At 03:09 PM 17/02/2010, you wrote:

>There is nothing wrong with a paper based system. In fact, some Agilists use
>a whiteboard with sticky notes each representing a task for their daily
>meetings. It has numerous advantages over a computer-based system: it's
>cheap, easy to maintain, doesn't crash, and it's right there for everyone to
>see.

The Harvard manual also recommends the use of Post-It(tm) notes for creating
the Work Breakdown Structure, with each team member taking a color of sticky.
The physical note helps establish "ownership" of the task. It can be entered
into software later, if you want.

>There is danger in trying to "computerize" the way you do things, you may
>end up wasting your time trying to adjust your workflow to fit it withing
>the software's paradigm. Thankfully these sorts of systems are
>self-limiting: you realize that your time investment isn't worth the benefit
>you get out of it, and the system quickly falls into disuse.
>
>The ad-hoc, "seat of the pants" approach to management is more effective
>than a standard formal approach, because it has lower overhead. Agile gives
>you the benefit of a disciplined approach, but it fits better with the way
>we humans tend to do things naturally, and it has low overhead.
>
>In my mind, bug tracking systems are a symptom of a flawed approach to
>development.

You do need some way of tracking non-compliances and making sure they are
all addressed. And of doing integrated change management.
All these things start to get exponentially more important
as the complexity increases. It's all a waste of time if one person can
keep all the issues in mind at once, but for a large project (or juggling
many smaller projects over longer periods of time) I don't think
there is much choice but to heap on some complexity. The official large-
project management model has more than 40 processes, many of them iterative,
each with complex inputs and outputs. People have PhD's in this stuff.
If you have a project with 200 people, 8 countries, a dozen subcontractors
and so on.. things can't be quite so ad-hoc. If you're doing a little PIC
program and hardware in a project involving three people and taking a
few weeks, everything might fit in a single Excel spreadsheet
and/or a few page Word document. Horses for courses- you probably 
don't need to
create a detailed communication management plan when everyone involved sees
everyone else in the coffee room every couple hours.


>Best regards,

Spehro Pefhany --"it's the network..."            "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com



-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist