How To Work With Reports To Ruin Everything

[#1]

Reports are meant to help teams make better decisions - but when handled incorrectly, they can do the exact opposite.

If you want to waste time, create confusion, and ensure reporting becomes a never-ending headache, here’s how to do it:

---

❌ Step 1: Create Reports Without Understanding the Actual Need

Why bother figuring out what people actually need? Just throw together a report and hope for the best.

• Need an overview? Dump raw data.

• Need strategic insights? Overwhelm them with issue counts.

• Need sprint progress? Forget to include capacity.

📌 How to do it better: Before creating a report, clarify the goal - who it’s for, what decisions it should support, and what insights are actually useful.

---

❌ Step 2: Ignore Who the Report Is For

Make sure to give everyone the wrong level of detail, so they have to guess what’s important:

• Jira Admins? Too much raw data, no clear insights.

• Project Managers? No high-level takeaways, just endless issue lists.

• Executives? Data overload with no clear high-level goals

📌 How to do it better: Adapt reports to the audience - high-level summaries for leadership, detailed breakdowns for operational teams.

---

❌ Step 3: Keep Reporting Requests Unstructured & Last-Minute

Don’t define what’s needed in advance - just wait until someone urgently asks for a report you’ve never prepared before. Then scramble to pull something together.

• ❌ No clear KPIs.

• ❌ No standardized format.

• ❌ Just a rush to get something sent.

📌 How to do it better: Create dynamic reports that automatically adjust to the current period and date, ensuring teams always have up-to-date insights without manual adjustments.

---

❌ Step 4: Make Reports Impossible to Read

Want to ensure reports are ignored? Make them as painful as possible to interpret:

• ❌ Overload them with unnecessary charts.

• ❌ Use colors and formats that make comparisons difficult.

• ❌ Skip summaries - let people dig through the data themselves!

📌 How to do it better: Design reports with clear visuals, key takeaways, and a logical data flow, so insights are instantly actionable.

---

Reporting Should Work for You

If your reporting process feels like an endless cycle of manual work and unclear data, it’s time to rethink your approach.

With Report Hub, you can automate, simplify, and customize Jira reports - so your team gets the insights they need without the reporting headaches.

Dare to upgrade your reporting? Start here.