Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Welcome to the 'Plogging' World

Posted by Hemos on 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."

5 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. Plogging for defense and security by tcd004 · · Score: 4, Informative

    See this interesting short piece in FP about how military contractors, the Office of Naval Research and Law enforcement agencies are testing plogs on their projects and networks.

    Tcd004

  2. Basecamp for Plogging by gokubi · · Score: 5, Informative

    I recently started using Basecamp from 37Signals for tracking projects. It's basically a "plogging" system with to-do lists, milestones, file uploading, and one of the most intuitive interfaces I've ever used on the web. I've been tracking internal projects in the way described in the article--I think it's great.

    It also makes it really easy to make client-extranet plogs where clients can comment on your entries. Really slick.

    --
    I'm much funnier now that I'm a subscriber.
  3. links by thebra · · Score: 4, Informative

    Palm Plog, pLog

  4. XP by MikeHunt69 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've worked with Thoughtworks on a few projects and they looove XP. They also love the idea of refactoring and used to keep a project wiki for each project - similar to what is being described here, except without the historical info.
    Martin Fowler, owner of Thoughtworks and XP evangelist, keeps a Bliki (his name for a cross between a Blog & a Wiki)

  5. Re:one word by gmuslera · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm using TikiWiki for projects, it provides me wiki pages, individual blogs for separate projects (and with wiki syntax), basic java drawing program for adding diagrams and collaborate on them, forums, comments and some granularity on permissions (i.e to limit what people can do on one project or another). The tool have a lot of more ways to collaborate, but with those functions are enough for most normal uses.