In general, what's worked for me in the past is to have someone do a shared state update every 15 minutes or so (pick the appropriate time interval here). It should be done by a senior person (or people), and they have to understand either the end-to-end of the whole system or the end-to-end of their part of the system.<p>One goal is to keep management up-to-date. The other goal is to keep management from interfering with the actual effort, which they are wont to do.<p>It could be something as simple as someone going "where are we at."<p>And at the end of the status update everyone agrees on when the next update time should be. If something's going to take a while that needs to be communicated.