Progress Reviews

Progress Reviews are usually the formal communications one schedules with a client or a superior at the end of each phase of a project, often leading up to a final report. After the first one, the structure is always the same.

The first one will say something like this:

S =  We have been working on X problem

C =  We told you that step one in the analysis would be to determine whether Y is the case. We have now done that.

Q =  What did you find?

Once this presentation has been made, the recipient will have a particular reaction. Perhaps he will ask you to investigate an anomaly you have uncovered in your work, or he may approve what you've done and tell you to move on to phase two. At the time of your next progress review, then, you might say something like this:

S =  In our last progress review we told you that you had a capacity problem

C = You said you thought this would not be a problem long because you believed your competition was shortly going out of business. You asked us to investigate whether that were indeed the case. We have now completed our investigation.

Q =  (What did you find?)

A =  We found that you will still have a capacity problem, only worse.

Or to put it in skeletal form:

S =  We told you X

C =  You asked us to investigate Y which we have done

Q =  What did you find?

(You will find real life examples of introductions to consulting documents in Appendix B, Examples of Introductory Structures.)

I hope this discussion of opening introductions has made you think that it is important to devote sufficient thought to ensuring that you write a good introduction. For as you can gather from the examples, a good introduction does more than simply gain and hold the reader's interest. It influences his perceptions.

The narrative flow lends a feeling of plausibility to the writer's particular interpretation of the situation, which by its nature must be a biased selection of the relevant facts. This feeling of plausibility constricts the reader's ability to interpret the situation differently, in much the same way that a trial lawyer's opening statement seeks to give the jury a framework in which to receive the evidence to come.

The story flow also gives a sense of inevitable rightness to the logic of the writer's conclusion, making the reader less inclined to argue with the thinking that follows. And throughout, it establishes the writer's attitude to the reader as a considerate one of wanting him clearly to understand the situation-to see behind the story to the reality it represents.