![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Cat Herding Web Application
Mar. 31st, 2007 01:59 pmToday I found HiTask web application for team task management. You know how some applications are so general-purpose that the labels on their controls are too vague and generalized to understand?* This one does what I want, doesn't bloat with what I don't want, and has an incredibly shiny drag-and-drop user interface. I've wanted this for conventions for years.
This application amounts to Cat Herding Software. Understand what tasks await doing, not necessarily knowing how to do them. Assign tasks and track who is assigned to what. Set deadlines and warn of their approach and arrival. As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
netmouse has said, some of the things Penguicon needs are workable timetables and active knowledge capture for what needs to get done and when. I am going to make sure Gerald Gentry knows about it for next year's committee, and see if past chairs can get on board with setting up the task calendar for the coming year.
My initial reaction:
(MP3 sound file)
Edited to add:
Unfortunately HiTask is not at all free. It allows you to have a useless ten tasks for free. I can't call that anything other than deception. Apparently we'd have to pay $12 per team member per year.
Also, you can't print or export or embed the information you create. It's completely locked in.
We might want to use the open-source project management web app ActiveCollab instead. It's confusing and opaque with navigation labeled things like "Companies", and it doesn't teach you how to use it as you go. That makes it unlikely that team members will be willing to use it. I know this as a fact from years of experience getting techies and non-techies together: the non-techies absolutely refuse to register or stop logging in after the first couple of painful experiences, the techies don't understand why they don't get on board, and the project doesn't happen, period. It's that simple. But that situation is pandemic in Open Source, so if we want free and open software we have to accept that. Unfortunately it means the solution would not be used, and that constitutes a failed solution.
Basecamp and GoPlan are as smooth and sensible as a dream, but ask twice as much money monthly. So we might try HiTask anyway.
* I'm looking at you, Content Management Systems. You're vastly over-engineered for what most organizations want. Try forking off different pre-packaged/pre-tailored distributions for specialized purposes, like Linux does. So what if you can be an ecommerce store, a blog, a brochure, an online magazine, a social networking community, or a knowledge management application all in one? You'd label most admin controls differently for all those websites. So you end up with the most watered-down generalized description for each link that the admin can click, because you don't know which purpose he or she is going to use that feature for.
How many websites are all of those things all in one? And of those that are, how much do the users like it or understand it?
What if the customer I deploy web software for doesn't want to hunt through an admin screen that's cluttered with controls for a messageboard, wiki, chatroom, private message, shoutbox, ecommerce, calendar, blog, project manager, customer relationship database, and file storage, when they only want to make a navigation tree for their online brochure? They should probably just use Google Page Creator.
This application amounts to Cat Herding Software. Understand what tasks await doing, not necessarily knowing how to do them. Assign tasks and track who is assigned to what. Set deadlines and warn of their approach and arrival. As
netmouse has said, some of the things Penguicon needs are workable timetables and active knowledge capture for what needs to get done and when. I am going to make sure Gerald Gentry knows about it for next year's committee, and see if past chairs can get on board with setting up the task calendar for the coming year.My initial reaction:
(MP3 sound file)
Edited to add:
Unfortunately HiTask is not at all free. It allows you to have a useless ten tasks for free. I can't call that anything other than deception. Apparently we'd have to pay $12 per team member per year.
Also, you can't print or export or embed the information you create. It's completely locked in.
We might want to use the open-source project management web app ActiveCollab instead. It's confusing and opaque with navigation labeled things like "Companies", and it doesn't teach you how to use it as you go. That makes it unlikely that team members will be willing to use it. I know this as a fact from years of experience getting techies and non-techies together: the non-techies absolutely refuse to register or stop logging in after the first couple of painful experiences, the techies don't understand why they don't get on board, and the project doesn't happen, period. It's that simple. But that situation is pandemic in Open Source, so if we want free and open software we have to accept that. Unfortunately it means the solution would not be used, and that constitutes a failed solution.
Basecamp and GoPlan are as smooth and sensible as a dream, but ask twice as much money monthly. So we might try HiTask anyway.
* I'm looking at you, Content Management Systems. You're vastly over-engineered for what most organizations want. Try forking off different pre-packaged/pre-tailored distributions for specialized purposes, like Linux does. So what if you can be an ecommerce store, a blog, a brochure, an online magazine, a social networking community, or a knowledge management application all in one? You'd label most admin controls differently for all those websites. So you end up with the most watered-down generalized description for each link that the admin can click, because you don't know which purpose he or she is going to use that feature for.
How many websites are all of those things all in one? And of those that are, how much do the users like it or understand it?
What if the customer I deploy web software for doesn't want to hunt through an admin screen that's cluttered with controls for a messageboard, wiki, chatroom, private message, shoutbox, ecommerce, calendar, blog, project manager, customer relationship database, and file storage, when they only want to make a navigation tree for their online brochure? They should probably just use Google Page Creator.
