gtmjosh

Interactive guide

Make the Work Reportable

Imagine someone asks how inbound follow-through is going. The answer takes several days, involves multiple exports, and arrives with a caveat the reader cannot evaluate. A slightly different question may send the team back through the same work.

It can be tempting to blame the reporting tool. In some cases, the deeper issue is that a process was built to complete work but does not capture the events needed to answer later questions. A report can still display a number when its source events are incomplete. You will build a Reporting-Ready Process Specification. The lab saves your progress in your browser.

Capture what happened with Elena.

Decide which events, dates, statuses, and sources a report needs. Build an evidence trail that distinguishes a missing value from a failed action or an outcome that is not due yet.

Elena’s reporting room. A bookshelf, pinned charts, a reading lamp, and reports laid out on a desk.
Elena, reporting lead, welcome pose
Elena · Reporting lead

Start with a broken answer

Start With the Question the Report Must Answer

Chapter 1 of 8 · 14 min

Start guide →

The learning path

This guide focuses on the process and data contract upstream of a report. Capturing an event while the work happens can preserve evidence that may be difficult to recover later.

The foundation

  1. 01Start With the Question the Report Must AnswerWrite the question, and name the decision a different answer would change.~14 min · exercise
  2. 02Define Clear StatusesEvery record gets exactly one status, and every status means one thing.~16 min · exercise
  3. 03Capture Milestone DatesEvery date a report needs has a stated capture rule and a backfill that cannot make things worse.~16 min · exercise

What makes it durable

  1. 04Preserve Decisions and HistoryDecide what gets appended and what gets replaced, and tag every entry with what caused it.~16 min · exercise
  2. 05Define the Reporting PopulationState who is in, who is out, and what counts as the event being measured.~14 min · exercise
  3. 06Name the Owner and Source of Each MetricOne owner and one source of truth per metric, with the definition travelling alongside.~14 min · exercise
  4. 07Handle Unknown, Missing, and Failed StatesThree different absences, represented three different ways, so none of them reads as zero.~16 min · exercise
  5. 08Capstone: Make a Workflow ReportableAsk four real questions of the whole specification, validate it, and approve version 1.0.~20 min · exercise