Hello Hugo,
I am not aware of an OOTB solution for reporting on project phases directly. However, our organization uses the process status of a project to achieve similar results. The process status of a project is a reportable field. The completion of a task can be used to automatically drive the settings of the process status field.
Our solution:
- Created custom process status field values that matched our project phases.
- Created template phases and tasks.
- Set process status default to value that matches first phase of project
- Identified the final task in each phase that would drive the process to the next phase.
- On project template, edited final task in each phase and set field setting value. Field Setting is used to indicate what the Process Status value will be changed to when the task is completed.
For the most part this solution worked as expected. We are able to report on process status to understand where in the process a project is. However there are some limitations. For this to work requires users to be diligent marking tasks complete. This doesn't always happen and the process status is then not accurate. Also users would sometimes mistakenly complete the task that changed the process status. The status does not change when the task is restarted (it only changes on task completion). There is no easy way to correct the process status in this case.
Cheers
Ken