Hawaiian Shirt Gonzo Friday Top 10 List #1: Did we solve the wrong problems?
Note: We’re going to try and post some lighthearted content on Friday afternoons to peruse when planning your weekend fun. And if you’re not careful, you may learn something before it’s done!
In building out the underlying application infrastructure for ProjectPipe, we added a bunch of features that seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
Here are the Top 10 features that we added to ProjectPipe but maybe shouldn’t have:
10) We came up with a lightweight mechanism for integrating web-based apps and desktops applications. I spoke about this approach here. Unfortunately, now that AJAX-y Web 2.0 applications are all the rage, far fewer people are using Excel, Word, or MS Project anymore, especially in business.
9) We baked Tagging into our infrastructure, but the profound lack of interest in Flickr,
Gmail, and del.icio.us suggests that people may not find Tagging to be a particularly flexible or intuitive means of organizing their data. Someday if Amazon were to support tagging, maybe it would catch on.
8) We allow data to be managed as an outline, and we support hoisting so that you can focus exclusively on a segment of the outline. For example, you can hoist your view of the project plan tasks so that you only see the tasks for Iteration 2 of the Elaboration Phase. But deep down inside, we feel a little guilty that our innocent hoister may be missing out on the big picture. For if you focus on the 20 tasks that you’re working on, you miss out on the majestic view that you get as you stand and look out over the 500+ line items of the overall project plan, most of which you may never otherwise be involved with. From that perspective, the stuff you’re working on today looks like a little dot.
7) We allow users to subscribe to adds/modifications/deletes of any data via RSS, but our feeds are guarded by the Role Based Security. However, if you have to type in a userid and password, is it still Really Simple Syndication?
6) We’ve hooked auditing into the application. But if someone on your project team wants to delete a reported bug when no one is looking because it’s hard to fix, who are we to judge them?
5) We provide Role-based Security, but it seems kinda mean to not give everyone on the project the same access privileges.
4) We have integrated workflow. But that was no mistake, my friend. Workflow is the cowbell of enterprise computing. Even though workflow means different things to different people, you just can’t have too much workflow. Guess what? I got a fever. And the only prescription… is More Workflow!
3) We allow any-to-any links to easily establish traceability across use cases, requirements, test cases, issues, etc. However, it’s probably easier to just keep track of all these dependencies in your head. I think that’s the approach that the GTD folks advocate. (I tried speed reading the book). Plus, committing these dependencies to memory instead of entering them in a system means less typing, so not using this feature is also easier on your fingers.
2) We’ve integrated visualization tools that automatically layout complex traceability graphs. But Good Developers know that Project Managers don’t need dependency diagrams. Seeing the big picture without first spending hours pouring through all the excruciating detail is like having dessert before dinner.
1) We made it possible to dynamically alter the data model by adding fields to existing tables and/or creating entirely new tables. But who ever heard of a customer wanting to customize an application? Not I, for one.
Have a good weekend,
��Mike
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