I thought some of you out there might appreciate this picture. While looking at a rather complex problem that required a process design, I was presented with this very old school work breakdown structure as the Information Analyst saw it (on the right in the picture, with all them yellow sticky notes just waiting to fall off).It took most of the day in a sort of workshop session to pull the not yet written use cases out of the Information Analysts and many "oh yeah, I forgot to mention..." It resulted in the process design you see here which is then used to roughly estimate the number of man hours needed to implement it. With all the available technology, we are using sticky notes for placeholders, notes in a workbook, and nothing even remotely created in this century... luckily I had my mobile phone camera to be able to capture the work done in this session.
Is it just me? Have you ever had days like this on your jBPM projects?
To be honest,
ReplyDeleteSticky notes work, they are easy to use and are a marvelous invention, unless you prefer ducktape...
- They never run out of power
- They can be used without any manual
- They are cheap
- They can be reapplied
Digital tools would:
- Require knowledge of the tool
- Require electricity
- Require an interchangeable format (so everyone can read and edit items)
- Result in perhaps a slower process
So I favor still the good old things we know how to use, where we can focus on what's important and not what's nice to have.
And for this story, I call this work.
Not just you. I favor old-school and use it on everyday basis. Nothing shares the expressive power and invention of face to face brainstorming. Yet I admin I am rather old-timer, in love with fountain pens, mechanical film cameras and stuff like that:)
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