After the game, the reporters descend on the locker rooms. Most fascinating to me are the quotes from players in the Loser's Locker Room. They're feeling bad, yet most of the time they manage to say something that doesn't have to be bleeped. "They wanted it more than we did," or "The ball just didn't bounce our way." Some of these clichés have hidden meanings, and if you know the team well enough, you can understand what the players are really saying.
So it is with project status reports. Sometimes we struggle to put the best spin on the facts, or to convey indirectly a message that we cannot — or dare not — convey directly.
Have you learned to read, write, and speak Status-Report? Status-Report is a language that uses the same grammar and syntax as your own language, but the words mean something different. If you want to learn Status-Report, here are some examples.
| What You Read | What It Might Mean |
|---|---|
| Forward progress continues to be inhibited by external difficulties. | It's not our fault. |
| This month we made good progress toward implementing the necessary infrastructure. | We're still trying to figure out what the heck we're supposed to be doing. |
| Fortunately, the delays have provided us with an opportunity to address other outstanding issues. | We're finding work for everybody so we won't lose them while we're waiting. |
| Requirements of important users for new versions with enhanced capabilities have driven us to provide alpha releases. | Sales has been beating us up so bad that we had to send them something. Heaven only knows if it works. |
| Progress toward completing this work has been slowed by an assortment of problems in other parts of the system. | We're stuck. We have no idea for how long. Pray. |
| The requisition to purchase the new software is running into some approval problems. | The recent reorg has had political implications. We might have to cut a deal. |
| It was determined that we will continue to watch the situation and assess our options at a later time. | We have no clue what to do about this. |
| No deliverables are completed at this time. | There is disagreement about the meaning of "completed." Or maybe "deliverable." |
| A detailed project plan cannot be created at this time because it is not yet known exactly what system will be designed and built. | I hate paperwork. |
| One problem could be lack of manpower. It was decided that if this was a major hindrance, we should look at ways of allocating resources for this purpose. The executive committee will follow up. | Management doesn't want to fund this project at an adequate level. We will try to get people to work on it anyway. |
Find an old status report from a troubled project — maybe a report you wrote yourself. Translate it from Status-Report into plain language. How much more useful would it have been in that form? 
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