by John Carter on the extremeprogramming@yahoogroups.com list in response to Alistair Cockburn's announcement of his article, The End of Software Engineering and the Start of Economic-Cooperative Gaming

I really like the idea of artifacts as markers in a cooperative game. In particular, the project plan is exactly such a marker...

http://www.cio.com/archive/011500/excerpt.html

• The Dirty Coffee Cup System SWIFTLY, SELF-ORGANIZATION EMERGED. an entire wall became a pinboard with every remaining day calendared across the top. Someone grabbed an unwashed coffee cup and suspended it on a long piece of string pinned to the current date. Every element of work to be done was listed on scraps of paper with the required completion date and name of the person who had accepted the work. Anyone could revise the elements, adding tasks or revising dates, provided they coordinated with others affected. Everyone, at any time, could see the picture emerge and evolve. They could see how the whole depended on their work, and how their work was connected to every other part of the effort. Groups constantly assembled in front of the board as need and inclination arose, discussing and deciding in a continuous flow; then dissolving as needs were met. As each task was completed, its scrap of paper would be removed. Each day, the cup and string moved inexorably ahead. Every day, every scrap of paper that fell behind the grimy string would find an eager group of volunteers to undertake the work required to remove it. To be able to get one's own work done and help another became a sought-after privilege. Nor did anyone feel beggared by accepting help. Such Herculean effort meant that at any time, anyone's task could fall behind and emerge on the wrong side of the string.

Curiously enough, before I read this I actually had done something remarkably similar.

It didn't work.

It was stuck in front of a MS-Project gantt chart created in the bowels of the project managers PC.

ie. No space to add information. No way of changing it to reflect the current reality.

You need a very low ceremony way of keeping the thing real.

And I mean low ceremony. Pencil and post-it note level.