What’s in Your Project Management Toolbox?  ## Metadata - Author: [[Marketing Over Coffee Marketing Podcast]] - Full Title: What’s in Your Project Management Toolbox? - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/1e97f668-2804-420e-963c-ec76a651850b ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Project vs Task Management Tools** - Project management tools mainly focus on task management rather than comprehensive project management like budgeting. - The effectiveness depends heavily on keeping data current and managing resources actively. Transcript: John Wall Over in Analytics for Marketers, if you're not familiar that we're talking about every week, that's where we have discussions and we kind of get the initial research for this kind of Stuff. We talked about project management. And so the list that came out of there was we've got Asana, Jira, Monday, Trello, MS Project, Wrike, Basecamp, Airtable, Excel. So that's beyond my like Wrike I've never used. Do you even know what that one is? No. Okay. So, but Asana has been kind of king of the hill over the past couple of years for everything that I've seen as far as just a lot of people using it at easy access. But yeah, where do you want to start on that list? I guess. So if we're going to start taking potshots at tools and process, where do you want to go? Katie Robbert Well, I was trained more formally on Microsoft Project, which I still have a soft spot for. It's very, there's a lot of good about Microsoft Project. But unless you're in Microsoft Shop, you tend to not have access to Microsoft Project as a standalone. So, you know, you're not going to find a company who's a Google Shop that's also going to have Microsoft Project. I mean, that does that scenario does exist. But typically, if you have the Microsoft Suite or you're in Microsoft 365 or something like that, then you use Microsoft Project. If you're using SharePoint, you likely have Microsoft Project, those kinds of things. But that's not exclusively true. So we also know a lot of companies that will use SharePoint and a Jira or a Basecamp or a Trello or all of the above. And I think that's really where I'd want to start is companies are using a bit of all of the above. And the goal of project management software is to do just that. It's to manage tasks. It's to manage resources. Sometimes it's to manage budget, but that gets a little tricky. That's something that you can do in a lot of these tools. But at the core, it's a task management tool, a project management tool. You can call it portfolios, you can do whatever. So where I see it sort of get over-conflated is we're asking these tools to do many things and we're not giving the tools the data that they need in order to do the things that we're asking Them to do. So for example, we want to know, is Chris over-resourced? Well, in order to know that, we have to get every little last piece of data into the tool in order to see that. But then we also have to make sure we're keeping it up to date. And so a lot of it comes down to process. So the tools are great. I would say, honestly, you can't go wrong with any tool. Where it goes wrong is the people in the process of someone actually managing it, keeping it up to date. That's why project managers exist. I love them. I was one. Your sole focus is keeping these tools up to date. And it is a thankless job because as soon as you get the information in, it's changed. And so you're constantly chasing people. And a lot of these tools, depending on what you're doing, aren't set up for like agile development, for example, they're more waterfall. So like those are all the things that you have to like, know and taking consideration, John, I could talk your ear off about project management tools all day long. So I just want to kind of like stop there. Hopefully I've given you enough of a foundation to jump off from. ([Time 0:01:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bb7f038f-74e0-45dc-aadf-e35c97587077)) - **Begin AI Projects With Requirements** - Start AI project implementation with clear requirements gathering before coding. - Follow the software development lifecycle phases to manage design, development, and testing effectively. Transcript: Katie Robbert Gathering. That is the lead off of any SDLC. So the SDLC, Software Development Life Cycle, the standard like basic phases of an SDLC are requirements gathering, design, development, testing, and then, you know, iteration, Refinement, and then you sort of start all over again. How quickly you move through those phases really depends on the kinds of processes that you have built into your organization as a whole. And so, you know, I've mentioned Waterfall and I've mentioned Agile, very high level. You know, I'm not trying to, you know, come after people who subscribe to the Agile manifesto. It has its place in time, but at a high level waterfall is if you think about like a set of stairs, everything is dependent. You can't move down to the next step until you've completed phase one. So you have to finish your requirements before you can move on to design. You have to finish design before you can move on to development. Whereas with agile, you do a lot of these things concurrently. You take the plan as a whole, you break it down into smaller pieces, and then you do define design, development, testing, iteration, and then you sort of start all over again while doing The next milestone in parallel. And so it's meant to move quicker. And what I was actually saying to Chris this morning, because Chris was asking, with AI, does it sort of negate the need for agile because you're moving so much faster? And I said, no, absolutely not, because it's a process. The coding itself is going faster. The process itself is not if you can't get the right requirements. And so to answer your question, that's a very long way to answer your question, John, where you start with the SDLC is requirements gathering. ([Time 0:15:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/500a330e-ba30-417c-b8dd-b0a4bdbbe6ee)) - **Use AI Use Cases For Focus** - Use the seven general use cases of AI to clarify project goals: extraction, classification, summarization, rewriting, synthesis, question