Your company has just gotten a multi-million dollar contract to design and install a custom software system, and you're project manager. The project will take over a year to complete, and the client wants regular updates. You know you can do the work itself, but what are you going to do about the updates?

You're going to write progress reports, that's what.

A progress report is simply what the name implies - a report, usually brief, explaining the progress you've made on a given project or set of projects. In this course, you'll write at least one progress report for your major research project.

Progress reports can take different forms, including brief verbal reports at your weekly or monthly staff meetings, periodic emails to your supervisor and covering all of your current projects, formal reports for clients marking various milestones in the project, and so on.

This module outlines the basic components of a progress report. As with any document, though, these components are only a starting point. Before you write such a report, you need to analyze your audience to determine what information they need, and design your report accordingly.

Goals
After completing this module, you should be able to:

• Identify and analyze the rhetorical context(s) for a progress report.
• Identify the key components of a progress report.
• Write a progress report that effectively meets the audience's needs and fulfills your goals.

Analyzing Audience and Purpose -->