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Weblogs, like Reforming Project Management,
have proliferated. In a popular discussion group on Scrum Development, the proposed use of daily status logs attracted some of the best postings in quite some time. Many commented on the shortcomings of collaborative environments while others spoke of the value for enhancing knowledge-sharing, collaboration, and improved coordination.

In November 2002, Network World Fusion hosted a debate of the legitimacy of weblogs as business tools. Bill Keaggy argued favorably.

Using Weblogs in your business environment can increase employee communication and knowledge, save time and resources, and build reputation and confidence.

A blog can keep everyone up to date on projects without clogging in-boxes. It also can provide an archive of mistakes and milestones that could be shared with other teams undertaking similar projects.

Speaking for the other side was Mark Hurst.

There's nothing inherent in blog technology that will transform a business. A page of online posts, sorted reverse chronologically, just doesn't by itself change a corporation. If anything, the blog is inherently less effective than a more popular tool that companies have used for years: the e-mail newsletter.

One reader commented:

…the blog becomes a true knowledge management system. It's an archive of all the news and information that's relevant to them, which is searchable and sortable – including their comments and annotations.

When companies set up their own internal blogs, they need to convince people to take time from their daily work to put stuff into it.
Mike Masnick, President, Techdirt Corporate Intelligence

Or, should we really be considering a project management information system? George Sifri answered that question in December 2002 in a Builder.com article. Sifri says, "(P)roject managers often fail to deliver the types of information needed to ensure project success." Good start. Unfortunately, he adds, "(A PMIS) is able to provide upper management with adequate information about all the projects in the organization's portfolio." He offers these seven objectives for a PMIS:

• Enable the project team to identify and isolate sources of significant variances and determine the reason why a project deviated from its plan.
• Allow the project team to track the status of the work packages in order to determine the work that is completed and the work that is still pending.
• Help the project team manage project schedules by providing the basis for work package resource allocation and work timing.
• Interface and be compatible with larger legacy information systems.
• Help the project team forecast the impact of certain risks on time, costs, and quality baselines.
• Give the project team insight into what revisions to the baselines they need to implement, when they should implement these revisions, and why they are implementing these revisions.
• Integrate with the work breakdown structure (WBS), which provides the capability to report the status of the work packages throughout the project's life cycle. These reports include identification of the work package, its associated cost code and schedule, and the individual responsible for the work.

Sounds to me like Sifri supports the more structured heavy-weight approaches. The vast majority of projects lie in the middle between the unstructured use of email and the formal project management information systems. Let's explore a solution for the rest of us.

Tomorrow, look for my proposal on what a p-log should contain.