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Keeping Track of All of Your Tasks?
An anonymous reader asks: "I work for a Fortune 500 Company as a Unix sysadmin and at any given time I may be working with 10 different project teams, each with their own milestones, tasks/to-dos, notes and reportable status. I'm constantly losing track of tasks that I need to do, notes I've taken and status reports that I've written. I've tried paper solutions, PDAs, Microsoft Project and groupware type stuff and nothing really seems designed to allow me to track mulitple project with mulitple tasks and to-dos as well as keep up with the status and notes that I generate from each of these tasks. How do you keep it all straight?"
keeping yourself organized in life takes some practice. most of all you at least have to try and stay organized rather than let something else (like a peice of software or a butler) keep it all organized for you.
first, you need basic organization skills and then maybe you will be ready to supplement those skills with software.
We use a web CMS called Xoops for the IT departement intranet. We use a "bug tracker" called xHelp that is integrated with the CMS. Xoops also offers basic project management. It's a no brainer setup, real easy to get started with. For documentation, we use PukiWiki which does the job of organizing useful information. You may also want to look in "tracking" software (refered to as "trackers") which may be of use in your situation. Hope it helped.
Freedom is strength, Ignorance is peace, War is slavery.
I just personaly use e-mail as my To-Do list/Project list/Notebook
I just made subfolders for each project and to-do list. then if someone wants me to do something and they're yelling it at me i just say "Send me and e-mail with it" that way i sit down, can organize it. or if i need to put something on a to-do list. i e-mail it to myself.
Might not work for you depending on your spam count but for me it works perfect. And if spams an issue how bout just making an internal e-mail account to handel just that.... call me lowtech but it works for what i need.
I've just finished reading David Allen's "Getting Things Done" http://www.davidco.com/ and it's remarkably tech-agnostic. You can achieve all of your requirements with paper and pen. I'd recommend getting a good solid view of WHAT you want to record, and how to arrange it before deciding on any kind of tech solution.
(Then jump straight to ShadowPlan... heh heh..)
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
Does anybody know of a MS Project look-alike and/or work-alike for MacOS X? I got spoiled with it at the office, and I'd like to use it at home, but I can't find anything similar for Macintosh... thanks in advance for any tips.
Comment of the year
Hey there. I'm also a UNIX Admin for a Fortune 500 company. Recently I was promoted to "lead" and I just got slammed with tasks to track.
I went out and bought a Sharp Zaurus SL-C3100. Google it. They're a great PDA, clamshell design with a real keyboard you can actually use. You can get one cheaper if you look at the SL-C3000 or SL-C1000 models.
I'm using the K/OPI package todo function to do all my task tracking. It includes start dates, percent completed, etc. I blieve you can sync it with KDE and if you want to fuss with it even Outlook.
Every week I look at my list of completed tasks and copy that information down as my weekly status report.
Putting the PDA on WIFI gives me ssh access and I can actually get into boxes and look at things to answer question during meetings.
It's a great solution for a UNIX admin.
--Chris
-William Brendel
Try the Hipster PDA.
Yes, it requires some organizational skills, but there isn't any system that will effortlessly make you organized if you naturally arn't organized.
Stop the world; I need to get off.
Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
I don't know if you have access to a windows machine, but seriously Outlook is awesome at this. I have a list of tasks, meetings and deadlines all in one place. I get reminders of when all these things are due and I can get a synopsis each morning of what my day is going to entail and what my upcoming deadlines are. Im sure people will tell you its insecure and all that jazz, but you should have many layers protecting you if youre at a large company. Outlook organizes my life.
I usually just use my mom. I have so many projects going on here at the house it is crazy. When ever she starts yelling I know I missed something and I get told what it is.
