Why was this question migrated to PM?

Question

I'm just curious as to if there have been changed in topicality recently, after I saw this question had been migrated from here to PM.SE:

Should a group of three students working on a big programming project have a leader?

There are a few ways to cut this. I organized them in order of my personal preference.

1. It's on-topic both here and at PM.SE. Migration {should | should not} (aside: my preference is should not have been migrated, especially since PM is not out of beta yet) have happened. It's a project management question, but software project management is inherently different than managing projects in other engineering disciplines or even cross-disciplinary projects. Since the main focus was software, it's on-topic here. However, since it has to do with subject matter in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (mainly Project Human Resources Management), it's also on-topic at PM.

2. It's on-topic here and should not have been migrated. One of the on-topic categories is "software engineering". My take on that is that the formal definition of what is included in software engineering should come from the SWEBOK. Software engineering management is a knowledge area in the SWEBOK, and therefore is on-topic here.

3. It's on topic here and should not have been migrated. The project, based on the question, is specifically and exclusively a software project. There was no mention of other engineering or business disciplines. The P.SE FAQ states that conceptual questions about software development are on-topic.

4. It's off-topic here because it's relevant to more than just software engineers. Although software projects are different than other projects, if and how to choose a leader remains the same. It's a cross-cutting PM concern of interest to all PMs, software or otherwise.

5. It's off-topic here because the question was worded to generally. Although it was a software project, no key concerns about developing software were identified. Unless there is some kind of demonstration of relevance to exclusively software, it should be moved.

I'm not sure who moved it, but these are what I see as the major possibilities for dealing with this question are. The only one I don't like is 5 - if that's the case, could the question have been edited to be made more specific?

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I suppose this does prompt another question, though. How do we deal with a site like PM that's in such overlap with a huge chunk of relevant questions? It might be something to look at in the future.

Answer 1

I was the one who migrated it after a quick consultation with the other moderators. As an aside, you can click on the "programmers.stackexchange.com" link in the "Migrated from" banner on PM to get back to the original question here.

The reasons for the migration were a combination of #1, #4, and #5 on your list. The question (while mentioning a software team) did not focus on software development aspects of the project and the answers did not provide any information that was uniquely related to software development either.

It was a general question that could be summarized as "should we have a project manager/leader?". The type of project appeared to be irrelevant, and I think that made the question a better fit for PM than for us.

Far as editing the question to be more specific, I'm not sure how anyone except the OP could do it. We could've asked the OP to edit it, I suppose, but I'm not sure what that'd gain us when the question as it stands is pretty good as is, but simply better for another site.