Dmitri Ivanenko has some good things to say about status reports in "Are You Ready for your Next Status Report?"
One critical missing piece in this post the raw materials for the status report come from the plan. You plan the work and work the plan, you have the materials for the status report in your plan. This "plan the work and work the plan," is independent of any product development method. Agile has plans. They're called planning sessions. Agile works the plan, it's called an iteration. DoD has a plan, it's called an Integrated Master Plan / Integrated Master Schedule (IMP/IMS). DoD works the plan, with weekly Work Package assignments and Earned Value reporting. So no credible project can not - not plan the work and work the plan.
But the status report still needs to report status of the planned work:
- Perform no work that is not in the plan (in some way). Then you can report what was accomplished from what was planned to be accomplished. If your doing work that's not in the plan - why? Who asked for it? Who's paying for it?
- If you address risks in the status report that are not in the risk registry, then put them there and report on them.
- If you spent more money or delivered late, you should report against the planned spend and deliverables.
What a status report does is
Report the status of the planned activities. So have a credible plan and report progress against it using Dmitri's guidance.
