Recommendation Reports

Time to Tell a Story

The time arrives with many improvement projects when you need to make recommendations.

These recommendations need to clearly address the root causes you have identified. Recommendations which are half-baked or proclaim magical solutions are worthless, if not dangerous.

Beyond a simple list of recommendations, your project team needs to tell the story of your project. This story needs to come to life in a well written recommendation report.

One effective approach for crafting a recommendation report includes the following six part format:

1. Executive Summary
2. Project Overview
3. Description of Options
4. Evaluation of Options
5. Recommendation
6. Appendix

Let’s look closer at each section. We will start with section 2, as the Executive Summary is written last.

Section 2: Project Overview

This is your opportunity to share the excitement about your project. Describe the project and what you did.

For a Six Sigma project, you will want to explain what you have done for the “DMAI” steps in the “DMAIC” methodology. The recommendation report is part of the “I” step. Each step in the methodology can have a part:

• Define: Provide a brief description of the highlights in the project charter. Don’t rehash your whole charter. Pick the highlights in the scope and few other choice nuggets.
• Measure: Share a run chart or explain the big data you acquired. A Six Sigma project should be data intense and you must demonstrate you have gotten your hands dirty.
• Analyze: Show some of your analysis and demonstrate you have gotten to the root cause. Scatter diagrams can be one of the most powerful visualization tools.
• Improve: Reveal how you got to this recommendation report by exploring best practices and narrowing down your options.

Stick to the title of this section and provide an overview of the project. This is not the same as the Executive Summary which will quickly summarize the entire report.

In most cases, your Project Overview should be about two pages.

Section 3: Description of Options

Describe possible options which will address the root causes you identified and deliver the desired situation articulated in the project charter. Don’t be too rigid in sticking to the specific words in the charter. That document was created months ago. In some areas, you may exceed expectations and other areas may have been underestimated and misunderstood.

Your options should be creative and address the root cause of a problem. The root causes should have been found during the Analyze step.

The scope of your project will generally drive the number of options. If your scope covers 1 process, then 3 or 4 options is fine. If your scope is multi-functional and say it covers 4 processes, then you will probably need 4 to 6 options.

Be crisp and clear with your options. At a minimum, each option should have:

• Option number, name, and description. These will carry forward to coming sections in the report.
• Benefits. What are the financial benefits? What other benefits might stakeholders appreciate?
• Costs. What additional costs will it take to implement the option. You did not know the answers when you created the charter. Thus, the need for additional investment is understandable.

A few cautionary bits of advice about your options:

• Be cautious about options which launch new projects. You may have found a few best practices such as Sales and Operation Planning or the Balanced Scorecard are legitimate options. It’s fine for them to be a recommendation, but you don’t want 6 recommendations which are all new projects. Six Sigma projects solve things.
• Don’t claim wild and reckless savings, such as cutting overhead expenses by 50% or doubling revenue. No nonsense about things being free. Executive and project team time is not free. You could be doing other things. Charlatans make wild claims. You do not.
• Be very careful about launching into the need for new software. Most companies have more than they need and don’t understand how to use what they have. You are far more likely to encounter the need for training on current software or the need to upgrade to the latest version.
• Don’t include options for things you should have already done. For example, you should have analyzed how big data could supercharge your processes. This is not the time to say someone else should go investigate how big data could help solve something.

Your description of options can be very challenging. There is often too much to say. You will be blamed for saying too much and you will be blamed for saying too little. It’s best to keep each option to about one-half of a page. Put extra materials in the Appendix or have a link to them. You would never put your big data into the report, but you can put in a link to the database you want to use.

Section 4: Evaluation of Options

Your next step is to evaluate each option. Common criteria includes benefits, costs, time, and risk. Organizations with an abundance of common sense will use criteria for sustainability and customer satisfaction.

One caution is to avoid measures which have a high correlation with each other. For example, high cost options will most likely take longer. Thus, higher cost and longer time options could be penalized while they may have enormous benefits. Alternatively, lower cost and shorter time options might win your scoring while providing very low benefits. If using both cost and time, you might weight them at 20% each while giving a weight of 40% to benefits.

Some organizations will have a pre-defined scorecard for evaluating options. One example is shown below. This scorecard uses benefits, costs, sustainability, customers, and resources.

