{"id":21,"date":"2004-05-27T14:13:49","date_gmt":"2004-05-27T21:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/index.php\/archives\/2004\/05\/27\/using-blogs-for-project-management\/"},"modified":"2004-05-27T14:13:49","modified_gmt":"2004-05-27T21:13:49","slug":"using-blogs-for-project-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/2004\/05\/using-blogs-for-project-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Blogs for Project Management"},"content":{"rendered":"

I chaired the RSS<\/span> and Web\u00adlog day at Sey\u00adbold San Fran\u00adcisco 2003 (I\u2019d put in a link but there\u2019s noth\u00ading use\u00adful there that isn\u2019t pass\u00adword-pro\u00adtec\u00adted). One of the pan\u00adel\u00adists was talk\u00ading about using blogs for pro\u00adject man\u00adage\u00adment, espe\u00adcially when new people are expec\u00adted on the team. The idea is that new people can come up to speed quickly and don\u2019t need to have mega-mounds of email for\u00adwar\u00added to them. Sounds good, but in prac\u00adtice I\u2019m find\u00ading that people have a hard time adapt\u00ading to using more than one meth\u00adod of com\u00admu\u00adnic\u00ada\u00adtion. So many people use email for a simple todo-list track\u00ader and pro\u00adject man\u00adager that they send email first and think about maybe doing a blog entry \u201cif they have time\u201d afterwards.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve star\u00adted to won\u00adder wheth\u00ader there are deep\u00ader issues here than just people not quite being ready to move to a new tech\u00adno\u00adlogy. There are, of course, tech\u00adno\u00adlogy issues as well. One obvi\u00adous dis\u00adad\u00advant\u00adage to pro\u00adject mana\u00adgent via a blog is that you always have to be con\u00adnec\u00adted to the inter\u00adnet to keep on top of it. This rules out those people who catch up on their todos while sit\u00adting on a plane. And VPN<\/span> and secur\u00adity tech\u00adno\u00adlo\u00adgies that involve pass\u00adwords and logons tend to put people off as well. RSS<\/span>\/Atom feeds that involve pass\u00adwords are dif\u00adfi\u00adcult to man\u00adage (point\u00aders to good read\u00aders that can man\u00adage pass\u00adword-pro\u00adtec\u00adted blogs are wel\u00adcome, and I\u2019ll update this page to include them). <\/p>\n

Are there people issues as well? With email, it takes an action to for\u00adward the email to someone else, so a per\u00adson can legit\u00adim\u00adately claim they only expec\u00adted it to be read by the per\u00adson they sent it to (wit\u00adness all the legalese on the bot\u00adtom of much com\u00adpany email). With a blog, there\u2019s the sense that any\u00adone could read it, even if pass\u00adword-pro\u00adtec\u00adted. This may be nerve-wrack\u00ading to those unsure of their opin\u00adions, or nervous of mak\u00ading a mis\u00adtake and post\u00ading some\u00adthing they later regret. Even though delet\u00ading a post\u00ading is easi\u00ader than recall\u00ading an email mes\u00adsage, the thought of per\u00adman\u00adent archiv\u00adal can cre\u00adate a cer\u00adtain angst.<\/p>\n

One of the main prob\u00adlems may be the unfa\u00admili\u00adar\u00adity of the user inter\u00adface. For email, no mat\u00adter what soft\u00adware the sender used to send the email, you read it in the tool you choose (or your com\u00adpany chooses). For a blog, you have to use the inter\u00adfaces provided by the web site (assum\u00ading you don\u2019t just read the feed in a read\u00ader that works with Out\u00adlook). This may or may not include use\u00adful items such as search, or cat\u00adegor\u00adies, although many of these are now becom\u00ading more com\u00admon as the blog\u00adging soft\u00adware sup\u00adports them. It will be a while before usab\u00adil\u00adity guidelines work their way through and people come to real\u00adise what is use\u00adful for dif\u00adfer\u00adent types of blogs. For example, if you expect people to read the feed via Out\u00adlook, you might want to con\u00adsider put\u00adting all the con\u00adtent in the feed, rather than just an excerpt and then send\u00ading them to the web\u00adsite for the rest.<\/p>\n

For what it\u2019s worth, I think any blog\u00adging soft\u00adware com\u00adpany aim\u00ading at rel\u00adat\u00adively light-weight cor\u00adpor\u00adate pro\u00adject man\u00adage\u00adment uses could do a lot worse than to ori\u00adent them\u00adselves on email soft\u00adware. That is, of course, sup\u00adpos\u00ading that any\u00adone actu\u00adally does use blogs for pro\u00adject man\u00adage\u00adment. Do they? Do you? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I chaired the RSS<\/span> and Web\u00adlog day at Sey\u00adbold San Fran\u00adcisco 2003 (I\u2019d put in a link but there\u2019s noth\u00ading use\u00adful there that isn\u2019t pass\u00adword-pro\u00adtec\u00adted). One of the pan\u00adel\u00adists was talk\u00ading about using blogs for pro\u00adject man\u00adage\u00adment, espe\u00adcially when new people are expec\u00adted on the team. The idea is that new people can come up to speed quickly and don\u2019t need to have mega-mounds of email for\u00adwar\u00added to them. Sounds good, but in prac\u00adtice I\u2019m find\u00ading that people have a hard time adapt\u00ading to using more than one meth\u00adod of com\u00admu\u00adnic\u00ada\u00adtion. So many people use email for a simple todo-list track\u00ader and pro\u00adject man\u00adager that they send email first and think about maybe doing a blog entry \u201cif they have time\u201d afterwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}