Ask HN: How do you report your progress or status to your Manager/Boss?

Yep, daily, and then we recite the same thing at our daily morning standup.

Don't think I'll share a real one, they're probably proprietary and no upside for me in that. But I can give you a fake one.

Below is the top of my file. The last entry, the dated one, gets pushed down every day under a fresh one, and I update it as I go during the day.

The markup syntax is vimwiki http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2226, but it could be any markup. Years ago I used to use markup something like this without transforming it, before there was anything like markdown or reST.

At the end of the day I run Vimwiki2HTML from within vim, and my daily status html page is updated; it's just a local page, I don't serve it. I copy today's entry from that and email my boss. Ten years ago I would have just copied the plain text from the vim file.

Every once in awhile I email the ever growing file to myself at home.

Scripts that generate the daily template after the example.

  =Status=
  
  ==Long term ToDo==
  * Some long term thing that currently doesn't have any tasks:
  
  * Some slightly more interesting long term thing:
      * practice elocution
      * study needed inventions
      * study electricity
  
  
  ==Immediate ToDo==
  * Follow up on that thing by end of the week.
  * See if that other thing is ready.
  
  
  ==2013.03.22 Friday==
  
  ===Today===
  * Wrote test ABC.
  * Reviewed test BCD.
  * Passed test CDE.
  * Failed test DEF.
  * Wrote bug ticket 234 describing test DEF failure.
  * Cleared ticket 345.
  
  ===Tomorrow===
  * Write test XYZ
  * Run tests MNO, PQR. 
  
  ===Roadblocks===
  * My cube mate keeps looking at me.

This generates a date:

  $ cat bin/adate
  #! /usr/bin/env bash
  
  dt="$1" || "today"
  date --date="$dt" +"%Y.%m.%d %A"

  $ adate
  2013.03.22 Friday

  $ adate Monday
  2013.03.25 Monday

  $ adate "last Monday"
  2013.03.18 Monday

  $ adate "next Friday"
  2013.03.29 Friday

And this generates a daily entry skeleton:

  $ cat bin/edate
  #! /usr/bin/env bash
   
  dt="$1" || "today"
  echo "==$(adate $dt)=="
  echo ""
  echo "===Today==="
  echo "*"
  echo ""
  echo "===Tomorrow==="
  echo "*"
  echo ""
  echo "===Roadblocks==="
  echo "*"
  echo ""
  echo ""

  $ edate
  ==2013.03.22 Friday==
   
  ===Today===
  *
   
  ===Tomorrow===
  *
   
  ===Roadblocks===
  *

Then in vim, put your cursor above the previous day's entry, and:

  :r!edate

which creates a new blank entry with one empty bullet per section.

Emailed reports are usually project-specific, like "Projects X and Y are done, I'm stalled on project Z with this issue...".

In person it's usually a 2-minute meeting where we clarify which projects are done, which are priorities, etc.

...and sometimes the 2-minute update meetings turn into 2-hour planning meetings.