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The only project management tool I've ever seen work effectively - I'm not even kidding - is a whiteboard with Post-it notes stuck to it. Everything else is sna

• zwetan 9y ago
  how do you make that work for a "remote team" ?
  • dasmoth 9y ago
    Something Trelloesque is the obvious answer, but I'm curious if anyone's tried whiteboard+webcam.
    • eikenberry 9y ago
      We did this once and it didn't work. The whiteboard's appeal is its size and interactivity. The webcam version loses both of those qualities.
    • gaius 9y ago
      whiteboard+webcam You could call it a trelloscope
      • akoncius 9y ago
        holy shit, good name!
  • whorleater 9y ago
    trello/github projects/whatever hip new trello clone came out this month
• dyim 9y ago
  We use Trello and it works great. Its closest skeuomorphic equivalent is... a whiteboard with Post-it notes stuck to it.
  • bshimmin 9y ago
    I actually find that the ease with which non-technical and - let's phrase this delicately - busy people can add new cards and even new lists (columns) to Trello is a significant detractor from its successful use in software project management. JIRA is significantly harder to use - I challenge any non-technical novice JIRA user to figure out how to add extra columns - but, for that reason, vastly easier to keep under control. If you have stringent rules in place like "only the project manager can add cards, they can only add them in the sprint planning session on Monday morning, and we are keeping strictly to Kanban", then Trello will work fine - but any competent project manager should also be able to use JIRA, and will surely benefit from its extra functionality (and any non-technical stakeholder should at least be able to log into JIRA and click the requisite few buttons to see the current sprint and the backlog, if they care enough). But hey, each to their own.
    • logicallee 9y ago
      sorry, what is your "busy people" a euphemism for?
      • bshimmin 9y ago
        I mean, for example, a sales director with a stake in the business getting in after a challenging client meeting and creating extremely hyperbolic cards like "Search is incredibly slow!!!" or "Client profile picture is blurry" with absolutely no further details. I've seen this happen with Trello, and it doesn't help anyone. You don't get it with JIRA, because the sales guy really won't be able to use JIRA well enough to do it (in all likelihood), so he'll just send an irate email which may get translated into meaningful tickets (or, you know, it might just be he was on slow wifi in his meeting).
        • logicallee 9y ago
          sorry if this is a bit long - I'd usually edit it down but am in a hurry. So I actually am having trouble following your example. 1 - Do you mean that the landed contract is actually really big and important (basically it's now paying for all of the development) or just another signup? 2 - you called them hyperbolic but picked two examples that can keep clients from taking the software seriously: both examples seem to be something that might be much more important than whatever the team was working on. What I mean is that if the client is trialing the software, and has a certain process in place but trying yours, then if their search is too slow they might go back to whatever process they had before; you can lose the client. Likewise blurry profile pictures might cause them to decide that it is not polished software they can use. You did not use examples like "unclear icon on search label!!!" or "client logo NOT on their dashboard" or something stupid. I also thought that anyone could talk to the stakeholder who added to your board and figure out why it is so important (if it is) or immediately move it if it's not (Assuming it's a big, important client.) Or edit it as appropriate. Obviously this might mean totally rewriting the feature: perhaps slow search can just be rewritten as showing a recent list of the last ten (whatever) and allow them to be pinned, as the client doesn't really care about search but just wanted to bring up (whatever). I say this because for really old searches from archives people wouldn't care about waiting a few seconds, whereas for workflow type things done lots of times all the time it really matters. Obviously a PM is supposed to stand between such a client/internal sales director and the developers but I am having trouble understanding why the PM can't move and translate from the board - assuming these issues and the client is big/important enough. Emails often get lost or not handled with appropriate urgency for the case at hand (and can even be marked wontfix or feature request simply due to lack of communication) so if you wrote a bit more about your example I might understand better.
• raverbashing 9y ago
  Post-it doesn't even stick properly after the 2nd time Give me an online tool any day, I work in software development, not in arts and crafts
  • bshimmin 9y ago
    I worked in a place once that had both a whiteboard with Post-Its and JIRA. The two weren't especially well-integrated. (The same place also had a 45 minute standup - often featuring Post-It note rearrangement and concomitant sticking issues - every morning at about 10.30 which, given their deliberately lax office hours, meant you didn't really need to worry about working before lunch. I was supremely well-informed about news and current affairs during that three month contract.)
• qrbLPHiKpiux 9y ago
  To me a digital version is a shared google spreadsheet. Both work well.