control advice in this book you have all the information you need to produce accurate earned value reports.