Project Management Graphics (or Gantt Charts), by Edward Tufte
A fascinating thread on project management, with incisive remarks by Professor Tufte and some excellent “from the field” feedback from hands-on project managers. Perhaps I underestimate the value of the big wall-chart . . . .
I persist in thinking this is something that can be done digitally, in a database of something, but it turns out that folks who manage the kinds of projects I can only dream of use paper for a couple of reasons. They may use a piece of software to handle data entry and printing, but what they actually use and live with as The Plan Document is a pasted-together wall-chart of the project status, written on, annotated, and talked about.
An inflammatory but nonetheless insightful quote:
The design of project charts appears to have regressed to Microsoft mediocrity; that is, nothing excellent and nothing completely useless. (Is the reduction of variance around a modest average the consequence of monopoly?) Most of the charts in Google look the same or make the same mistakes: analytically thin, bureaucratic grid prison, not annotated, little quantitative data. The computer Gantt charts, so lightweight and tinker toy, do not appear to have been designed for serious project management.
I read an article on the use of MS Project by its own development team and the adjustments they made as they got used to eating their own dog food. I’ll see if I can hunt it up.