[wpietri]

It is definitely the point.

One of the basic notions in the school of thought that Tracker comes out of is that team interaction is valuable and to be encouraged. So making a tool that makes it easy for people to not talk undermines the broader goal.

One of the basic insights of the Agile movement (R.I.P.) about Waterfall is that processes structured around documentation rather than collaboration have a lot of subtle bad effects that gradually destroy characteristics you'd like your teams to have. E.g., responsiveness to change, systemic effectiveness, resilience to failure, low overhead, ability to ship frequently, ability to deliver customer value.

That's why when I set things up I generally drive things off of index cards. [1] Those are obviously insufficient, which forces people to discuss and collaborate. (That's in contrast to more voluminous documentation, which is subtly insufficient.)

[1] E.g.: http://williampietri.com/writing/2015/the-big-board/