Comment My mattress IS FDIC insured! (Score 1) 345
This is how I roll!
This is how I roll!
TO clarify a bit: this is more of a Wiki and bug tracking, project management features are less developed
This is what I use: http://www.axosoft.com/ontime
Windows and web client are available. Can be hosted completely within your environment. Free trial and free permanent license for 1 user (Express version). Much more details and how-to videos on their website
Well I posted and then possibly partially answered my own question: probably because Russia doesn't have money and China does? On the other hand wouldn't expertise be just as important or even more important?
Not to diminish China's achievement, but Russia is definitely way ahead of them or anyone else. Plus AFAIK China's space technology is mostly licensed from Russia. Is politics getting in the way? Well then doesn't it make even more sense to team with Russia since they are now significantly "less communist" than China (even if mass media may not reflect that)?
[I am a project manager on software development project]
Definitely do weekly status reports and release notes (if you have software releases - I do).
You will achieve 2 goals doing status reports and release notes:
1) communicate what you do to other people
2) improve your visibility and justify your necessity to your company.
Both should be a list of items accomplished within last week (or implemented in latest release). Separate user-facing and back-end changes in 2 separate groups - non-technical people will only be interested in user-facing changes, so if they are separate and in the first group - there is more chance people will actually pay attention.
To make it easier to do each week I recommend using some bug/issue tracking software (I use Axosoft Ontime) and if you do any coding - source control system (I use Subversion).
When including item in the list also put the number of item in your bug tracking system at the end of the line. Subversion can be configured to required comments before commit and send email notifications to interested parties after commit. I force my developers to always put descriptive comments and related bug # (if applicable). This makes it easier for me to do weekly status reports/release notes - I just go through these emails at the end of the week.
Send these not only to your boss but to other team members as well.
To find out if someone actually reads these put somewhere in the middle of the list "17) If you are reading this please reply to me with "the eagle has landed" in the subject line". Don't let the fact that only 10% (at best) will respond to discourage you - these maybe the only people that count.
The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets. -- L. Zadeh