More on the question of whether or not team members can update their own progress:
It seems to me, with my limited experience in project management that we have a structure like this:
Project A - Manager AA
Project B - Manager BB
Project C - Manager CC
Inside Project A:
Start date: April 1, 2003
End date: June 1, 2003
List of subprojects:
Subproject a
Subproject b
Subproject c
List of tasks/tickets:
Task aa - assigned to abc, deadline April 15, 2003
Task bb - assigned to bcd, deadline April 30, 2003
Task cc - assigned to cde, deadline May 15, 2003
Dependencies:
Task bb can't be completed until Task aa is completed.
Each employee has a list of tasks/tickets. They work from those tickets, and have the ability to update the deadlines (of course this sends an email notice to their manager and anybody who has tasks dependent on theirs).
Whenever they close their tasks, or change the deadlines, they make comments on what they've done. This is in fact micro-level updating, and not by the managers. The managers are certainly able to do this, but the team members themselves are able to manage their tasks.
The managers thus get a list of projects, and can look at gant charts, see what's happening on each project, etc.
The employees get a list of their tasks, and they can click on them to see more information about the project, and what depends on their task being completed. The employees work from their task list/ticket list, and mark each task as closed when it is completed.
Does this make sense as a work case scenario?
I'm pretty new to formal project management, but this is the scenario we're thinking of at my place of employment.
We're already doing this using the old ACS 3.4 intranet, and it works okay, but it needs to be reworked greatly to REALLY do project management the way we'd like.
