Salut, mes amis. It’s that time of the semester again where I don’t write as much here as I would like because I’m busy writing old school project documents as part of my coursework. Last fall I wrote a software test plan for a fictitious web-based software check-in process. Then last semester, I created requirements and design documents for a fictitious web interface for a library. Earlier this evening I submitted a Microsoft Project document with the plan for a fictitious web reservation system for a hotel.

Toward the end of the lengthy exercise I couldn’t get Edward Tufte’s The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint out of my head. I took a Tufte visual design class about a decade ago and found it enlightening about a lot of things: the value of information density, small multiples, and not lying — just to mention a few things. Subtlety isn’t one of Tufte’s strong suits — unlike, say, David Allen — so I didn’t totally buy into his thesis of the inherent evil of PowerPoint:

Alas, slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis. What is the problem with PowerPoint? And how can we improve our presentations?

But there I was thinking the same thing about Microsoft Project. The hierarchical view of the software project lifecycle that Project uses has its most natural analogue in the antiquated waterfall model. Discrete phases for inception, requirements analysis, module design, coding, integration testing, and acceptance testing map directly to the traditional project management work breakdown structure and the definition of a project as a linear flow of tasks from idea to complete product without backtracking to account for reality.

Of course, you can use Microsoft Project to do agile development, just like you can use PowerPoint or Keynote to make great presentations. But you’re far more likely to end up with a ridiculous waterfall project plan that quickly falls apart or a slide show with too much text that you read with your back to the audience.

Maybe Tufte was right.