[civilized]

In my company, the project manager is essentially just there to report progress to management.

Why is it necessary to report progress to management? I'm not sure; as far as I've seen, nothing is ever done with the information, except to propagate it further up the chain. I can only speculate that, without progress reporting, management would seem to have too little work to do to justify its headcount.

[kenjackson]

If you don’t known what is done with reports on progress, you probably shouldn’t comment on such things and should instead go find out.

[AstralStorm]

Usually what is done with that information is scheduling or sales. Typically overly optimistic scheduling or selling a thing one does not possess (a future).