Re: Adding Org Files to org-agenda-files

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>]

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@gmail.com> writes:

> Dear Jean Louis,
>
> Thank you for the detailed insight into your extensive experience of
> project management and practical planning. I do not have that much
> experience, but can provide a significantly different point of view
> related to my research work.
>

Some good observations. I have cut most of it out to stop the thread
from becoming too long.

I think it is very important to recognise there is no one way to do
project management or organise a project. Different industries have
different requirements. For example, project management requirements to
build a bridge are very different from those to build the software that
will be the next evolution of social networking sites.

The way Jean Louis describes project management sounds very similar to
the waterfall methodology which was popular in software development up
until the late 90s. It is a methodology that can work well when you have
a well defined and understood project, like building a bridge where we
have a couple of thousand years of experience and engineering knowledge.
It doesn't work particularly well with software projects and has been
largely replaced by various 'Agile' methodologies which are similar to
what you outline as your experiences and approach with research. Even
within the software development space, you find considerable variation
because different stages within the software life-cycle have different
requirements. For example, during the R&D stage, there are far more
'unknowns' than 'knowns'. Often, many things will need to be tried and
then accepted or rejected (suck and see). At this stage, you need to be
fast and flexible with maybe 80% of ideas ending up on the scrap heap.
You have limited ability to identify all the stages, all the tasks or
make terribly accurate estimates on completion time. Later, the software
will move into production status. Things change considerably at this
point. Here you need stability, reliability and performance. Changes
often need to be justified from a return on investment perspective.
There are fewer unknowns, more accurate estimates and better defined
tasks.

Is org mode suitable in all these scenarios? Possibly not or perhaps
there are dedicated project management tools which are better suited.
Org is not a project management tool, but it is a tool that is flexible
enough for many people to use it for either project management or for
part of the project management process.

To argue for a specific workflow using org mode in a specific manner
with only the task types you believe are relevant fails to recognise the
vast differences in requirements everyone has or personal preferences in
how individuals like to manage their projects or information. The great
power of org mode is in the ease to which it can be bent to fit with the
individual's preferred workflow. This is significantly different from
many other solutions which require you to adjust your workflow to fit
with the tool. The great weakness with org mode is that this tends to
make everyone think they have found and defined the ultimate approach,
which can easily reach religious heights and inspire a missionary zeal
to evangelise their perception of the world.


--
Tim Cross