What is the difference between a project review and a project report?

A Practical Guilde to Project Review

April 17, 2025

Project review is a key step in project management. It allows you totrack a project's progress, make the necessary adjustments and validate the transition to the next stage. It is a moment of exchange with decision-makers that promotes collaboration.

So how to organize a project review? Who participates? What are the different types of reviews? In this article, we offer you a deep dive into project review and how to set it up.

What is Project Review?

Project Review: Definition

The project review, or review meeting, is an integral part of effective project monitoring. Organized between the decision-makers of a project, it helps monitoring and validate, or not, the moving to the next step.

Established at the end of each milestone, it fosters a synchronization time in order to establish effective collaboration and a climate of trust.

Why Project Review Matters?

For Clients

The project review brings together the client or his representative, and the teams.

These moments of exchange strengthen transparency and establish a lasting climate of trust.

In addition, the project review represents an opportunity to ensure that the project remains aligned with its expectations throughout the project, in order to adjust actions if necessary.

For Teams

Project review is essential for your teams. Indeed, it makes it possible to clarify the objectives at each stage, to take stock of the actions in progress and to identify the necessary adjustments before validating the transition to the next stage.

In addition, it is part of a continuous improvement process that encourages recognition of work and values successes. This helps to strengthen the involvement of the teams.

For Your Business

Finally, the project review benefits the company as a whole. It proposes a framework to guarantee effective management to ensure the success of the project. It benefits the company on several points:

increased profitability, thanks to the analysis of the differences between the forecast and the actual,
strategic alignment, ensuring that the project remains in line with the overall objectives of the company,
a gain in expertise thanks to feedback from previous reviews,
better customer satisfaction, thanks to rigorous management and monitoring, thus strengthening the company's reputation.

What are the Goals of Project Review?

Monitoring Project Progress

Provide a transparent view of the project's progress

Project review consists of sharing a transparent vision of the project's progress with all stakeholders.

Thus, it makes it possible to evaluate:

current and remaining tasks,
risks,
the problems encountered,
justifications for any deviations,
respect for deadlines,
respect for the budget,
the objectives achieved at a given stage.

Study relevant KPIs

Project review involves obtaining precise information, obtained thanks to very specific KPIs:

To measure the progress of the project:

- the percentage of progress of tasks and deliverables compared to the initial schedule,
- performance gap analysis,
- the rate of achievement of objectives,

To ensure that deadlines are met: comparing planned and actual completion dates for tasks and milestones,
to assess risk management: the status of the identified risks,
To measure satisfaction: the measurement of customer and project team satisfaction

Use a project management tool

To gather these KPIs, the use of a planning tool is a great help.

Stafiz makes it possible to centralize all the information of a project on a single platform in order to access in real time all the data to evaluate the progress of the project.

More about our Project Management ERP

Solving Problems

The project review provides the context to expose problems and risks in order to find solutions. Indeed, the members involved are experienced profiles who, together, will help identify optimizations and solutions.

In the event of threats to the profitability of the project, it is at the project review that it will be relevant to assess the need for a new call for funds.

Approving the Next Milestone

The project review validates the achievement of the objectives and records the passage to the next milestone.

Decisions taken are generally irrevocable.

Strengthening Collaboration

Another goal of project review is to federate teams and strengthen the relationship with the client. Indeed, it leads to a framework conducive to exchanges in order to promote cooperation, reassure the customer and build loyalty.

It is also an opportunity to look back on achivements and congratulate the members involved.

The Different Types of Project Review

The Steering Committee, to Define and Reframe

The steering committee is considered as a project review. He intervenes at the start of the project to define the context and then during the project to validate the alignment with the objectives.

Thus, the steering committee will make it possible to:

appoint the project manager,
build the team,
define the phases and deadlines of the project,
validate the steps,
Establish the schedule for the various project reviews.

Progress and Approval Reviews

These project reviews, which are organised regularly during the project, respond to two issues: to take stock of the project and to validate the transition to the next stage.

They are essential and guarantee rigorous project monitoring.

The Closing Review

The closing review takes place at the end of the project and allows us to take stock.

It ensures that all deliverables have been transmitted, that they correspond to expectations and that the accounts have been closed.

It allows you to look back on the successes and failures of the project in order to draw lessons and build a history for future projects.

Other Project Reviews

Budget Review

The budget review is essential for rigorous management control because it allows the financial aspect of the project to be monitored.

Thus, it is used to analyse expenditure, study budget variances so that the actual corresponds to the provisional budget and to propose adjustments in the event of deviations.

