Adhoc Status Reports Considered Harmful
Managers can’t help asking for status reports. It’s just one of the things we have to do when we’re asked a question we can’t answer with our brains or the tools at hand. We usually don’t think of them as status reports, we just ask a question like “Hey, Pat, when is Project X going to ship?” And that’s when the trouble begins.
It turns out, asking for an unexpected status update for a project immediately increases the perceived priority of that project.