Why do monthly reports enhance the PMO’s project visibility?

Giving more visibility to your project data it’s usually a driver to start making better decisions, of course. That data needs to be well structured and rich. That’s why in this blog post, you’ll learn how incorporating monthly reports into your PMO strategy will bring clarity to team progress, accelerate decision-making, and give executives actionable insights without digging further.

For many teams, reporting it's usually a burden. This happens because of siloed and scattered data across different systems and disconnected workflows, eating up hours at the end of every month, or in some cases, every Monday... you can relate to this struggle, right?

The scenario goes down to managers chasing down numbers, admins manually searching and exporting a specific filter of work items (not being sure what, why, or to whom!), and C-Levels waiting to get a clear picture of what actually happened, which probably they won't accurately get… to later on, start all over again. The irony of this workflow is that all this effort goes around pieces of structured data and metadata that already exist where the work is happening: Jira.

The main problem is that this data is not accessible in a way that makes the decision making process easier.

What monthly reports are, and why they matter to project management

In every organization, projects are a source of continuous streams of information, such as progress updates, task completions, risks, etc.

In the end, these are performance metrics useful to evaluate project health and evolution. Without a proper data structure and a proper flow in place, this data disappears or even becomes difficult to extract because it’s scattered across tools, emails, and conversations. To solve that, monthly reports are the mechanism that turns that chaos into a way to keep control of your projects.

What’s a monthly report?

A monthly report is a structured summary that captures key project activities, relevant dates, SLAs (depending on what’s important), and outcomes over a specific month. It helps teams look back at what was achieved, what went off track, and where efforts should focus next.

Unlike regular updates, these reports provide consistency across the development of the process, an audit for the right matters, that reflects the same data and cadence but across time with a clear timeline for reflection and decision-making, ensuring adjustments and enhancements to following sprints or projects.

Why is monthly reporting critical for project management

The data every project produces tells a story. It’s just a matter of focusing it right, and a proper monthly reporting strategy in place avoids that story going untold. These regular reports help teams connect effort to results and leaders to make decisions with confidence. Here’s more specifically why these are important:

1. Ensures transparency and accountability
   
   Monthly reports foster a culture of accountability. When teams regularly document what’s been done and what’s next within the app of use, everyone, from contributors to executives, understands the project’s status and direction.
   
   It also gives visibility into dependencies and bottlenecks that might otherwise go unnoticed.
   
   
2. Improves the decision making process
   
   Consistent reporting means decision makers are working based on data, not based on assumptions, “feelings” or outdated ideas, which makes no sense when running a proper business.
   
   Instead, having in-depth reporting based on a month-over-month data allows the revelation of trends regarding productivity, gaps, recurring blockers, or improvements project after project. This overview enables proactive planning instead of reactive problem solving.
   
   
3. Drives continuous improvement
   
   Having a monthly reports strategy in place creates a feedback rhythm focused on continuous improvement and agile ways of working. By comparing results over time, project managers alongside the Project Manager's Office (PMO) can identify inefficiencies, refine ways of working, and adjust priorities.
   
   They also help teams celebrate incremental wins, reinforcing motivation and alignment.
   
   
4. Supports project strategies
   
   For the PMO, monthly reporting creates a single source of truth across multiple initiatives and projects. It ensures that strategic goals cascade effectively into the execution for each project team.
   
   Leaders can assess performance portfolios, allocate resources better, and ensure projects remain aligned with business objectives.
   
   
5. Connects business & technical perspectives
   
   Monthly reports allow the two worlds to collaborate better: The operational and the strategic:
   
   
   1. Project managers get the insights they need to adjust roadmaps.
      
   2. Data managers and analysts can extract patterns, measure progress, and feed performance data into dashboards.
      
   3. Executives gain visibility without diving into day-to-day apps supporting informed, data-driven decision-making.

What if you’re running your projects in Jira?

