Teamreporter wants to replace your daily status meetings with daily email updates

Anyone who’s spent any time working in an office will largely agree that an insane amount of time is wasted sitting around in meetings. It’s a common, but largely unavoidable, complaint.

It’s not that attempting to get through the endless supply of bad coffee and limp looking fruit (not in our office, of course) is a chore in itself, it’s more that a lot of them are simply to deliver regular updates to the rest of your team, the sort of thing that could be handled in an email.

This is where Teamreporter comes in; it wants to effectively end these needless meetings and replace them with an automated system for feeding back project progress at the end of each day, thereby negating the need for unnecessary discussion. It’s a bit like a lightweight alternative to 15Five, which may appeal to some people.

So, with no software to install, no specific platforms required and a simple set up process, swapping out daily meetings for email updates might seem like an attractive proposition for some small teams.

All you need to do is set-up the daily (you can specify the frequency yourself) report, input a few questions that you want updates on, like “What did you accomplish today?”, “What will you do tomorrow?” and “What obstacles are impeding your progress?” and it will be automatically sent out each day.

The idea is that all team members can then quickly fill out the short questionnaire each day. The system then collates reponses and delivers a complete status report on everyone’s progress – which Teamreporter said allows companies to spot any potential delays or problems with projects early on.

That’s the theory, my fear is that the daily grind of meetings would be replaced by a daily grind of filling out yet more reports or paperwork, plus the system obviously works best when everyone manages to fill one in without fail, every day. And if everyone reads each submission.

If a team member fails to fill one in, surely it’s a bit like them missing the meeting?

To be fair, you’ll get precisely two extra emails per day (one for you to fill in and one updating you with everyone’s key progress) – and fewer if it’s set to update less frequently.

Founder Luke Davis argues that the time spent responding to a few short questions is actually time saved in comparison with status update meetings which can easily last 15 – 30 minutes, if not longer.

Nonetheless, Davis concedes to TNW that brainstorming meetings aren’t intended to be replaced by Teamreporter. It’s more like the bullet points of your day. A neat package for easy team consumption.

Teamreporter is available on a range of plans. ‘Free’ allows one team with a maximum of four team members. The next tier allows for 2 teams with 5 team members for $19 per month; the $49 per month company plan allows 10 teams with a maximum of 10 members on each. The top-end ‘Enterprise’ plan costs $99 per month, supports up to 25 teams with up to 25 members on each team.

➤ Teamreporter

Featured Image Credit – Shutterstock