Is there an official stance on software project management questions?

Question

I feel too many questions are being closed, voted to close, and people are being pointed toward Project Management inappropriately. PM.SE is still a beta site, and isn't doing stellar in the metrics. I think people are being too hasty, so here are a few points to consider:

• Software project management is a part of software engineering, which is explicitly listed as something that is on topic. Admittedly, there are no single, universally accepted standard definitions of software engineering, but project management topics are explicitly addressed in two knowledge areas of the Software Engineering Body of Knowlege (Software Engineering Management, Software Engineering Process), and the SWEBOK is the closest thing that exists to defining what is and is not a part of software engineering that I'm aware of.
• There's a large body of work built exclusively around managing and controlling software projects. Work by people such as Barry Boehm, Thomas Glib, Steve McConnell, Frederick Brooks, and Watts Humphrey focus on software projects. There are also organizations such as the SEI and CSSE dedicated to software (and systems) engineering. I searched Amazon for works about "mechanical engineering management" and "electrical engineering management" and couldn't find very many resources related specifically to these engineering fields. Of the engineering fields that I looked for, I found specific resources about civil engineering management and systems engineering management (systems engineering being a combination of mechanical, electrical, and/or software systems).
• Tags related to project management are popular here already. Nearly 500 questions are tagged project-management. Nearly 300 are tagged agile. Nearly 200 tagged scrum. Some less popular tags include waterfall with 17 questions, rational-unified-process with 11, extreme-programming with 17, and development-methodologies with 39.

Although there is nothing precluding software project management questions from PM.SE in their FAQ, I don't think it's wise to migrate questions to that site nor close questions that are about software project management until PM.SE is out of beta. If a question is applicable to a software-intensive project, I think it should remain here. If it's a question applicable to a project that involves software (a systems engineering project) but is focused on the software side, it should also remain here. Other questions are debatable, but I see no reason to splinter the software engineering management questions to a site that isn't even open yet.

Answer 1

These questions fall into the more general category of questions that might be a "better fit" for another site, but are not off topic here either. I can't find a reference at the moment, but it was my understanding that the policy on those is not to close, that closing should be reserved for topics that are clearly off topic here.

Answer 2

Speaking in broad generalities, the value of Stack Exchange is to get answers from experts on a subject: it's why we don't have one site for all questions and have 80+ sites all targeting specific types of people. One of the first questions one must ask when determining if a question is on-topic is, "Is the audience of this site experts in the topic of the question?" If they aren't, it's not a fit.

When a question is off-topic here and a possible good fit for another site on the network, we consult with the destination site's moderators and see whether they think the question would do well on their site. If they say "yes, it'd be a perfect fit!" we migrate it. If they say "nah, it's not going to do well", we leave don't: either it gets closed for any number of reasons or it stays in hopes a heroic edit or answer can save it.

On the other hand, if a question is on-topic here and on-topic on another site, it's the asker's choice: if they ask it here, it should stay here, if they ask it on the other site, it should stay on the other site.

To get into specifics, the key issue is whether any specific question is on-topic here: we're a site for Programmers, not Project Managers, and our expertise is in programming. While there are a number of project management-related issues that are programmer-specific, there are a ton that aren't. That's why Project Management.SE was created.

That is, just because programmers might use a project management technique like Kanban or Agile does not automatically make it on-topic here. If there's something particular to the problem that specifically requires a programmer to answer, by all means it should stay here. Otherwise, Project Management.SE is a perfectly fine candidate for migration.

To that end: the example you provided, What do you do if the Product Owner is ill?, lacks any indication on why it necessitates the expertise of a programmer and not an actual project manager.

If it can be revised to clearly explain that connection (and I do not mean simply adding "(as a programmer)" to the question), by all means it should be done. Otherwise, it's perfectly reasonable to migrate it away.

And speaking in generalities again, the default action—when you see a question closed that you think shouldn't be—is to always, always edit it to make it clear why it's on-topic. A question that is attracting close votes, flags, or comments saying it's off-topic is a question that needs to be revised to be made better and more plain why it's on-topic. As a community-run site, we can't just assert questions are on topic without clearly expressing the specific problem in a way that convinces others it is, in fact, on-topic.

Answer 3

It might be worth considering that you don't always want the most specialized expert possible to answer your question, if you yourself are only in a related field. If I have a question about some math typically used by programmers, I don't want it answered to a god-like level of purity by the world's leading mathematician in that area, I want an answer from a schlub programmer who, though he knows the answer, is as blissfully ignorant of how it relates to topology and group theory as I am, and I'll know what the heck he's talking about.

I'm pretty sure for project management questions, I don't want answers that assume I've read the top 200 project management books in the world and am familiar with the Humptey, Schmeyburg, Dumpty metric, I just want to know what those Scrum guys do in real world situations.

Even if the same people post on Programmers, at least when they do they'll know their audience.

Of course, PM.SE may be a place where programmers who aren't unusual knowledgeable about project management can read happily, in which case there's better reason to migrate them.

But I think it's quite possible that people might intentionally want project management questions answered on Programmers rather than PM.SE, and even that people googling something who understand the distinction might prefer those answers.

Answer 4

Initially I was going to suggest that migrating questions that are more on topic to PMSE than here, was actually a good thing and it would help PMSE kick off as a full site sooner.

Then I found a couple of MSO discussions that seem to support your view. PMSE is not doing that bad, according to my interpretation of the stats, but I wouldn't say it's doing particurarly well either. So, at this point I'm rather confused :)

I think it would be easier to clarify if we want to migrate to beta sites first, and discuss PMSE later. Sites that somehow overlap with PSE will keep popping up, and any stance should be adjustable, but let's clarify that part first.

When (and if) PMSE comes out of beta, I'd prefer it if we migrated all non programmers specific questions there, and limit our PM scope to questions that can only be answered from a programming perspective. But that's a future discussion.