Tim
Also eat healthy when you are dealing with a lot of stress. Diet can be as important as any new shiny peice of software in helping with memory.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
And on a more useful topic... for a long time I used to have my homepage setup such that the center section (bounded by links, quotes, and news) highlighted all my upcoming activities. Everything from birthdays to deadlines. I didn't keep up with it mostly because I had to hand edit it at the time and I hadn't learned PHP yet. If I can reformat that page to use a submission form and add a few more features, I might get just a bit more organized.
Start/Stop drinkin a LOT of coffee. (i.e. if you drink it, stop. if you don't, start)
A single GTD might be enough to manage all the projects, using Tiddlers for notes and such. It's a single file that can be carried around on a stick, and needs a browser to be edited, so it might be simpler to set up than a more complex server-side tool like Trac (which you might look into, although I don't know how good it is for non-software projects).
Biggest drawback of GTD TiddlyWiki seems to be the lack of timelines. These might be implementable via macros if/when GTD will use the most recent version of Jeremy's TiddlyWiki.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
I'm in a similar situation, but perhaps the key difference is that my company requires me to maintain paper records of everything that I do. If I change the contents of a script, I have to print and file paperwork stating that I checked out the script from my configuration management tool, estimated how long it would make the change and what impact it will have, got management approval, made the change, tested the code, recorded actuals, and checked everything back in. Anal, yes, but...
Everyone in my company is aware that I need to do this paperwork and it gets factored into the time I can spend on doing a task. In other words, if the PHB pops into my cubicle and asks me to change the font on a web page, he knows it's going to take at least an hour.
I suspect your problem isn't so much that you can't find one solution, it's that you can't find enough time to fully utilize any of the solutions you do have. Even a plain old notebook works wonders if you have only one task to do each day and can devote several hours to managing your records for that task, each day.
My suggestion is... and I admit it's paradoxial; jot down on a piece of paper the "title" of each and every meeting minute, form, document, record, spreadsheet, calendar entry, whathaveyou that you create or access during the day, for a week.
Then go to your boss and say "I have to create, modify or review this many artifacts in a typical week, and it takes X hours of my time (where X is a rough number). Either reduce my workload so that I can complete all of the necessary paperwork, or consider dropping some of these artifacts."
The important thing is that you're describing the cost of doing business. It's up to your management to decide if the value of the paperwork you produce outweighs the cost. I would imagine there's considerable value in a change log, especially if you apply patches every day, but in contrast, a status report that no one reads is a waste of company resources.
http://www.xplanner.org/
You don't have to be eXtreme to use it. We're not.
Believe it or not, a personal wiki might be one way to go. If you happen to be on a Mac, Voodoopad is a great standalone app that I use quite a bit; there are others available, and on other platforms.
There's an article here, Getting things done with VooodooPad, which combines the GTD concept. I've got my own notes here as well. I use the app for meeting and project notes, and the auto-linking wiki goodness puts it all together.
Lately, though, I'm experimenting with the single plaintext file todo list using tags.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
First off, for me, I find it very, very easy to get caught up in the "how" and "why" of technology, often foresaking the actual use. In order to actually get things done, you need to USE the technology, not just be enamored with it.
OK, that said, I'm currently using a customized TiddlyWiki at work to track tasks, notes, and other useful information tidbits that I run into on a daily basis.
TiddlyWiki is a single, self-contained, self-updating, HTML file that contains HTML, JavaScript code, CSS data, and the content data all wrapped up in one file.
The content presentation is Wiki-like, but differs in that the linked content (called Tiddlers) opens right on the same page, in context with the calling text instead of one page at a time. This makes working with and navigating the content very useful and easy.
Its new Tag features let you organize the data, and it has a built-in Search feature that's quite quick. In addition, a new Macro feature has been developed to allow for feature extension by simply creating additional Tiddlers containing the appropriate extension code. Lots of new Plugins have been and are meing developed. Its community of users and developers is rapidly growing.
TiddlyWiki just has a real coolness and elegance about it that's hard to match. But most importantly, it's useful!
[self-serving plug]
I set up a TiddlyWiki Tips site with some Tips on using and customizing it.
