Believe it or not, collecting status in large organizations is a difficult problem; one that new leaders, in particular, struggle with and spend countless hours trying to figure out.
It’s easy to see why. Managers, and particularly those at senior-level, are expected to be able to represent their team’s work to their peers and upper management. Similar to how engineers are evaluated based on their in-depth knowledge of a particular system or tool, leaders are evaluated on their ability to answer the important questions of the moment about their organization. The easiest way to do this is through status reports.