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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."

3 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. Do we need more types? by Bobdoer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
  2. Duh! by imidazole2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

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    -Imidazole2
  3. Discussion groups by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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".

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    Table-ized A.I.