from The Virtues of Chitchat - Making I.T. Work - CIO Magazine May 15,2004

"the blogging phenomenon has intriguingly useful implications for IT. I have to ask myself: Why wouldn't it make sense for an IT project manager to post a blog—or "plog" (project log)—to keep her team and its constituents up-to-date on project issues and concerns? Is it inherently inappropriate for an individual to post constructive observations about a project's progress? IT organizations that can effectively use blogs as managerial tools (or communication resources) are probably development environments that take both people and their ideas seriously. "

lots to ponder in this article. one is the funny tone of shock- how can they let employees to opening say what they think!" but far more interesting is contemplating how a blog can be so much more. When MT came out their pricing notice, a number of arrogant souls said, hey just go back to notepad and ftp. But the reality is, even for folks for whom those tools are sufficient, blogging is just easier. And easy means everything you know and think is more likely to make it into documentation-- for good and for bad.

A critical problem is getting people at the end of a project ot write out documentation. But inline at eh time documentation si both easier and more useful.

I would question though, if blogs (or plogs if you wish) are the right tool. i'd say a wiki, with it's emphasis on topic over chronological ordering is more useful.

Still, over all I think it's an excellent trend, one smart companies should take advantage of. Blogs make post-mortems easy, reveal problems earlier, and make it more likely people will take the time to write down at least some of the logic behind decisions, plus it helps mitigate the bus-factor.

all good.

For something like this, when you want workers inside a company to particpate in a project, is it best to dumb down the interface to a minimalist set of features? We've been having this argument, internally, for months. Edward Tufte says you should trust the intelligence of the user and offer pages with broad ranges of options, but dealing with users seems to indicate the opposite - they all want a simpler interface.

Anyone who wants to login to this site, please do so:

http://publicpen.com/designer/
username: designer
password: designer123

The link to login is in the lower right column.

Any strong feelings about this? Less options? Rework the same options so they are more clear?

Just be surfing around in net. I definitely fpund a very informal place with a lot of good stuff for everybody. I will
certainly visit your site again sometime. Really good work.

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