Reporting can drive bad behaviours

It’s important to be aware that reporting drives particular behaviours. If you demand the wrong outcomes in your reporting then you drive the incorrect behaviour. You are responsible for the behaviour change you are triggering when asking teams and people to send your reports, even if you are not aware of the incorrect behaviour it is triggering.

A current example talking to a client:
The risk management team want to see that risks are getting moved to "Resolved".
If you tell the delivery teams that, then the focus becomes "Move everything to resolved".

Risk doesn't go away just because you want it to. If you make "Move to resolved" the focus and drive, then teams either A) artificially move things to resolved (too soon / incorrectly) and/or B) they stop reporting risks.

You want to see risks being documented and you want to see them being managed. if you make "move to resolved" the target, then you lose visibility of them - they get swept under the carpet.

In Agile software development, teams are constantly facing a stream of risks that they need to manage and report. The way to encourage that behaviour is to make it a good thing that they have identified a risk, and that they are managing it.

Therefore, make the focus that risks are being Actioned. Not Resolved.
Set the expectation - "I want to see all risks with owners, and action taking place."
Resolved occurs only when the risk can no longer have an impact.

Review all reporting that teams are doing, and ask yourself “What behaviour is this encouraging that we don’t want?” If you can’t think of any, start with Watermelon Reporting - a common phenomenon in project management where people report that the project is Green (From the status Red / Amber / Green) whereas in reality, if you dig below the surface, you quickly find that it is in fact red.