Project planning software is particularly useful in this case. For example, Stafiz offers dedicated features in order to:

establish a provisional project budget,
Carry out a strategic review of the project through the study of deviations by day and by cost,
Establish a financial analysis by period or in comparison with other projects.

Our project planning tool

Sprint Review

Sprint review is for agile projects that are organized into sprint phases.

Organized at the end of each sprint, it reports what has been achieved, clarifies what needs to be changed, and validates the move to the next sprint.

Manufacturing Review

The manufacturing review is mainly about products.

It takes place at each stage to validate manufacturing, design, compliance, or propose adjustments to move on to further development.

Who Participates in a Project Review?

The project review should only include members whose presence is essential.

The more participants there are, the longer the meeting is likely to last.

The Project Sponsor

The project sponsor is the one who allocates the budgets, ensures that the budget is respected and that the project is profitable.

It is the government that will intervene if other budgets need to be released.

The Client's Representative

The client or their representative attends the project review in order to have a transparent visibility on the progress of the project.

Their participation is essential in order to validate important decisions and to be clear on the turns that the project is taking.

The Project Manager

The project manager organizes, leads and follows up on the project review.

Thus, he is responsible for its preparation, ensures its smooth running and its relevance.

The Project Team

The project team is involved in the preparation of the meeting.

He or she does not attend the project review directly but assists his or her representative, the project manager, so that he or she has all the necessary information. It communicates the progress of tasks, problems encountered or risks.

The Experts

Some deliverables require a technical point of view, thus requiring the presence of experts to answer technical questions and provide a realistic point of view.

How to Organize an Effective Project Review?

Step 1: Defining Goals

The first step is to define the type of project review. Thus, you must identify the objectives to be achieved by planning this project review: take stock, validate a step, review the budget, etc.

By clearly defining a framework, you will save time and increase efficiency.

Step 2: Set the Agenda

Preparing for the project review is one of the most important phases. Indeed, it is at this stage that you will have to define:

The agenda and the expected objectives.
The participants. Call them well in advance to ensure their availability.
The calendar. Try to estimate the time needed for each step.

To facilitate the project review, prepare a presentation that you will take care to have validated by the sponsor before the big day. It must include:

a dashboard presenting the actions carried out so far as well as the key indicators for project monitoring.
what has been achieved, what remains to be done, the problems encountered and the risks.
the expectations for the project review, the decisions that need to be made.
an appendix giving access to the history of the project and all the information in detail.

Step 3: Guiding the Meeting

The project review opens with a reminder of the objectives and the milestone to be validated.

Here are some tips for organizing and hosting a project review.

List the members present for maximum transparency.
Identify a "time master" and a person responsible for note-taking.
Focus on information that concerns the whole group and not spread yourself too thin on aspects that are too specific.
To act on decisions.
Encourage open discussion and constructive exchanges.
Allow time for questions.
Call back the next project review.

Step 4: Approving the Decisions Made and Next Steps

The project review must make it possible to validate key decisions for the rest of the project.

Make sure the next steps and actions are clear to everyone. In addition, all participants must approve the move to the next stage, otherwise the project will be put on stand-by.

Record the findings, clarify the tasks expected for each with specific deadlines.

Step 5: Rigorously Following-up the Project Review

The follow-up stage ensures that all members are aligned on the same vision.

Following the project review, the project manager sends a report, which has been validated beforehand by the sponsor. Concise and precise, this report lists what was present, what was discussed and what decisions were taken.

Following the project review, it is necessary to ensure that the actions have been put in place and the decisions taken have been recorded. You can group all project review reports in a folder to facilitate project monitoring.

In addition, we recommend that you establish a project review template that includes a standard format, a schedule and a checklist. However, it is important to remain flexible in the event of changing needs.

The project review is not very complex to set up but requires careful preparation. The more efficient the preparation phase , the smoother the meeting can be and the more quickly the meeting will allow you to respond to the objectives and validate the passage to the next step.

Using project management software is a great help in preparing for a project review. Some tools such as Stafiz offer features not only dedicated to project planning, but also to project monitoring, thus offering reliable and usable data.

Questions:

The project review is a periodic evaluation of the progress of an ongoing project. It takes place at key stages to review what has been achieved, identify any problems or deviations from the original plan, and make the necessary decisions for the rest of the project. Its main objective is to ensure the smooth running of the project until its completion.

The project report, on the other hand, is a retrospective analysis that takes place at the end of the project. Its purpose is to assess the overall performance of the project, identify successes and challenges, and draw lessons that can be useful for future projects. It focuses on analyzing the entire project lifecycle once it is complete.

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