I'm not against of leaving a trace log of everything that happens on a project what I'm completely against is filling documents for the sake of filling documents.
Some software houses that are on the CMMI trail insist that in order to keep or to re validate their current level they need all their artifacts in order but what is missing from that picture is that sometimes it becomes quite a time waster just filling a 5 page word document or an spreadsheet which is just not adequate for the task needed.
Perhaps those artifacts cover required aspects at a high degree but they stop being usable after a while either by being hard to fill on a quick and easy manner by someone with required skills and knowledge or they completely miss the target audience of the artifact. Other possibility is that each artifact needs to be reworked every few days apart to get some kind of report or to get current project status and those tasks are currently done by a human instead of being automated.
I think this problems tend to come from paperwork still being thought in the form of a template. Then as an afterthought try to pull some data from a MS Word file or an excel. Hey we are I.T. people, we are coders. Why in the world would we be doing this?
I think this problems tend to come from paperwork still being thought in the form of a template. Then as an afterthought try to pull some data from a MS Word file or an excel. Hey we are I.T. people, we are coders. Why in the world would we be doing this?
It is easier the other way around, capture all data in some database and create a report from that. Yes you need version control and sign off data but that is part of the problem to solve and probably it is also needed on the expected reports; my point is still valid.
There are tools that already do this kind of stuff, ones prohibitively expensive others not completely usable or don't have the same concepts/flows that your project needs. Then again we are coders, find a customizable tool with minimal implementation and extend it.
There are tools that already do this kind of stuff, ones prohibitively expensive others not completely usable or don't have the same concepts/flows that your project needs. Then again we are coders, find a customizable tool with minimal implementation and extend it.
Even better: build your own and then sell it. Don't try to build it all at one time, pick a template with the bare minimum and lots of 'free text fields'. Then over various iterations, reduce said fields and replace with your exact necessities.
Perhaps open text fields sounds outrageous, but what is more open to editing than a text document? A password protected excel spreadsheet? Yeah right.