Welcome to the 'Plogging' World

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."

Comments

Do we need more types?

[Bobdoer]

We already have blogs, flogs, photologs, moblogs and now these plogs? Someone needs to stop making new terms up and just call them all logs.

Re:Do we need more types?

[Angostura]

Next week, why the neologism 'Web' should be replaced with 'Internet-based hypertext-linked document system'.

Duh!

[imidazole2]

People have been project blogging for a while. So someone comes up with the term PLOG and gets on slashdot? sigh.

Discussion groups

[Tablizer]

For small projects, a "Wiki" system is nice because it is informal. It is kind of like a bunch of named note-pads where anyone (given access) can edit content. It has simplified editing conventions to avoid having to type HTML. For example, a bullet point can be created (upon rendering) simply by including an asterisk at the begginning of a paragraph. (Different wikis have different conventions.)

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.

[DAldredge]

Do we really need 42 different names for what is basicly the samething?

Quit quoting from other blogs

[Animats]

Too many Slashdot stories are coming from other blogs. Quote from original content, please.

Re:Plogging for defense and security

[nocomment]

Funny thing is that most people firewall the original "plog" from years ago. Just turn on finger, make a .plan and bingo, instant plog. Of course my .plan always consisted of an ascii middle finger so when someone fingered me, I fingered them back. So maybe this new way is better after all?

Oh, goody...

[mr_Spook]

Another buzzword for people to throw about like mad. Just what we need.

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 .plan files some used to the same purpose? Sure, you don't have to finger for the info as it's all on the web now, but it's the same concept, isn't it?

Careful now, your projects may inspire others too.

[asbestos_tophat]

Careful now, your projects may inspire other companies and people to simply take your work for free. There was a cool clock design that the MCu people designed as a learning platform, and some creative individual swiped the industrial design and sold it to Radio-Shack © (cheers mate! May you ROT in cyber hell.) Unless your project is a non-profit public service or GNU licensed project the implied copyrights of today's web is practically non-existent.

My personal choice is to publish hardware designs, but to force visitors of the research projects to write their own code (aka .EDU .) There are always options to recreate the same design in a slightly different way to avoid the copyrights, but we don't work for free. ;-)

Prior Art

[TequilaJunction]

How is this different than tools we've been using for years like Lotus Notes, eRoom, etc.

Re:piquepaille

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I have to say, RP's blog is as uninteresting as it comes, and gets way too much Slashdot time. RP almost reminds me of Jon Katz, without the sometime amusing I'm-not-sure-what-was-in-that-cigarette effect.

MOD PARENT UP, he has a very valid point.

Re:one word

[Paulrothrock]

I think this would be an excellent idea. I'm new to my current organization, and have no way to find out information except for the rather time-consuming process of calling/emailing/asking people. And when I do find something out, I have no way to record it except memory or, if I'm lucky, an email exchange.

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.

Email analysis might be a better tool

[GileadGreene]

Blogs or plogs are all well and good, but the problem is that getting anyone to write any kind of documentation is hard. There will always be design decisions that get made but never recorded. Personally, I think that the method of extracting design rationales from an analysis of a project email archive that was proposed in this paper would be more useful than a plog, in that it captures the actual consensus and decision-making process, rather than relying on people to go out of their way to write extra information down after the fact. Admittedly, it misses decisions made in verbal interchanges, but it does catch a lot of stuff that would otherwise be missed (I know that many of the projects I've worked on recently have resolved many design issues via email exchanges).

As an aside: who is Roland Piquepaille, and how does he manage to get an article in /. every other day?

I wouldn't try to manage a project without one

[symbolic]

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

[StrawberryFrog]

Oh look. nntp has been reinvented, only without the standardisation.