I’m actually a member of *several* teams at work. We’re a cross-functional organization, so you’re not only on, say, the “UI team” or the “database team” (based on your area of expertise), you’re also on one or more project teams collaborating with members of other areas of expertise.

We work in a Scrum format, so we don’t really have “status meetings,” we have stand-up meetings. There is a stand-up meeting every morning for every team you’re on.

What I’ve found is that if you stick to the stand-up meeting format (what you did yesterday, what you’re doing today, and what is blocking you), you can get all the information relevant to the entire group out pretty quickly. On the other hand, if everyone in both groups explains their dilemmas right there in the stand-up meeting, the meetings never end and pretty soon it’s lunch time and no work has gotten done. Further, certain dilemmas may be helpful/interesting/relevant to part of the group but not the entire group, meaning some folks are getting their time wasted.

What we’ve adopted is more of a “breakout session” approach. Stick to the stand-up meeting format, and when you list things that are blocking you, also list your dilemmas. Folks interested in working on that dilemma and discussing the details can stay after the meeting and talk about it; folks not interested can go on their merry way. Sticking to that format gets the required information out there, lets people get more details to folks interested, and doesn’t waste anyone’s time.

Of course, if there’s something that needs to be run over in detail (“here’s how we solved this crazy issue”) that’s a separate meeting, not part of status/stand-up. We have those on an as-needed basis.