Scoring options is an art and a science. Don’t be timid when scoring the benefits and customer criteria. At the same time, don’t be reckless with costs, sustainability, and resources.

After getting your initial scores, take a close look to ensure you have been fair and accurate. There can be a back and forth. You could adjust an option to provide more benefits at a higher cost or vice versa. You could adjust an option to reduce the need for more resources. You want to be fair and honest. You also want to solve problems and improve the performance of the company.

Given one table for criteria and one table for scores, your Evaluation of Options should be about two pages.

Section 5: Recommendation

After scoring your options, the recommendations should write themselves.

Be sure to:

• Rank your recommendations by their scores.
• Be clear about the option numbers and names. Do not dream up new numbers or new names.
• Provide a package of options which meets, or exceeds, the goal stated in your project charter.

There are just a few things to avoid:

• Do not include options which address the same root cause. Two options which do the same thing does not mean both options should be done.
• Do not imply your package of recommendations will deliver galactic optimization or some form of perfection.
• Do not surprise your readers with brand new ideas which have nothing to do with the options you have described and scored.
• Do not make a last-minute plea for an option which scored low. Time to let go.

You can complete this section with suggestions for how to proceed from here. For example, you might want to do a presentation to the steering committee.

In most cases, your Recommendation should be one page.

Section 6: Appendix

Your appendix should include the material which did not need to appear in the report.

In most cases, the appendix should not be detailed information. It should be links to webpages where people can find additional information. Very few of your readers will want to read the details, but many will be pleased to see you are not just making things up.

An appendix needs to fit the expectations of your readers. Be flexible and ask the key people what they need.

A few of the common items to include links to:

• Best practices
• Big data
• Case studies
• Relevant articles
• Relevant videos
• Social media posts

Each link should lead to the specific additional information demonstrating you have done an extensive investigation, and your recommendations are well-reasoned.

Section 1: Executive Summary

While this section is at the beginning of the report, it is written last. It needs to be a quick summary of the entire report.

This is the “first impression” of your work. Don’t be timid. You only get one chance to make a first impression. The folks at Alchemer note how “a thought-provoking statistic, or an inspiring and relevant quote at the beginning of your summary will capture the reader’s attention and get them thinking on the track you want them to”.

Your Executive Summary should:

• Get your readers eager to learn more
• Describe your purpose for producing the report
• Share how your project is going and where this report fits into the overall flow
• Leverage data visualization knowing a picture tells a thousand words

People debate whether this summary should give away the answers or simply create an incentive to read the entire report. If your recommendations need the entire story in order to be understood, then don’t list them in the summary. If your recommendations can be revealed early and will not be controversial, then list them in the summary.

You need to meet the expectations of your readers. Some executives will want to only read the summary. Others will want to read the entire report and feel the summary just gets in the way. Did somebody say you would be blamed if you do and blamed if you don’t?

In most cases, your Executive Summary should be one to two pages.

Summary

Making recommendations is a critical milestone in all improvement projects.

Your project team has been engaged in discussion, debate, and design of a much better future state. It’s now time to share the story and gain approval to proceed.

An underestimated challenge is often the need to be storytellers. You can’t rely on your project champion and steering committee to immediately embrace your proposals. They have not lived through your data collection, analysis of root causes, and investigations into the path forward. You owe them the story of your project up to this point and you have to be quick, crisp, and exciting about it.

One effective approach for a recommendation report included telling your story using the following six parts:

1. Executive Summary
2. Project Overview
3. Description of Options
4. Evaluation of Options
5. Recommendation
6. Appendix

For many projects, this six section report will run about a dozen pages.

Mike Loughrin

Mike Loughrin is the CEO and Founder of Transformance Advisors. He also teaches for Louisiana State University Shreveport and is on the board of directors for the Association for Supply Chain Management Northern Colorado.

Mike brings exceptional experience in industry, consulting services, and education. Mike has helped organizations such as Levi Strauss, Warner Home Video, Lexmark, and Sweetheart Cup.

Keeping a commitment to a balanced life, Mike loves downhill skiing, bicycle rides, and hiking in the mountains. See one of his trails of the month at: Little Switzerland.

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