[/self-serving plug]
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Since you are unix admin try this:
http://www.rc0.org.uk/tdl/
It is a very small TODO manager, it manages tasks which are described by date, priority and so on. The most interesting part is that its hierarchy is mostly based on directories in filesystem, so you can have different TODO lists per project tree etc. It is also a text based application so it can be easly binded with shell scripts and entire unix userspace... Quite nice.
I've tried a lot of similar (by tasks that they want to accomplish) tools, GUI, sans-GUI etc. and I find it the best - smiple, text based, and working.
Give it a try.
It is a bit rigid, but if you have any coding skills you shouldn't have any problems.
I like it is web based, others here like its reports.
It has things like role seperation; so you can allow a developer to log bugs, bug not close bugs; or allow test engineers to close bugs, but not open new ones.
Over all a nice little system. Never had any problems over the last year or so using it, or more importantly, teaching others how to use it.
Very customizeable as far as work flow and organization.
http://www.taskperfect.com/
It sounds as if your problem isn't with technology - honestly, some to-do lists in Excel would be adequate - but with self discipline.
Any of these systems will help you, but it is imperative that you get into the habit of writing or entering details and logged items immediately when they happen or are brought to you.
I suspect that only half of what you need is being entered into MS Project or whatever system you have tried, with you relying on memory to fill in the gaps.
That seldom works well, especially when handling multiple complex projects.
Three Squirrels
Watch out. I just read the same book after my sister recommended it but when I posted my comments in response to a recent article some anonymous coward flamed me - apparently said coward seemed to think I was a shill.
As someone else commented, learning to organize takes practice and I do have a way to go but I have already seen a significant jump in my organization and productivity since I read the book a few months ago and started using some of its ideas.
As you say, it's "tech agnostic" - it's a book about concepts which can work well with your tool of choice (KOrganizer, Palm, Outlook, pencil and paper - whatever).
I found that I appreciated a book that didn't try to indoctrinate me into, say, the "Cult of Franklin" with planners, refills, tote-bags, Palm plugins, Outlook add-ons, binder-charms (whatever the hell they are) etc. It was upfront about saying, hey, if you aren't ready to change everything but just try an idea or two and find them helpful, that's great.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Personally, I've just started using KDE Kontact. It's simple and intuitive and has most of the features of outlook. There are some things it's missing for me (tasks blocking tasks and task delegation) but for those things I plan on rolling up my sleeves, implementing them and submitting a patch. I've never found a system that does everything I want, so my plan from this point on is to adopt an OSS tool and make it do what I want, that way I get what I need and everyone else benefits.
It may be overkill, but at work I use "Trac" ( http://www.edgewall.com/trac/ ) tied to my personal SVN sandbox. You should have something similar for any big project anyway. Then I have different categories like "SysAdmin work" etc.
I should put something clever here. Maybe someday.
Don't you know that any true geek keeps everything in a honking big text file and writes scripts to process it?
(This is less insane than it sounds, interestingly. Grep is a powerful tool.)
Anyhow, I too am a fan of GTD (see above posts), but that is of no use to you at all as it is totally agnostic as to how you store your stuff, it merely insists that you must store your stuff in something that you trust absolutely.
Of course there is a deeper truth here that fancy tools do not fix bad processes, they just have a chance to make good processes better.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
I'm in the process of rolling out a wiki for our workplace. Since it's my idea / my push, I've been using it exclusively for the last month or so while getting the training stuff done (there's higher pri stuff going on right now).
Anyway, I'm finding it really cool having a tasks page, and separate pages for each project. Makes it real easy to copy/paste from emails and docs, add bookmarks, even pasting into Word for status updates. Having the history is handy for reviewing what I've done. And it's all on the web, so accessible from home or remote offices as well as from work.
Bring it up at work; get at least one of your groups using a wiki. Once more people see the benefits, it'll be easier to get more people involved and then.. profit!! Until then, you can use it just for yourself.
