Today I attended a birds of a feather session focused on managing projects with team systems.  I went in search of insight on how others are managing projects, using team systems, and reflections from people who are using team systems in the "real world".

The converstations were great, and I was amazed by the number of people that have already adopted team systems.  Since the discussion was focused on project management a lot of the talk revolved around integration with MS Project.

The general consensus in the room was that companies should take baby steps when introducing team systems and begin the movement from the ground up.  Everyone seemed to agree that the tool was written by developers, for developers... and adoption from others in the company may take longer.  Start with just utilizing the new source code management capabilities, then move onto work items, or tasks, or customizations... whatever it is you want to explore... however diving into the deep end could be too overwhelming for most organizations.  Planning and baby steps seem to be the key with this tool.

One interesting insight that came out of the discussion was that time tracking within the team systems was not suggested.  Several people attempted its implementation several times with very limited success.  Sticking with a very simple stand alone time tracking system seemed to be the most useful and effective approach anyone had experienced.  One team was assigning client/job code metadata to work items or tasks within teams systems for simplified time tracking lookups... this might be something to explore.

Overall, a very informative and high quality discussion.  Hopefully we can continue the discussion and take steps towards progress internally.

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Posted 06-13-2006 8:11 PM by jvogt