Reports relay data based on facts and figures to aid in (business) decision making. They are a snapshot of information in a presentable and easily digestible format. Preparing effective reports is an art, and good reporting analysts and managers are in demand across various IT sectors.

In the IT field, there are several types of reports, and the list grows by the hour. Some popular types of reports include weekly status reports, service delivery reports, time tracking reports, project reports, and technical reports, among others. In fact, an organization can come up with a report that is probably unheard of in the industry. In one of the organizations that I was associated with, a team manager used to send out desktop performance reports of all his subordinates to the senior manager in order to convince them that the team needed better infrastructure. He came up with a formula to calculate what percentage of productivity was impacted due to obsolete desktops.

In this chapter, I will...