From Burden to Baseline: Integrating the Weekly Activity Report into the Agile Sprint

Courtesy Photo | Learn how the 2d Theater Signal Brigade's Data Engineering Office transformed the WAR from a cumbersome administrative task into an efficient operational baseline. By integrating Microsoft Planner tasks into our Agile workflow, we've eliminated manual processes and created a seamless documentation engine. (AI Image Generated by Gemini)  

WIESBADEN, HESSEN, GERMANY

11.11.2025

Courtesy Story

2d Theater Signal Brigade

Commentary by Nathan Slack, Chief Data Officer, 2d Theater Signal Brigade

I. THE UNIVERSAL PROBLEM: THE BURDEN OF THE WEEKLY ACTIVITY REPORT (WAR)

In every organization I’ve served, I submitted a Weekly Activity Report (WAR). This report became a significant administrative burden, consuming several hours of a supervisor’s time each week. I spent those hours sorting through emails and chats, actively recalling the tasks and activities I had tackled just five days earlier.

For the Data Engineering Office (DEO), this administrative drag is unacceptable.

Our team constantly balances priorities: sometimes we develop large Human Resources Data Products that improve processes for the entire organization, and at other times, we deliver hyper-focused, targeted reports that impact a single office. No matter the scale, every task consumes personnel resources.

Leadership must recognize where employees allocate their time to ensure it aligns seamlessly with the organization’s strategic goals. Our solution was to stop viewing the WAR as a separate, burdensome task and instead, integrate it directly into our team’s rhythm and workflow.
This integration enhanced efficiency and focused our efforts on our core objectives.

II. INTEGRATING REPORTING INTO THE AGILE RHYTHM

Our process starts with the two-week Sprint Planning Session, which is the heartbeat of the DEO’s work:

• We review the previous sprint’s work.

• We passionately debate the retrospective to ensure continuous improvement.

• Crucially, we receive clear, top-down leadership priorities for the next two weeks.

• We plan as a Team.

There is no micromanaging here. The team collectively decides the best technical and tactical approach to achieving the outlined priorities.

THE PLANNER AS THE ENGINEER’S REFERENCE CARD

The key to eliminating reporting friction lies in how our engineers manage their daily tasks using the planning session as their baseline:

• As the engineers build out their tasks for the sprint, they place them on an electronic planner. We use Microsoft Planner for this; however, there are many other options out there.

• As the engineer executes work each day, they update their task card by either closing it out or adding progress comments.

• Accountability and Documentation: As we work on each task, we attach the necessary documents, check off milestones, and establish accountability by assigning program tags and personnel to the tasks.

While this may seem like extra work initially, it isn’t. These Planner tasks become the engineer’s reference cards—serving as historical notes for methods used, code developed, and blockers encountered. They are essential for final documentation and pivotal in preparing the WAR.

This documentation is a gift that keeps on giving: when the appraisal period arrives, engineers can immediately pull all completed tasks to build out their performance packages.

III. THE AUTOMATED & TRANSPARENT COMMUNICATION PIPELINE

When the Weekly Activity Report is due, the supervisor does not start from scratch; instead, they strategically organize the existing data to ensure accuracy and efficiency.

1. Distributed Drafting: Team leads open their respective Planner tasks and use the detailed comments and completion notes to write a quick summary of the week’s work into a centralized, shared document.

2. Voice Standardization (LLM Assist): Once everyone has contributed, we utilize a Large Language Model (LLM) to consolidate the raw input, unify the voice, and help fill in any missing data or details.

3. Future State: We are actively working toward the day when the LLM can pull the comments and data directly from Planner to build the WAR completely, achieving fully automated reporting.

TRANSPARENCY TO COMMAND

The Commander receives every Weekly Activity Report, and the entire DEO team is included on the distribution list.

• Transparency: This allows every engineer and analyst to know exactly what was communicated up to Command, eliminating speculation.

• Team Feedback: The entire team receives feedback or follow-up questions from Command together, reinforcing that accountability is a collective effort.

• Streamlined Process: This process effectively removes the chaotic flood of separate emails and chats typically required to construct the report, replacing it with a single, reliable communication pipeline.

This communication structure effectively aligns our resources, enhances transparency in our work, and significantly reduces the administrative tax on the team. It transforms the mandatory WAR into a highly functional and valuable output of the agile process itself.

How does your organization streamline communication from the ground floor up to your leadership team?

• Date Taken: 11.11.2025
• Date Posted: 11.17.2025 04:26
• Story ID: 551291
• Location: WIESBADEN, HESSEN, DE
• Hometown: INYOKERN, CALIFORNIA, US