Once upon a time I produced a highlight report every week and it went to one person – my boss. Over time I become embedded within in matrix organisation where there was no-one to demand a highlight report. So I stopped doing highlight reports.
A few years ago I was involved in a team where we were moving quite fast on things and we wanted to keep each other up-to speed with how we were getting on. We recreated the concept of the highlight report as a mechanism for communicating within the team. Steve wrote about this some time ago.
I’m now working in a globally distributed matrix set of teams where communication is an issue. Steve has been badgering me to get back into writing a highlight report, and so have others. So this week I returned to writing highlight reports.
I’d prefer to be writing an internal blog, but the infrastructure just isn’t available so the highlight report will have to do for now.
The benefits of a highlight report weren’t just communication though. One of the feelings I’ve been having recently is that I’ve not been making much progress on things, writing a highlight report made me realise how much I had achieved.
Sometimes it’s the basic disciplines that make the difference.
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Graham Chastney 
well done Graham! I too would prefer an internal blog, but in many ways the traditional email highlight report is like the web newletters that preceded blogs. So within our company maybe we will overload people with emailed highlight reports and that will help them to understand just how useful blogs and RSS are for tracking change.
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