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

Plogging for defense and security

[tcd004]

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

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?

Basecamp for Plogging

[gokubi]

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.

Re:Basecamp for Plogging

[nounderscores]

hmm have to check that out.
my uni uses tutos.

and the software engineering documentation subject has "Document the building of your very own team management software" as their semester project

actually, in order to manage all the docs our team used a combination of roundup, mailman and B2 blog to make our own rapidly developed team work space...
it was kinda ironic - using a collaborative online project management system to design a collaborative online project management system

in the end, though, the strain of having 7 people work on 1 document through a webbased interface got too much so we ended up using CVS on the school unix servers

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?

[ericspinder]

In response to an internal tech newsletter about "what you wanted to see", I anwsered with an idea about an "internal forum" with postings about every project, it's general status, design and questions (and hopefully answers) on technology. Apparently only the name stuck, our "Forum" is an web page form to ask questions, which are to be answered by (appenently) the newsletter staff. In fact, I am only quessing about my idea being turned into an email page becuase I never heard a word back on my suggestion, not even a "hey, thanks" to indicate that it was even read; I suppose other people may have suggested such a "forum" (or even just the general idea).

I glad the idea has a specific name, now that there is a buzz word attached to the idea maybe someone who matters will pick up on it and champion the idea, it would be useful, no matter what it's called.

Re:Do we need more types?

[sootman]

"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."

There are too many words in English, period. From now on, let's just call all things "things."

Oh, wait, what's the point of language again?

Re:Do we need more types?

[generic-man]

"Blogs," "moblogs," and "plogs" are not words. They are ill-conceived marketing creations, no better than "information superhighway" and "top-speed technology." They exist to perpetuate the myth that personal publishing is going to reinvent the web as a means of communication.

Weblogs are personal web pages or journals. Plogs are project logs. Photologs are photo journals. Sure, the terms are longer, but they actually sound reasonable compared to "blog."

Re:Do we need more types?

[Angostura]

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

Re:Do we need more types?

[generic-man]

'Web' should be replaced with 'Internet-based hypertext-linked document system'.

It's still better than "blogosphere."

Re:Do we need more types?

[arnie_apesacrappin]

I believe the word you are looking for is marklar.

From here if you don't get the reference.

Ah, like the old .project file

[Mick Ohrberg]

Brings back memories, when we would check out each others' .project files... Hopefully this tool will be a little easier to manage.

one word

[Anonymous Coward]

pwiki.
They make for excellent documentation both for old and for new developers/users

Re:one word

[gmuslera]

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.

Following this naming scheme

[pavon]

Richard Stallman's page would be a Freedom Log, one of many in the new flogging scene.

SF

[Leffe]

Could you consider SourceForge a 'plog'?

links

[thebra]

Palm Plog, pLog

Star Trek

[danormsby]

Why are there all these abbreviations anyway?

Never heard James T. Kirk put an entry in the clog.

We all knew it would come to this...

[jiffah]

O.K. it's time to shut off the internet. Thanks for your participation everybody.

tlog?

[lacrymology.com]

If a web log is a blog, then shouldn't project log be a tlog?

-m

Duh!

[imidazole2]

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

Workplace Wikis are useful

[mikemacd]

I've found that WIKIs can be useful as a collaboration tool in the workplace.

It can be a free form tool to coordinate various teams and projects. Its important to bear in mind though that even the best tool is no replacement for good management.

The WIKI I'm currently using is TWIKI which is GPL'd.

Plog, Blog,...

[thenextpresident]

all make me think of Barf's (John Candy) line in Spaceballs:

"I'm a mog. Half-man, half-dog. I'm my own best friend."

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".

My experiments in my team with a blog.

[thehive]

A few months back i setup a blog to help out our team to help manage the knowledge we acquire throughtout the projects duration. My managers fourtunately approved it. Though it was well recieved throught the team, very few knew what a blog actually is and very few have actually used it. It is rather unfortunate that some employees do not do anything other than things which are manadatory. I'm sure people would have used it much more if it was made mandatory to record all their experiences but we know that it's not possible. An oft quoted excuse is time. Blogging does take time and i totally agree with that but what is not being considered is the time that would be saved by someone else who would come across the same problems after a month or two.

XP

[MikeHunt69]

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)

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.

Logs on the JPL Mars Exploration Rovers

[goatbar]

Not too surprising. We used this all the time for the MER rovers at JPL. We used aim chat groups with a logging robot (easy enough to write one using say Net::AIM). Lots of design discussions and training sessions were done through IM and then became a part of the project documentation. Then grep and search when you forget something. Just don't say anything too obnoxious while chatting...

Nostalgia...

[igrp]

We used to use .project files to keep track of schedule changes, progress and project-related problems we had run into, too. It actually worked very well in small to medium-sized development groups.

We would timestamp our .project files and each of us would have their login script finger the other group members, compare the timestamp to the one stored in a flat database (ASCII file) and then, if there were any changes, display the output of the finger command.

Simple, yet effective (plus, it was geeky enough to make sure that nobody outside of R&D or Coding ever bothered to check the status of projects).

These days, unfortunately, hardly anyone seems to be running fingerd and it's virtually always firewalled off to the outside world.

if it were an IQ test

[sesaetaen]

web log is to blog, as project log is to:

1. a) tlog
2. 
   b) plog
   c) clog
   
   

My logic would tell me a project log was a tlog (+ it sounds way cooler =)

Stupid .plan tricks

[Rufus88]

I used to be able to tell when someone was fingering me. My .plan was a named pipe fed by a shell script. The script would netstat looking for fingerd connections, rsh to the source host, "ps -aux" for finger processes, and send me the results. I'd then send email to the person, asking "why are you fingering me?".