Status reports aren't a sign of a broken company. Micro-management, over communication, and unnecessary process are.
Turns out that many broken businesses utilize status reports as a weapon of oppression. However some small tweaks, like reminders, team-level sharing, company-wide search index, and a sane managerial attitude make Snippets popular with many teams at Google.
Just like any tool, status reports can be misused. However, many non-broken businesses are fueled by them. You just might not always call it a status report.
The abstraction over these various tools is that they represent a (1) communication medium, (2) audience, (3) cadence, and (4) similar content structure.
Snippets are (1) emails, sent to (2) everyone on your team, (3) weekly, and contain (4) last week's accomplishments and this week's goals.
Standups are (1) in person meetings, (2) with the whole team, (3) daily, (4) discussing yesterday's accomplishments, today's goals, and identifying opportunities for offline collaboration.
Managerial status reports are (1) emails, (2) to your boss, sent at (3) some frequency, (4) discussing accomplishments, goals, blockers, etc.
You shouldn't do snippets because Google does them. You should figure out a communication medium, cadence, and agenda/template, which works for you and your team.
Our project was in part inspired by Google's snippets (which some teams love and some teams hate; we loved them) and also inspired in part by the various enterprise-consumerization startups that are popping up left and right.
Shameless plug: We've got a much grander vision. The most common phrase we hear in meetings is "How the hell did you get me excited about status reports?" We've got top-tier investors and real traction. If you're a talented engineer in Seattle: We're hiring and would love to buy you a beer and get you excited too.
Standups don't scale though. The company I was with got to the point where morning standup took nearly an hour as each person talked about what they did yesterday, what they had planned for today, and any blockers. Worse, the only person who really needed to hear all of this was the manager. Sometimes you had interest in what another person was doing because it might impact your work, but for 90% of the standup you were just standing there, bored, waiting for your turn or waiting for it to end. Terribly unproductive.
On my previous team, even with 8 people, too much yakking made standups too slow, and indeed you had many people bored just waiting. No one thought eliminating standups was a good idea, though.
So one guy pulled out a timer. You've got one minute. After one minute, if it's so worth saying that you'll keep talking through the "bzzt bzzt bzzt bzzt" of the annoying alarm, you go ahead. But now you're getting direct feedback against talking without need.
Of course, I make no claim this would work for any other group, much less any particular group. But it helped that team get standups done faster and more productively.
Forgive me for quoting/paraphrasing myself, but...
"You shouldn't do [standups] because [agile consultants] [tell you to]. You should figure out a communication medium, cadence, and agenda/template, which works for you and your team."
The bigger problem with standups is when you are in a role such as operations, where you are often involved (extremely peripherally) with many development teams, each of which wants you at their "20 minute" standup.
I regularly spend a full hour a day in standups, and the useful content to me in them could be communicated in 5 minutes or in 2 emails.
Turns out that many broken businesses utilize status reports as a weapon of oppression. However some small tweaks, like reminders, team-level sharing, company-wide search index, and a sane managerial attitude make Snippets popular with many teams at Google.
Just like any tool, status reports can be misused. However, many non-broken businesses are fueled by them. You just might not always call it a status report.
The abstraction over these various tools is that they represent a (1) communication medium, (2) audience, (3) cadence, and (4) similar content structure.
Snippets are (1) emails, sent to (2) everyone on your team, (3) weekly, and contain (4) last week's accomplishments and this week's goals.
Standups are (1) in person meetings, (2) with the whole team, (3) daily, (4) discussing yesterday's accomplishments, today's goals, and identifying opportunities for offline collaboration.
Managerial status reports are (1) emails, (2) to your boss, sent at (3) some frequency, (4) discussing accomplishments, goals, blockers, etc.
You shouldn't do snippets because Google does them. You should figure out a communication medium, cadence, and agenda/template, which works for you and your team.
Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder of http://www.thinkfuse.com
Our project was in part inspired by Google's snippets (which some teams love and some teams hate; we loved them) and also inspired in part by the various enterprise-consumerization startups that are popping up left and right.
Shameless plug: We've got a much grander vision. The most common phrase we hear in meetings is "How the hell did you get me excited about status reports?" We've got top-tier investors and real traction. If you're a talented engineer in Seattle: We're hiring and would love to buy you a beer and get you excited too.