If you’re running your projects in Jira, and you’re interested in getting these reports, unfortunately, there’s not a simple way to easily generate fully automated and robust monthly reports based on project activity’s minimal expression: work items. This gets even more complicated if you’re looking to get this data with its full metadata, such as comments, transitions, attachments, and SLAs (given the case).

What you can do by default in Jira is:

1. By default, Jira offers the possibility of building reports within Jira Dashboards at the work item level (e.g., Created vs Resolved Work Items, Average Age Report, burndown charts, velocity charts, cumulative flow diagrams, and more).
   
   
2. Another workaround could be by saving filters, subscribing to them, and setting up email notifications of filter results. For example, you can subscribe to a saved filter and receive periodic email lists of issues matching a given JQL. 
   
   However, this workaround would need to get into the app, and there, see the details, making for some stakeholders difficult to get in touch with this data, regarding permissions, licensing, and more.

As you can see, there are ways, still a bit rudimentary, to access project detailed monthly reporting in Jira using saved filters, dashboards, and subscriptions, but you’ll face limitations in automation, metadata completeness, and format flexibility.

At this event, you could learn about different ways to handle your data in Jira:

For full monthly reports properly exported, based on automations, and ready for project audits, you’ll likely need a custom build or Marketplace app solution.

Making monthly reports working for you, your team, and your PMO

To make project managers, program managers, the overall PMO, and C-Levels keep track of this monthly data flow going, with a minimal investment of their productivity, instead of building custom filters or navigating through Jira’s complexity, it’s possible to have them automatically generated.

By following the Exporter for Jira app, available in the Atlassian Marketplace, it’s possible to schedule monthly reports based on predefined templates tailored for this precise data, relevant for the PMO.

By taking advantage of Exporter’s monthly reports, you’ll get predefined filters that will ensure portfolio oversight, team performance, and project visibility.

Exporter for Jira is a data machine that helps you to get your data out of Jira as your PMO needs it

These reports are delivered monthly in your preferred format (Excel or CSV) to your email inbox, giving you a reliable overview of your work without manual effort.

Currently, Exporter for Jira's monthly reports has three predefined templates which, once configured, will provide project-specific information aimed at targeting the previously mentioned stakeholders:

1. The PMO Project Status Overview: This report offers a quick overview of the statuses of active work items by project at the end of the month. By providing on a schedule, export information such as Work item Key, Summary, Status, Priority, Assignee, Work item Type, Project, and Updated.
   
   
   
2. The PMO Last Month’s Activity: This second monthly report provides data about which work items have had time invested in, by showing the total time spent on each of them, providing data such as Work item Key, Summary, Work item Type, Assignee, Time Spent, and Project.
   
   
   
3. The PMO Last Month’s Closures: Last but not least, this report allows us to understand what deliverables have been recently completed, by project, based on the following data: Work item Key, Summary, Work item Type, Assignee, Resolution, Resolved, and Project

Each of these reports is easy to configure and delivered to your email inbox, where you’ll be able to download from Jira, and later on, depending on the format, work richer reports in spreadsheets, and more importantly, the possibility to share them with external stakeholders.

The power of automating monthly reports

The challenge with traditional reporting lies in the manual effort. Teams spend hours gathering data, cleaning it, and formatting updates instead of analyzing it or even getting it with minimal effort and working with it further. Automating monthly reports it’s a solution that Exporter for Jira enables by eliminating bottlenecks and rework.

Automation ensures reports are consistent, accurate, and always delivered on schedule with the same data. It allows teams to focus their energy on understanding what the data means, not just collecting it. Over time, this leads to faster insights, improved forecasting, and a more agile response to project dynamics.

In essence, monthly reports are not just documentation; they’re a decision-making tool. They connect effort to impact, create alignment between teams and leadership, and enable organizations to evolve intelligently with each iteration.

When automated, they become the invisible engine that keeps projects transparent, measurable, and strategically aligned across the PMO, month after month.