Designing a Process Around Reporting and Why That Matters
In this blog we explore why designing a process to manage your reporting matters, how it impacts your organization, and what you can do to solve it.
The Process Matters If You Want to Scale
The “Execute and Ask Questions Later” Trap
Often we find ourselves actioning requests without considering the finer details. This mindset forms from working in organizations moving at lightning speed where being first to deliver matters more than doing it right.
Sometimes it’s a valid response, but if you work at a large organization with multiple stakeholders interacting with the same reporting, it’s a scaling trap. You know that scenario: you provide a report based on loose requirements to Person A, then Person B requests additional fields. Soon you have to refresh for Person A, but they have no clue the report structure contains more fields because Person B requested additions. Historical context gets lost in Teams/Slack because the process wasn’t documented.
Research shows that poor documentation practices cost organizations an average of 21.8 hours per employee per year in lost productivity[1]. A 2023 study by RescueTime found that knowledge workers lose approximately 2.5 hours per week just searching for information in communication tools[2].
Why Good Process Documentation Rarely Happens
This reality happens more often than not, and what I’ve found is that it stems from not pausing to ask more questions to fully understand what’s going on.
What Does a Good Solution Look Like?
A good solution starts with asking these questions—adapted from journalism’s 5 W’s framework[3]:
- Who is this report servicing?
- What story is this report telling, and what are the desired outcomes?
- When and how often is this reporting needed?
- Where is this reporting used?
This approach aligns with established business intelligence frameworks like Stephen Few’s dashboard design principles, which emphasize understanding your audience before building visualizations[4]. Once you’ve answered the questions above, you can get into the nitty-gritty details of building a scalable process.
In my next blog post, I’ll dive into methods I’ve learned for building scalable reporting that’s easy to audit and refresh. I’ll share the tips and tricks that have saved me hours of work daily and made me look better as a data analytics manager.
Until next time,
— Ayo
References
[1] Project Management Institute. (2023). “The High Cost of Low Performance: The Essential Role of Communications.” PMI Pulse of the Profession Report.
[2] RescueTime. (2023). “Productivity in the Modern Workplace: 2023 Annual Report.” Retrieved from rescuetime.com/productivity-report
[3] Journalism & Mass Communication framework. The “5 W’s and H” (Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How) has been a foundational questioning method since the early 20th century, formalized by reporters and later adapted for business analysis.
[4] Few, S. (2006). Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data. O’Reilly Media.