One of the duties of a project manager is to find out from team members where they are at on their project tasks. This can be done in a lot of different ways including automated or email-based solutions. I have found that these type of solutions generally do not work very well because team members are people and progress is not just a matter of percent complete…
We were gathered in the conference room and the project team was scared. The project was six months late and the system barely ran. They were afraid to even sneeze because it might generate another cryptic error message they had no idea how to fix…
I can see how a tool like this would allow for public, but casual, conversations with co-workers. This would be like a hallway conversation or group discussion between cubicles I suppose, except on the record. I am both thrilled and terrified.
People are reluctant to report a lack of progress on a task even when they don’t have everything needed to do it. The fear is that the truth about why they didn’t get it done will not be acceptable….Most of the time the problem that they are having with getting it done is common and correctable once it is identified.