answering, and generation. - This focus prevents aimless exploration and initiates effective requirements gathering. Transcript: John Wall So talking about these situations where people are told that they need to do more AI, like how do you deal with that? One method for that, and we've used this, Chris has made it the core of training, is that there are seven general use cases for AI. You've got extraction, classification, summarization, rewriting, synthesis, question answering, and generation. And so that's an easy go-to if somebody is like, hey, you need to do more AI. Well, you can say, okay, well, which of these seven things do you want us to start chasing? And that at least, you know, gets you out of the like, oh, let's just spend two weeks figuring out what's out there in the world. You can at least pick something and then try and solve that problem. And that will, you know, now allow you to do some requirements gathering and allow you to apply the five Ps and get to where you need to go. Any other comments or ideas, feedback on that, on how people should do this and get faster to that point where they're doing requirements gathering? ([Time 0:18:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8e9b18bc-3994-4961-beb1-cad362ea4966)) - **Vibe Coding Upsets SDLC** - Vibe coding challenges traditional SDLC by enabling quick, less-structured coding but risks missing critical elements like security. - Proper SDLC practice is essential to avoid pitfalls even with generative AI assistance. Transcript: Katie Robbert I want to acknowledge we have a comment from our friend, Brian Piper, who says vibe coding is throwing a wrench into the SDLC. And Brian, I don't disagree with you. So we did a, we recorded a live stream and probably a podcast too over at Trust Insights about vibe coding. And I personally, again, N of one, but I have a lot of experience with the SDLC I think that there's a lot of danger it's a very harsh word but there's a lot of things to be careful of when you're Vibe coding because vibe coding makes it sound like anybody can code which is true however if you don't know what you're doing in terms of software development, then it can go wrong really Quickly. So for example, if you don't know that you have to put in, you know, privacy protocols, or you, you know, your software should not be hackable, for example, or if you're collecting information, How do you keep that information secure? So if you're like, I want to build an app, let me just Vibe code it and see, you know, what happens, the machine's going to do it for me. If you don't know the foundational pieces of the software development lifecycle, or even just software development in general best practices, it could go really wrong. And so I agree, Brian, that Vibe coding is sort of wrenching the SDLC because it skips that foundational piece of let's write down some requirements. Now you can use generative AI to write requirements. You can say, hey, generative AI, large language model, I want to do a thing, but first I want to make sure I have requirements so that it doesn't go off the rails. Can you help me do that? Absolutely, you can do that. So I think, John, to answer your question, the way that you're getting faster is you're using these tools as almost like the note taker. You still have to have the idea, but it's going to also sort of like, hey, did you think about this? Hey, what about privacy? Hey, what about governance? Hey, what about security? It can ask you those questions. If you say, I want to do this as safely, as securely, best practices, protect my customers. It's going to go, oh, those are words that I know. So let me make sure I'm asking those questions, provided you know what you're doing, even at a base level. ([Time 0:19:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/773229ab-af61-45bf-b25b-390e3bee20f3)) - **Leverage AI For Development Checks** - Use generative AI as a checklist to ensure governance, privacy, and security are considered during development. - This helps maintain best practices even when accelerating project pace with AI. Transcript: Katie Robbert Like, so you can say, hey, generative AI, what did I miss? That's a great place to start. John Wall Yeah, right. Doing checkup. And there is, touching on what Brian said, there's two levels. There is totally the running with scissors problem, right? Little people building stuff that they've never built before and don't understand. And like you said, yeah, privacy and security. But then there is also, for experienced developers, I have seen all these cases of developers, you know, becoming five, six times more productive because they're just able to grind Out code. And that's a whole different thing. I don't pretend to be any kind of expert on what, you know, how that works or where that goes, because that's a whole other thing. Katie Robbert But you just said something really important. You said experienced developers who are becoming five, six, 10x. Right, right. John Wall Yeah. Totally different from the running with scissors crew. Katie Robbert So like they know what they're doing. So it totally makes sense that generative AI would make them more productive because they know what they're doing. And that to me is the key. And so vibe coding, yes, is throwing a wrench in the SDLC, but not for people who understand and ([Time 0:21:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f84e4787-370a-42d1-b54e-1bac0cfd5b39)) - **Battery Terminal Safety Incident** - John Wall experienced a dangerous accident when a wrench caused a short circuit while reconnecting a car battery. - This incident highlights the importance of covering battery terminals during such repairs. Transcript: John Wall I destroyed the car battery on our car, which I am not dead or didn't lose any limbs or anything. So I'm marking that a complete success. But basically, as I was reattaching the car battery, the wrench flipped off and it closed the circuit between the two terminals and, you know, instantly heated up to 5,000 degrees and Just about melted the wrench and killed me. ([Time 0:25:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d1b40c55-dd5c-4b25-8e7c-d45351441d18))