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Welcome to the 'Plogging' World
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon May 17, 2004 12:03 PM
from the living-in-a-material-world dept.
from the living-in-a-material-world dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "No, it's not a typo. A plog is short for 'project log' like a blog is short for 'web log.' And plogs start to be used as tools to manage projects, especially in the IT world, as discovered Michael Schrage of the MIT. He reports his findings in an article published by CIO Magazine, "The Virtues of Chitchat." Schrage found that if plogs are not really commonplace, they're not exactly rare. And they are even used to manage large IT projects, such as ERP rollouts. I totally agree with him that a plog is of great value to integrate people in a team or to keep track of the advancement of a project. And you, what's your view? If you're a project manager, do you use a plog for better control? And if not today, will you use one in the future? This overview contains selected excerpts from Schage's article which will help you to answer the above questions."
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Plogging for defense and security (Score:5, Informative)
Tcd004
Re:Plogging for defense and security (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Stupid .plan tricks (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Stupid .plan tricks (Score:3)
Basecamp for Plogging (Score:5, Informative)
It also makes it really easy to make client-extranet plogs where clients can comment on your entries. Really slick.
Re:Basecamp for Plogging (Score:5, Interesting)
my uni uses tutos [tutos.org].
and the software engineering documentation subject has "Document the building of your very own team management software" as their semester project [mu.oz.au]
actually, in order to manage all the docs our team used a combination of roundup, mailman and B2 blog to make our own rapidly developed team work space...
it was kinda ironic - using a collaborative online project management system to design a collaborative online project management system
in the end, though, the strain of having 7 people work on 1 document through a webbased interface got too much so we ended up using CVS on the school unix servers
Parent
Re:Basecamp for Plogging (Score:3, Interesting)
Do we need more types? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do we need more types? (Score:4, Interesting)
I glad the idea has a specific name, now that there is a buzz word attached to the idea maybe someone who matters will pick up on it and champion the idea, it would be useful, no matter what it's called.
Parent
Re:Do we need more types? (Score:5, Funny)
There are too many words in English, period. From now on, let's just call all things "things."
Oh, wait, what's the point of language again?
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Re:Do we need more types? (Score:5, Interesting)
Weblogs are personal web pages or journals. Plogs are project logs. Photologs are photo journals. Sure, the terms are longer, but they actually sound reasonable compared to "blog."
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Re:Do we need more types? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Do we need more types? (Score:5, Funny)
It's still better than "blogosphere."
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Re:Do we need more types? (Score:5, Funny)
From here [southparkstudios.com] if you don't get the reference.
Parent
Re:Do we need more types? (Score:3, Funny)
Chris
if it were an IQ test (Score:4, Funny)
- a) tlog
My logic would tell me a project log was a tlog (+ it sounds way cooler =)b) plog
c) clog
Parent
Re:if it were an IQ test (Score:3, Funny)
as in "to flog the log", i.e. create a work of fiction to fulfill some project manager's dream of what should be happening. Not that I'm cynical or anything... but
h
What a... (Score:2, Funny)
har, har.
Ah, like the old .project file (Score:5, Interesting)
Nostalgia... (Score:4, Interesting)
We would timestamp our .project files and each of us would have their login script finger the other group members, compare the timestamp to the one stored in a flat database (ASCII file) and then, if there were any changes, display the output of the finger command.
Simple, yet effective (plus, it was geeky enough to make sure that nobody outside of R&D or Coding ever bothered to check the status of projects).
These days, unfortunately, hardly anyone seems to be running fingerd and it's virtually always firewalled off to the outside world.
Parent
one word (Score:5, Interesting)
They make for excellent documentation both for old and for new developers/users
Re:one word (Score:3, Insightful)
Setting up an organization-wide wikipedia for all issues from how the lunchroom works to how to contact payroll to the business logic for a certain process would provide an invaluable resource. And since
Re:one word (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Following this naming scheme (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Following this naming scheme (Score:3, Funny)
SF (Score:5, Interesting)
links (Score:5, Informative)
interesting... (Score:2, Interesting)
Star Trek (Score:5, Funny)
Never heard James T. Kirk put an entry in the clog.
