Using corporate data as a source, we have been producing reports of one type or another for years. Looking back at what worked well and what worked less well, a common theme emerges.

You must be able to produce the first good cut of the report within a single day.

Every now and then, we embarked on the production of a single report only to get bogged down for days, or even weeks, making little or no progress. Even when such a big effort resulted in a report, it often fell well short of what was required.

Looking back on it, what all successful reports had in common was that they "snapped together" very early on; always within the first day. In fact, I can't remember a time when a report was ultimately very useful where the first iteration of it took more than a day to produce.