I always said that if I got into management I would not do certain things. One of those activities was status reports. Why? Because I hate them.
Basically, if I’m going to do a real status report, one that actually means something, I’m going to spend at least an hour compiling it. That is assuming I haven’t been updating status all week, which would probably add up to an hour of effort anyway. Then the manager, project manager, technical lead, or whoever has to take my status report, read it, and compile it into some other kind of report. Let’s assume that effort is maybe another 15 minutes of effort per employee on their part. Possibly more. This is not counting time spent hounding employees for status, tracking down people who never get around to it (Hello, Boss!), or revising reports that were missing information.
Hey, I respect that managers have to manage and doing so without information is a bear. I’m not unsympathetic, but is this really efficient?
One of the best managers I ever had just did weekly meetings. He would bring a project plan or spreadsheet with him that had everyone’s known tasks on it. Then he would go around the room and get a quick update. Any issues would be talked about outside the meeting. This allowed him to not only get everyone’s status at once, but this was a good time to bring up issues so that he could address them quickly. Even though this was a fair size team, about a dozen people, these meetings could be done easily in half-an-hour. Realistically though you plan to lose an hour of time.
I’ve tried this approach on a team of a similar size and by scheduling a known meeting time every week then no one loses more than an hour of their time for status. I keep track of everything myself and it takes me maybe an hour, tops, to update every week. There is no hounding, missing status reports, or incomplete information. Getting status reports does not become a job unto itself and creating status reports does not become an additional task for employees. I admit, it’s not a perfect system. People get sick or go on vacation, and then I have to put in some extra effort, but really not that much.
The cynical side of me wonders if some past managers didn’t insist on status reports because it helped them do less face-to-face management while also generating work for themselves. After all, if I had to spend 4 hours compiling status reports every week I could look busy while maintaining a facade of importance. Maybe I am looking at it wrong, but all I really know is that the last thing I want to do is harass the people who ultimately support me.