Visual management – ‘A piece a day will keep the boss away’

How much information can you pass on to your boss or a working committee on a piece of A4 (about letter-size) paper? Not a whole lot. You just can’t use it to contain the whole report of a cost saving project that took 3 weeks to complete. However, it can contain complete daily progress report that include graph, charts, drawing and matrixes; enough information for the boss to be updated and informed about the daily progress that you'd made. This type of report is commonly known as one-page report, and it is an invaluable piece of objective evidence that tells the story about the events of the particular day in the course of completing a project.
Why a one-page report is indispensable for a project or a job assignment? There are two good reasons why this one-page report is indispensable. The first is a one-page report on an A4 paper is just nice to fax to the boss or peers of the same project team but located in separate locations; second it can be filed in and converted into the project journal or ledger which would be useful later when compiling the final report of such project. “A piece a day will keep the boss away”….emm, how about that?
The one-page report is usually prepared by hand in about 20 to 30 minutes and it’s normally written towards the end of each day. The content is restricted to the day’s results and observations made on the day. Since visual presentation can replace many words, it is preferred than written or essay style since there are no conclusions to be written. It’s just like making a presentation to the boss on a white board at the end of the day but now instead of the white board it is on paper. The boss or your committee might scribble some comments for you to look into and later would pass a copy back to you.
It fast, efficient and instant documented communication. This concise and simple reporting method is an important element of continuous improvement activity that an active organization cannot do without. It teaches technicians, engineers, and project managers to be more objective in presenting daily progress reports so as to leave a traceable track that can be developed into highway as soon as the project is completed.