Summary
Because the "Python 3 Patterns and Idioms" book project is distributed, I created a blog for everyone to give scrum-like reports. Did I just invent something?
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So far it's just me, but my intent is that everyone who is actively working on the project will be able to give reports -- not in a stand-up meeting, but whenever someone gets to a point where it's worth reporting progress.
I've personally found it quite useful to journal what I've done, what I'm planning to do next, and where I'm stuck, in scrum-like fashion, but it will be especially interesting to see what happens when I finally get the architecture of the project worked out and put something up that other people will be able to start working on, and reporting on.
I think a big part of the reason this might work in an open-source project and not necessarily in a company (although who knows, it might) is that there is no management to "care" about progress in the project; it will just be the participants and consumers who want to see how things are going and how they might help.
So did I invent something here, or have other people been using something like this -- if so, how has it worked for you?
I did something like this a couple of jobs ago for a workplace committee and during the design phase of one of the projects I had to work on that involved all the dev teams in the company. It worked out well for me. I had mostly up to the date information. It depended entirely on almost everybody being onboard from the outset, though. one or two stragglers won't kill you because peer pressure will make them cave in and put their updates on the site/wiki/blog. I think the point where you end up having it be more trouble than its worth is about 30% not participating. At that point you need to wander around and pester people if you need updates and you know people aren't using the tool.
Management actually like it because they could just check the site to see where things were vs. run around and get status updates from a bunch of people waste people's times in a meeting just to say "nothing new worth mentioning". You need a management team that buys in, to, though. I can't imagine running GE like that.
Overall for the couple of times I was able to get people on board for this it was a huge win.
I think this is a great idea. I was thinking about using it, but with some kind of <a href="http://laconi.ca">microblogging system</a> instead. Much less structured, I know, but hopefully much more up-to-date too. And I was wondering just that: if setting it up internally for a company would turn out being useful or not.
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