Welcome to the 'Plogging' World 185
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."
Do we need more types? (Score:5, Insightful)
Duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Re:Plogging for defense and security (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, goody... (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously though, my head may be up my ass on this, but could someone tell me just what the difference between all these *logs and the now long-dead
Careful now, your projects may inspire others too. (Score:1, Insightful)
My personal choice is to publish hardware designs, but to force visitors of the research projects to write their own code (aka
Prior Art (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:piquepaille (Score:4, Insightful)
MOD PARENT UP, he has a very valid point.
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 it's editable by everyone, you don't have to worry about getting it up to MIS to change the Intranet. And authentication could be handled by the current login/password system...
I like it. Thanks for making me look good at the meeting with the new CIO.
Re:Do we need more types? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
nntp (Score:3, Insightful)