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I don't understand why this question was closed on the grounds of "that this is an opinion poll", that I am asking what is the right approach in a given project management situation: https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/33461/who-should-be-responsible-for-preparing-a-tasks-written-assignment-between-an-a.

My questions clearly requires a definitive response, not an opinion. Moreover, what a professional considers a right approach in a given situation is not a matter of subjective tastes or moods, but straightforward solution which can only be described by specific arguments and logic.

Not to mention that this statement in the comments "It is also not scoped to project management; you are seeking opinions and discussions about a wider principle of responsibility" is completely untrue and shows that the author has not even taken the effort to understand the question. The question has nothing to do with "a wider principle of responsibility". It is about efficient allocation of roles in a project management process.

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  • FYI, users without sufficient rep may not be able to see the body of your currently-closed question. You may want to insert a portion (not the whole question) into the body as a quote. In addition, questions that have been closed for a period of time are generally deleted to avoid "broken windows" on the site, but they are soft deletes which can be reversed by the moderators or the community members with sufficient reputation when warranted. Hope that helps.
    – Todd A. Jacobs Mod
    Commented Dec 10, 2021 at 16:42

2 Answers 2

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SE Sites Have Community-Developed Norms and Values

Part of your issue is that you aren't understanding that that PMSE (like most SE sites) has both a community culture and a set of norms that have evolved over time. As much as we can, we document these in the help section, but like any social group some of these things are simply "tribal knowledge" and we try to explain them to newcomers as best as we can.

You have been told repeatedly by me (and now by others) why your question doesn't not meet our community standards, norms, and values. However, rather than refactoring your question to be on-topic (which it certainly could be with a little effort on your part) you seem bound and determined to argue that because you think it's on topic, it is therefore ipso facto on topic. That's not how our site (or Stack Exchange in general) works.

Because we have a community-driven site, I think your time would be better spent rewriting your question to meet our norms, and then flagging it to be reviewed by the community. Or write a new, more targeted and on-topic question. Regardless of how you do it, your question is more likely to be well-received if it fits our community guidelines and the norms that we've established over a great many years.

Frame Challenges

In addition to the foregoing, it's also been suggested (by me in particular; see pull-quote below, which many users without sufficient reputation can no longer see) that your original question was written with some baked-in assumptions about how tasking works (or perhaps should work). This not only invites opinions and polling, but it is also a question that simply can't avoid a frame challenge because many agilists (which is perhaps unsurprisingly the bulk of our active community) simply will not buy into the idea of top-down task assignments as a valid starting point.


Comment on currently-deleted question:

"Would you agree that this is the right approach?" is a pretty unambiguous flag that this is an opinion poll. It is also not scoped to project management; you are seeking opinions and discussions about a wider principle of responsibility, but that is inherently situational and will vary based on a wide variety of factors. That makes this subjective and posits a philosophical problem rather than a concrete one. You're welcome to bring it up in meta, but I feel confident that this question will remain off-topic unless you reconsider your motivation for asking it as well as its presentation.


If you decide to re-write your question, you might consider starting from the standpoint of explaining your real-world situation and problems, and why you think top-down tasking should even be a thing in your environment. To avoid the "smell" of Am I right? in your question, which is often interpreted as a flag for a rant in disguise, a polling question, or simply a request for affirmation, I strongly recommend you reframe your question as a search for a potentially-canonical answer to a concrete question about a real-world problem you're facing. This avoids both X/Y problems and other issues which typically get questions flagged for closure.

Salvage the Underlying Kernel of Your Question

Underneath what is currently an unacceptable question per our standards and guidelines, you have an interesting question that can (and perhaps should) be salvaged. On PMSE, when a question is closed and eventually deleted to avoid "broken windows" on the site, that's not personal and is also not an indicator that there's no merit in some portion of the original question. It simply means that, taken as a whole, the question cannot be salvaged by the community in a way that doesn't change the OP's original intent.

If you can make the intent and the post as close to on-topic as you possibly can, you will find the community well-disposed to helping you massage it into an on-topic question so long as it fits our standards and guidelines. From where I sit, there is some underlying value in your question that could be on-topic here with some effort, but it will require work on your part. I invite you to invest that time, and to explore our site further (especially the help sections) to see what we consider on-topic and how the community works together to build canonical Q&As (even from questions that are on the bubble) whenever we can.

Final Thoughts

Please consider becoming part of the community rather than tilting at this particular windmill. I think the underlying question of whether top-down tasking is ever a good idea, and whether it will solve some concrete problem your facing, is a potentially useful one, and would love to see you turn it into an on-topic post.

See Also

Arguing these point-by-point will not help, but reading them and understanding the community's underlying intent may be valuable.

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With just slight variations in the working culture (do people get tasks assigned, or do they pull from a backlog), the scope of the work considered when writing the answer and the expertise of the involved people, I would be able to write two completely valid and opposing answers. And only if you had a preconceived notion of what answer you want to hear would you be able to pick one or the other.

That fact, that two completely opposing and valid answers can be given, is one of the things that can make that a question is considered to be opinion-based.

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  • My question is about how how task assigning should be designed on the first place, it is not about a situation where there's already an established policy for assigning tasks. It is about which type of policy should be implemented for the sake of effectiveness.
    – drabsv
    Commented Dec 6, 2021 at 14:19
  • @drabsv, there is no consensus on if task assignment should be push or poll based, as it depends too much on culture, the tasks in question and the people available to do the tasks. Commented Dec 6, 2021 at 14:25
  • I want to underscore again that I am not speaking about a situation where we have a company with an established process for assigning tasks, I am straight asking about designing that type of process from scratch.
    – drabsv
    Commented Dec 6, 2021 at 14:27

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