We all knew it would come to this... (Score:5, Funny)
tlog? (Score:5, Interesting)
-m
Duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
Workplace Wikis are useful (Score:5, Interesting)
It can be a free form tool to coordinate various teams and projects. Its important to bear in mind though that even the best tool is no replacement for good management.
The WIKI I'm currently using is TWIKI [twiki.org] which is GPL'd.
Re:Workplace Wikis are useful (Score:3, Interesting)
IMHO, a free-form logging tool or discussion board serves two valuable purposes:
1) On a free-form weblog or discussion board, it is much easier to be honest about problems. Compare that to formalised documents such as progress reports, where most people tend to play down issues because they think they can fix them themselves before the n
Plog, Blog,... (Score:5, Funny)
"I'm a mog. Half-man, half-dog. I'm my own best friend."
Discussion groups (Score:5, Insightful)
But for larger groups a more formal "discussion group" may be more appropriate to keep track of who wrote what. These are generally hierarchical, AKA "threaded". The problem many of them have is that it is difficult to reference stuff outside of the hierarchy. They should use some kind of message numbering system so that one can easily make cross-branch references by typing in message numbers.
However, many managers are not used to such systems and are sometimes intimidated by them. Some tend to be "verbal-oriented".
Really now. (Score:2, Insightful)
Quit quoting from other blogs (Score:2, Insightful)
My experiments in my team with a blog. (Score:4, Interesting)
XP (Score:3, Informative)
Martin Fowler, owner of Thoughtworks and XP evangelist, keeps a Bliki [martinfowler.com] (his name for a cross between a Blog & a Wiki)
In theme with other posts... (Score:3, Interesting)
About the only thing proven here is that when e-mail is shown to be sufficient, it's sufficient, and developers won't be quick to jump to other technologies, even when they are more useful.
Wiki success. (Score:3, Interesting)
In contrast, our internal Wiki (a JSPWiki [jspwiki.org] instance) grows by leaps and bounds, currently at the rate of 400 new pages a month, and typically 50+ edits a day. There was never any official pronouncement to make it so; I actually started it here just for myself.
I think it took off because it was adopted by some high-profile and prolific people, and thus "It's in the Wiki" and "put it in the Wiki" became common phrases. I think that these combined to make it the "official" place to keep vital information. Qui
Logs on the JPL Mars Exploration Rovers (Score:3, Interesting)
What do the rest of you use? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been thinking about wiki, but it's a tad to difficult to be useful - my teams usually consists of developers, DB people, graphic designers, customers etc. They'd never learn the simple wiki markup.
Email analysis might be a better tool (Score:3, Insightful)
As an aside: who is Roland Piquepaille, and how does he manage to get an article in /. every other day [slashdot.org]?
I wouldn't try to manage a project without one (Score:3, Insightful)
There are so many details to track, and so many nuanced changes that can creep into the process. Rather than sit and wonder how in hell things ended up the way they are, and even more importantly, why specific courses of action where chosen over others, a project log is an invaluable tool. This is unfortunately, an area where almost every PIM falters miserably, since they all make the same limited assumptions: every event will have a start/end date, a start/end time, and will involve one or more participants. Project logging requires some very basic information: date, time, summary, category, and a text field that can accommodate a lengthy (up to 32K) description. All fields should be searchable. I will be very happy when I see KOrganizer or any of the other common Linux-based PIMs with this feature.
Hey, I just did that. (Score:3, Interesting)
My team has a number of large projects going at any time. If everybody project reported it's progress regularly to the "all" mailing list we would quadruple our traffic, and nobody would read anything. So instead I plan to set myself up a blog, tell people that it exists, and maintain it. If people want to read it, super. If they want to get into conversation, even better. I was gonna say "If it flops..." but I dont think it will, because at the very least it'll be a place where I can keep all my own thoughts on things and be my own braindumping ground.
Really, do you need a "Plog(tm)" to say... (Score:3, Funny)
4/13: This project sucks. I hate you all.
4/12: This project sucks. I hate you all.
4/11: Hot chick from Marketing was at meeting. Woohoo!
4/10: This project sucks. I hate you all.
nntp (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:piquepaille (Score:4, Insightful)
MOD PARENT UP, he has a very valid point.
Parent