You have a great point that status reports lack context. However, there is a deeper problem: people don't like to write especially about what they did. Some think that they might spend those 5 minutes doing something more productive, which is wrong. Some feel that they are being micro-managed and some say: "look at the code changes". All of them are wrong, but I've been trying to deal with information distribution problem for years in different organizations but without a good solution. Even daily/weekly meetings are not solving the problem (I let the people talk and then I write a summary). People talk too little and prefer not to listen. In summary, the best solution I had is to have group managers to write a weekly reports of the group progress and send it company-wide. They can be made to invest the time, they still know what is done in their groups and can summarize it. Those reports also limit the amount of flowing information in the organization.