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by jvalencia 1566 days ago
Yes, absolutely.

I think it can feel pointless when it's just a few people or less. At that size it may just be easier and more effective to wing it, or keep a todo list.

However, when you start involving more people than you can talk to easily, the work starts to pull apart into an incoherent mess. For work to be well coordinated at scale, one person needs to be able to hand off to another person. One team needs to hand off to another team. If dependencies weren't done on time, you could have a whole specialized team that is missing what they need to be effective or on time.

At that larger scale you need something to keep track of who, what, when. JIRA, monday, spreadsheets --- in some ways it doesn't matter, but there needs to be management that did not exist and probably wasn't needed at the small scale.
2 comments
Jtsummers 1566 days ago
They're also useful for small groups, though maybe less useful. They show dependencies between tasks, which tasks can be done concurrently, and which tasks need to be done first, which is useful for organization on every level. It's just that with smaller groups you can (often) get by with almost any approach, even down to just "put a bunch of sticky notes on the wall and take them off when done", trusting that people know the dependencies and priorities.
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washedDeveloper 1566 days ago
Thanks for this perspective. I hadn't really considered large scale usage. In my class the team sizes are just 4 members so it feels quite pointless for this scale. But know thinking about it, it makes sense to have a project management system in place.
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Reebz 1563 days ago
As much as agile is shouted from the rooftops for engineering and design, many businesses run in waterfall.

The reality is that budgeting and roadmapping is roughly an annual process. At that time scale and with sufficient people scale, management will need to illustrate how they will be spending millions of dollars and the sequence of activities.

Gantt charts are often the defacto communication method because people from many skills backgrounds easily understand them.

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