"Also, given the traditional source of newsroom managers/editors, it seems far more likely that a newsroom manager/editor was once a reporter than was once a journalist-programmer (at least at this stage in the game) and thus will have an intimate notion of what it takes to pull together a story but not so much what it takes to pull together a Web app."

This, I think, is the heart of the problem. I have friends who work at papers where it's still work to convince the higher-ups to care about the Web site, let alone invest in developing applications. Plus, these OG editors have egos and sometimes they're often intimidated by some young up-start who is literally speaking a foreign language.

While it would be sweet to have your editor read the "Mythical Man Month," (a book whose wisdom goes far beyond software engineering,) it's a better idea just to work on getting them to understand why they need to hire folks who can can manage these projects or why they need to invest in these projects in the first place. Sadly, the collision of the entrenched news culture with the CS culture is more like the meeting of an indigenous tribe and wildly advanced space aliens than the meeting of two equal civilizations. Just try not to kill the natives.

Joseph Kokenge

45

"I mean, it just seems to me that the skill set of managing/editing the creation of story and image content on deadline is very different than that for managing the creation (and maintenance!) of Web software on deadline."

While the two might have some high-level conceptual similarities (news and code both need to be accurate, incremental building process with a "pushed" final product, etc.) I'd tend to heartily agree with the above statement. I once worked in a newsroom where the web dev. and news team clashed so mighty my biggest concern was retention.

If you've found that special person who can manage all that, however, I'd recommend "PM Crash Course for IT Professionals" as a good introduction to project management. It's aimed at IT professionals who've just been drafted into management positions, but it's a got a lot of great all-purpose advice for any technical projects. A few of my readers reviewed it here and here, and I think it's accessible enough for a journo and informationally-packed enough to be useful.

Michael Morisy

241

I mean, it just seems to me that the skill set of managing/editing the creation of story and image content on deadline is very different than that for managing the creation (and maintenance!) of Web software on deadline.

People are learning how to manage these projects, but I don't think jumping fully into software project/product management is the right move. Things are definitely moveing in that direction but the kind of projects and web software that hacker journalists have a lot of differences from other Web software and have a lot of similarities with creating print stories.

(I'm talking about things like interactive graphics, databases, other multimedia, etc. People managing the actual website seem to run according to the traditional software development approach)

Editorial web projects resemble reported stories in having short, often unpredictable deadlines. They are generally smaller in scope. Since they are often tied to news events they have a shorter lifespan when they will be maintained and updated with new features. Typically, only one developer will work on each project or part of a project. The "release early, release often" doesn't really apply since traffic to the app will likely come in a burst when it hits the home page and aggreggators.

Because of all that, some product management techniques probably impose too much overhead to be worthwhile.

Many probably are worthwhile though, I'd be interested in hearing about specific problems people have had in these projects and what product management practices might fix them. Personally, I think the way we deploy projects and push changes from our development and staging servers to production is a little dangerous and could be done better.

Albert Sun

139

Hello J.,

Hopefully I don't break a rule here, but I answered from my experience in a similar question:

http://help.hackshackers.com/questions/539/what-project-management-software-techniques-do-you-use-to-coordinate-digital-pr/551#551

I work at Comcast Interactive Media, and previously at Philly.com/KRD, and I think Scrum might provide some relevant tools if not a fitting methodology.

Albert is right that most PM frameworks are too heavyweight, but Scrum might strike the right balance.

I am unsure of the cross posting rules here, so I just provide the link.

Karl

karl

10

I think a quote might be appropriate here: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

I'm kidding. Kind of. The problem here isn't, I don't think, a lack of training options - ONA, IRE, Hacks / Hackers, the Nielsen Norman Group; there are a lot of resources out there to get started if you (the org) are interested in training your management to speak both languages.

The problem that needs to be addressed is one of leadership, I think. In many legacy newsrooms, there is a deep, cultural resistance to the idea that they have to learn this stuff, to understand it. "On-line," the "Interweb," etc., still seems like something extra tacked on to the real business of publishing a printed newspaper. And as crazy as this sounds, I think many are truly waiting for the economy to turn around and their print revenues to rebound, that they believe digital will never be the dominant piece in their portfolio.

Kinda depressing for those in the newsrooms who are thinking long-term, right? But I do think this is temporary. Either the current leadership will retire and the journalists who are learning programming and the programmers learning journalism will become the managers -- or the motivated, talented employees (that's you) will jump on to a start-up whose business more closely aligns with reality.

amyjobrown

113