MediaWiki is very well supported, and is increasingly adding business features, and is dead-easy to maintain. I almost went with TikiWiki (PHP) or Twiki (Perl)-- also good choices. ((MediaWiki isn't spaghetti code like the others, but the other two have more features than the Bat-mobile.))
I am so tired of having to play "Where's the latest copy of the Word document?" with our project plans. Having a shared wiki fixes that.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
There's something about seeing all your info at once instead of scrolling around all the damn time.
If you're really busy, get 2 big freaking whiteboards.
Quite possibly the best personal information management software ever written. Amazingly customizable/programmable yet with a fantasticly minimal (but sadly not intuitive) user interface. See http://www.compusol.org/ecco/ Nothing else has come close.
You're having trouble managing all your projects. Take a project management class. Don't necessarily go for the certification. Then take a time management class. Get those fundamentals.
On the topic of an organizer, organized people can make just about anything work, disorganized and undisciplined people can't make the most simple and efficient system work. With that said, I enjoyed the Q4 (a Franklin Planner type of system) as long as I followed the system precisely. If started skipping steps, then I lost confidence in the system and the doubt slowed me down as I doublechecked everything.
As I started participating in Wikipedia (small contributions exclusively), I realized that I liked the system for automatically creating URLs. It seemed to be a great way to organize things. After evaluating a variety of personal wikis, I am currently trying out Moin Moin Desktop Edition. It's going well for me. I keep open three pages: ThingsToDo (running list of things to do), Expectations (running list of things that people are expected to get for me and when) and the current date. From there, I enclose anything I want to be able to track (people's names, important issues, etc.) in square brackets and double quotes. When I save the page, I then open a new tab for the uncreated pages (clearly marked with question mark links) and put in what I need to keep track of.
For me, all those features were really necessary. The paper system did it well, but the binding kept failing on me and I'm a better typer anyway. Next year, my calendar will be exceptionally important too, so I'm going to have to figure out if I can find a MoinMoin module to read Notes Calendars (if that's even the right way to attack the problem) or decide to manually track my meetings and appointments.
Just say "No!" to your PHB!
bamph
I use OSS Zentrack . It may be a bit of overkill for you but it allows you to organize your projects, TODOs and support calls. You can even specify how much time you spent on each. It provides a nice set of default categories that you can categorize your tasks with. You can customize the categories if you don't like the defaults. A set of customizable reports are also available. In addition, multiple users are supported. It is PHP based and can use quite a few different DBs.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
Linux - of the people, by the people, and for the people.
First of all you say you're working with 10 teams, but whose team are you on? You can't be on 10 teams, you can't report to 10 managers. I'm going to guess you are on one team and have one direct supervisor.
If the teams are trying to make you work within your team structure that's a separate issue to task management. You need to inform them of the task management structure your department uses, and have them submit requests for work under that structure. If your deliverables are project deliverables, they can be tracked, but they need to be tracked as external deliverables, and most importantly you don't need to track them according to the process that team uses to track deliverables. If you do have to act as a member of many teams dear god you and your organization need some serious intervention.
Anyway, so your problem is really "I have many many many tasks, how do I track them?" As someone else mentioned Getting Things Done is a technologistic agnostic task management sytem that is very popular with geeks, for managing many many tasks at once. You can also google to find links and articles like this one to let you try-before-you-buy.
---
I support spreading santorum
I highly recommend the Franklin system. I suggest you do the paper planner for a year, then decide if you want to keep up with that or switch to their PalmOS package.
I'm not affiliated with them in any way, but I am a happy customer of fifteen years.
-Peter
I'm a sysadmin keeping tabs on about 20 projects with varying levels of activity and these are the tools I use the most.
#1 Index cards are a no-brainer. Just take a stack of those and a pen and you've got the perfect PDA for meetings, notetaking, or brainstorming while taking a dump. Add a small clip and you've got the "hipster PDA" that all the cool kids are talking about. Google for it. Nothing beats paper and pen for free-form input. A lot of the hipster folks are printing custom templates on their index cards which is an upgrade I haven't tried yet. As is using different colored cards for different projects. Don't knock it 'till you've tried it. I have a Zaurus but only for SSH, it's useless for note-taking.
