[Sigia-l] Re: Project Management Software for MacOS X

[Adrian Howard]

On 20 Jul 2005, at 22:36, tOM Trottier wrote:
[snip]
> Depends on the project. The more players, the more need. The more
> distributed, the more need.

Yup. I'm not trying to say it's always unnecessary. It's just that I  
find that the best approach is to try and remove complexity first,  
rather than use project management software as the weapon of first  
resort.

For example with distributed teams you can either:

1)    spend time and effort using a fancy (or not so fancy) groupware  
app to integrate everybody's work.

2)    spend time and effort to persuade the organisation to colocate  
the team, ideally in the same location as the client.

I've found it more effective to push hard on (2) before I resort to  
software.

When I do resort to software I now tend to use small tools aimed at  
solving specific problems rather than using some uber-solution that's  
intended to do everything. These days my PM software tools of choice  
are things like wikis, blogs, always-on VOIP lines between  
development areas, etc.

> Project management software makes it much easier to see the effect
> of any delays or problems, to share info, to reschedule, and to
> manage the critical path.

And sometimes (not always) it's the moral equivalent of using Quark  
to produce your shopping list. Massive overkill that gets in the way  
of getting the job done.

> I've found it best to break the work down into very definable parts
> with deliverables or events marking progress and never to say xx%
> done. "xx% done" is not necessarily ever quantifiable in software
> projects.
[snip]

I agree. This is exactly what I do too.

Tasks go on the index cards. Nice graph of tasks completed over time  
on the whiteboard. Use yesterdays weather to estimate how many tasks  
we're going to complete each iteration. Divide into the number of  
tasks to give an estimated release date.

I've been amazed how complex a project can get before you need any  
more than this :-)

Adrian