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Proposal: Kanban

Proposal: Software Development Process

Proposal: Agile Software Development

Proposal: IT Management

Proposal: Project Management

There are many sites which deal with similar/overlapping areas. Actually I'd say that five I mention above have pretty significant common part and they could easily belong to one place.

Of course we try to build borders between them, but often they will be vague. Also with many sites we risk neither of them will survive. I believe having a broader range of subjects which belong to the site raises chances of success.

Also, I can hardly think of any questions from mentioned sites which couldn't be asked either on Project Management or Programmers or Stack Overflow.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to merge them into one broader site which deals with rather loosely understood project-related stuff?

Or to put in other words, where would you address a question about Scrum or Kanban by default?

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  • I agree they are very overlapping and should be asked on Project Management, but I don't think they are appropiate on StackOverflow or Programmers
    – Joschua
    Commented Mar 26, 2011 at 17:25
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    There are some questions, e.g. about TDD, which belong more to Programmers than Project Management. And they can be considered as questions on widely understood agile. Then, if you push them deeper to code side they become more appropriate to SO. But yes, probably most of them would go to project management.
    – pawelbrodzinski
    Commented Mar 26, 2011 at 18:16

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At 3.8 questions per day, I believe we run the risk of killing the Project Management Stack Exchange site proposal by allowing the creation of these other proposed sites. A Q&A site should have a range of topics that have the right balance of enough content and clear focus.

Someone asked if there should be a site for C#, Java, Ruby, etc. to break apart Stack Overflow. Jeff Atwood said no to this suggestion, because tagging can solve this problem.

Therefore, if I am only interested in Kanban questions, then I should simply check the Kanban tag for Kanban questions.

I haven't seen enough questions on any of those topics to even justify the creation of those sites as individual, separate topics.

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I don't get why this isn't a duplicate of Programmers, where process and software industry-specific questions are on-topic. PM questions that are of interest beyond the software industry already home on the Project Management exchange (which needs more love anyway).

Just to expand, the topics of software engineering and development methodologies are on topic at Programmers. Agile methods are a subset of development methodologies. Development methodologies are included in the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge as well as the topic of a number of books, including Steve McConnell's Rapid Development. As far as questions go about software teams relating to process and methods, put them on Programmers.

Topics that are in on PM include personnel and resource management, time-tracking, and estimation methods. I, personally, see PM as cross-disciplinary, as opposed to Programmers, which just focuses on software teams and software development. So for questions about managing cross-disciplinary teams (including teams that include software engineers), put them on PM.

As far as overlap, I think there is overlap between Programmers and PM. Questions about managing cross-disciplinary projects are off-topic on Programmers, but I don't think questions about managing software projects are off-topic on PM.

So either your question is software-specific and it goes on Programmers, it's cross-cutting and it goes on PM, or it's about a different industry (then I don't know what to do...maybe PM, I'm not sure what their take on it is).

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    As a moderator on Programmers I fully agree with this. I don't see a reason why these questions could not find a home on Programmers and/or PM.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Aug 10, 2011 at 3:47
  • @Dori - Pawel, Mark, and I all agree that Agile Software Development has a home in PMSE. There are many questions that cover this topic, and Mark was even involved in getting some members of RallyOn's Agile Conference to join our community: meta.pm.stackexchange.com/questions/219/…. We also get some Kanban questions on PMSE, but I'd want to poll our community before shutting down the Kanban proposal. I guess if Anna agrees on Agile Software Dev, you would have what you need to close that proposal.
    – jmort253
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 18:53
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Merge them all into one proposal.

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Well there HAVE been sites split off for topics that previously were discussed on Stack Overflow and programmers.se, lot's of them. There's DBA, Unix/Linux, Server Fault, UI, Game Development, IT security and proposals for many more. The proposal here is to unite discussions of software development methodology, for example, agile, RUP, Kanban, etc.

Saying go talk about it on the project management site is like saying go talk about web development on the power users site. DIFFERENT AUDIENCE. And if the project management site is in 'worry' mode, that's a separate issue. Maybe there aren't enough project managers interested in this format. That doesn't speak to the viability of a site for developers to discuss software process methodologies.

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  • Trouble is. Kanban has very little to do with managing projects. And it is also not particularly specific to software development. I could imagine sharing it under a general category including things like lean product design, systems thinking, process visualisation, change management. But then in this case what would be the heading? Definitely not project management, definitely nothing to do with software. Kanban is the closest I can come up with.
    – Kurt
    Commented Mar 27, 2011 at 6:25
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    @Kurt, actually I'm not sure whether Kanban is a good common denominator for such different areas as production, software development or personal productivity. I think there are more people interested in different approaches to software development, including Kanban, that people interested in applying Kanban in different places.
    – pawelbrodzinski
    Commented Mar 27, 2011 at 9:22
  • Folks - the Software Development Process proposal includes merging the Agile and Kanban sites. As far as Kanban in software - it's a huge movement. See limitedwipsociety.org
    – Chuck Stephanski
    Commented Mar 27, 2011 at 9:29
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    Actually I pretty much know what limitedwipsociety is and that many people are interested in Kanban. The question is whether there are enough of them to make the site survive. At the moment my guess is project management is even bigger "movement" and yet I'm not so sure whether the site is going to be alive in a few months from now.
    – pawelbrodzinski
    Commented Mar 28, 2011 at 21:00
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I agree that the project management site proposal and this software development process site proposal do overlap, but I want to note that project management is not strict about the software industry. If we want to merge the proposals I suggest the name to be Software Project Management.

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    Kanban, Lean and waterfall aren't exclusive for software development either. I believe we try to build some kind of artificial boundaries. It's pretty natural most of followers on any of those sites are working on software projects. Yet still I believe we have something to learn from other industries as well.
    – pawelbrodzinski
    Commented Apr 1, 2011 at 23:31
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    Building software is not exactly the same as building physical objects, in terms of how you can manage the projects. That's why I'm a firm believer in Programmers for these topics as they relate to software and PM for these topics in non-software and cross-disciplinary (which might or might not include software) projects.
    – Thomas Owens
    Commented Jul 30, 2011 at 1:25
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With the new unveiling of SE mini-sites, perhaps that would be a more appropriate avenue for the Agile proposal (and perhaps the other proposals mentioned here as well).

This would be particularly spectacular if the mini-site could somehow feed in from both Programmers and Project Management (possibly with new questions defaulting to Project Management? Could they be tracked if they were migrated from one to the other?) but that might be beyond present intended capabilities :P

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It makes sense to merge the Kanban proposal with the Agile Software Development proposal.

Kanban, as described at limitedwipsociety.org and in other literature, is more of an Agile implementation than a separate discipline. Kanban places emphasis on balancing the steps in the development process to achieve flow of software product through all the steps. "Traditional" Agile/XP emphasize the use of time boxed iterations, story points, and velocity to improve the quality of customer commitment dates.

Agile is really a philosophy, as described in the Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles.

Kanban is consistent with the Agile Principles and is a technique that software developers can use to implement those principles.

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