#2 Basecamp.. I'm surprised nobody's mentioned basecamp yet. It's basically a very simple (very "mac"-like and easy to use) message board with todo lists and milestones. I can't live without it!! For instance I have to-do templates where each item is a machine name. When I need to do upgrades, I just create a milestone in the calendar, and attach the to-do list and check them off. If somebody needs to know the status, they can just log in and check. And it integrates well with iCal and RSS (you *ARE* using RSS for keeping tabs on your machines and other low-priority stuff already, aren't you?).
#3 finally OmniOutliner, the best outliner in the world. I use this for all the brainstorming, note-taking, to-do lsits, whatever, that are too complex for the first two. You can even write full manuals in it, it's got as much formatting power as a word processor. It's great for numbered paragraphs and subparagraphs for instance. I can't live with this either. Did I mention it was fully scriptable as well?
Other handy tools are OmniGraffle (create flowcharts, etc) and email (mail yourself to-do items) but those three above are indespensible to me.
http://www.compusol.org/ecco/
(and despite just having written the same thing in reply to another topic on the same page, no, I'm not on comission or have any connection with the company).
It supports multiple projects and tasks, with text notes behind each. The downside is that it's Windows only and doesn't run under Wine, so it may well not be any use to you.
Our company is evaluating EPM enterprise program management tools for project management time tracking. These system will organize support tickets, project tasks, and admin time in weekly time sheet to keep the key work activities visible to contributors. Frank M PMThink! Project Management Thought Leadership
Get request tracker, it's amazing. www.bestpractical.com
It may be massive overkill for this, but I love using Request Tracker (RT) for ths kind of thing. It's primarily intended as a bug tracker / ticket tracking system, but it it's extremely featureful & flexible, and several other tools are built on top of it, including a FAQ manager, an incident response system, and an asset / inventory manager.
I for one find a lot to like about RT, which is why I currently use it at home for tracking regular household chores just as I used it at my last couple of jobs for tracking all the little projects I was involved with. One feature that may appeal to you is that it's very easy to set up queues for different problem areas. If you have 10 project teams to manage, you can set up one (or more) queues for each of them, and people using the system can be set up to have access just to their own queue / project or to multiple queues / projects. People can create individual tickets for individual tasks / to-dos, and tickets can be linked ("refers-to", "parent", "child", etc), so you can set up arbitrarily complex dependency graphs among a set of tickets -- one ticket might be the umbrella for a project, and any number of other tickets can be linked under it as children or grandchildren or ... whatever you like. And, of course, it's possible to add notes to these tickets either via going to your RT server's web site or via email messages to the RT system.
RT is all written in Perl and available under the GPL, and it'll run anywhere that Apache and mod_perl will run (Linux, Solaris, Windows, OSX, etc). Because it's so open, there's a lot of contributed add-ons available for it, as well as a pretty good collaborative documentation Wiki for the system. It can, admittedly, be a bear to install -- it depends on a lot of CPAN modules, so getting them all installed & configured can take a while if you're not lucky enough to be on a platform with a good package management system -- but there are installation guides for most major platforms, so you should be able to find a suitable one to start from.
Now, all that said, some of the other commenters noted that for the truly disorganized, no tool is going to get you past your own habits. Certainly, that's true, and coming up with a system for keeping yourself organized is tremendously important. In my case though, I have found RT to be a very useful organizing tool for my own needs, both at work and at home. It is, admittedly, a pretty complex piece of software, with a large number of nooks & crannies to learn about. But for starters, you don't need to know about any of that. Just being able to install it and start using it is all you need for now. If you need to, turn to the maili
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Hire an assistant. If they ever forget anything, fire them. Problem solved and you also have a nice scapegoat.
