Top Expenses Report: Monthly Reviews That End in Decisions
· 9 min read
The standing monthly engineering cost review at the 80-person org we worked with in March 2026 ran 90 minutes. Six dashboards. Four department leads each defending their numbers. The output: a Slack message saying "let's dig in next month." Same message in February. Same in January. The dashboards were excellent. The decisions were zero.
The problem is not data scarcity. Asana's 2024 Anatomy of Work report found knowledge workers spend 58% of the day on "work about work," meetings, status updates, and dashboard reviews, and that the modal review meeting produces no concrete next action. Engineering cost reviews are a textbook case. Too many numbers, no forcing function for a decision.