Storyboarding for Report Writing
Many of the projects I manage involve in-depth qualitative and quantitative data analysis culminating in a final report that my clients can (hopefully) use to make decisions about how to improve their programs. After surveying roads in a remote location or crunching numbers in an obtuse dataset or coaxing the truth out of reluctant interviewees, the final report seems like the most straightforward part of the equation. Just write it all down, right? As a writer, I should know better.
On the last few deliverables I’ve worked, the report that makes its way to me for review has not looked how I would have pictured. We were having difficulty synthesizing the information in a coherent manner, incorporating perspectives from multiple authors, and organizing the content in a logical sequence for the reader to process. We were able to pull it together to generate a quality product, but it usually involved a lot of last-minute rework and no small amount of pain. So, I’m trying a new approach for our latest deliverables. In this post, I’ll present the idea and, at the conclusion of the project, I’ll share our lessons learned in practice. Here is our plan to storyboard as part of the report writing process:
Storyboarding Session #1: Generate broad themes that will become part of the final report. We will hold a preliminary storyboarding session following an initial round of data collection. The purpose of this session will be to tease out the overarching themes that we’ve identified as part of our initial data analysis. The team will decide whether these themes fit the narrative that the client (and we) were expecting. We’ll identify additional themes that we expect will come up as part of subsequent data collection. If we’re not certain whether a particular concept has ascended to the level of a theme, we’ll note it as a question to keep in mind as part of future data collection efforts.
Storyboarding Session #2: Refine list of themes and use these data to describe the story we are trying to tell. Midway through the data collection process, we’ll hold another storyboarding discussion to refine the list of themes we identified as part of the first session. We’ll decide whether subsequent data collection efforts have supported these themes. Most, if not all, themes should have emerged by this point in the project. We’ll use these themes to shape the narrative of the story we want to tell based on observations, reasons for those observations, impacts of those observations, and our recommendations on how to realize those impacts (if positive) or avoid them (if negative.)
Generate report outline. Now that we have identified the themes and how they fit together, we can use that data to generate a report outline for the client to review and approve. In the past, the mistake my teams made was that we put together an outline without taking the time to think through how the content of each section flowed together. My hope is that discussing the themes first will help inform the outline and reduce the risk of having to significantly restructure that outline once we’ve already started writing.
Storyboarding Session #3: At this point, we’ll have generated and approved the outline, handed out writing assignments, and perhaps even have a section or two filled in. The writers will use this time to discuss their section-by-section writing plan, including how their section speaks to the overarching themes that the team identified. The team will use this time to reevaluate the report outline and make any changes based on the flow that the writers are describing.
Socialize initial draft outcomes with client and solicit feedback. This will help ensure that the team is on the right track with their writing plans and prevent surprises upon delivery of the final report.
Start writing! Upon finalizing the structure, flow, and draft content, writing truly becomes a mechanical task. My hope here is to focus the team on how to improve their writing without getting caught up in having to fix the organizational structure.
Let me know in the comments if you have any suggested feedback on the team’s plan! I’ll let you know how it goes over the course of the next few weeks and months.