Have one (1) boss.
Have one (1) girlfriend
that's it! whenever you are within earshot of either of those two people, THEY will tell you exactly what to do, when to do it, and where to do it. The why they keep secret on a "need to know" basis..... They are completely capable of accounting for your time 24/7, so you don't have to sweat it!
%^(
A dictation recorder, for example. Sure, tapes are a drag to listen all the way through, to make sure you get reminded of everything on it.
So...I bet as soon as someone rigs up one with a hard disk drive and a voice-controlled filing system, saving AND quickly finding recorded memos will attract a lot of buyers.
I just discovered this the other day, but try out Backpack. Essentially, you could set up individual pages for all of your projects, post notes, add a todo list, post reminders, share the pages with your coworkers, etc.
You can't be on 10 teams, you can't report to 10 managers.
Unfortunately the OP could be reporting to 10 managers (or more). In a matrix organization (I work in one) you have a "line" manager, who owns you, and project managers who have money and hire you to do work. When the project is done, they "go out of business" and your line manager helps make sure there's more work in the pipeline. If I work on 2 projects, I have at least 3 bosses-- one line, and two project. If I worked on 10 projects I'd have 11 bosses.
In management classes they often teach that 10 (or even fewer, 5-7) is the maximum number of direct reports that even a good manager can handle effectively. And management is about getting other people to do the work.
If you're working on 10 projects at a time it means you may be reporting to multiple people (even if you're doing multiple projects for a couple different people), they may all want different reporting formats, they'll want to be meeting with you to get status of things, etc. The overhead of dealing with your customers can eat more a 40 hour work week before you've actually produced a single thing. You need to offload some of the work to other people (and then maybe manage them to make sure the work gets done).
All that said, I use a combination of simple things that work for me.
- each project (or major element of a project) gets its own folder/directory. I leave these on sort by date.
- every time I change a file (I don't write software-- I do system engineering for space things, and sometimes tech development)) I give it a new filename that includes the date (sort by date makes this redundant, but when sending files out it makes it clear to people which is most recent)
- each project gets its own mailbox directory, with a filter to a general box, and specific filters for key people to put them into their own named boxes (people I report to get their own mailbox)
- If I'm actually responsible for a lot of organization, I give a project a single excel notebook with a lot of sheets. Each meeting that happens regularly gets its own sheet for notes, there's a sheet for project requirements, sheet for contact information, sheet for schedule, sheets for trades, etc. excel isn't perfect, but it's flexible enough that it works.
- I keep track of action items and things like that with electronic stickies (on my mac), and group them by project. Anal people freak when they see my desktop, but it works for me. My paper desktop is similar (but being phased out), and I can always find things quickly.
- any request/issue/anything that I can resolve right when I see it (unless it's clearly worthy of ignoring) I respond to and pop it off the stack. One less thing to think about.
My company has actually been gradually developing some simple but useful (and useful primarily because they're so simple) web based tools for things like status reporting and action item tracking. It's not universal, but many project people have someone (the same someone) set up a web page that lets various people put in their status (and sends them email reminders), and then it emails it out.
I usually keep TODO lists on paper; always easy to access and add, to mark an entry finished I just cross it through, usually the total list is spread over multiple pages and post-it notes, because I don't always have my big TODO list present when I get an idea to put on it.
;)
This usually works well by just using multiple pages of a notebook for different subject; post-it's stick you know
I usually leave a decent margin on the left so I can numerically prioritize them should the need arise.
It also helps to add notes with how long some task is expected to take, so if I have 15 minutes of time left and nothing to do, I just scan the list for something 15m.
But it gets troublesome if I need to build in dependancies, like, task #12 relies on task #27 being finished.
For small lists, a few drawn arrows will do the trick, for bigger lists this gets undoable.
Since I prefer to make "atomic" TODO entries since it makes it easier to do work in small, manageable chunks, my lists are usually VERY big.
Only when there's few tasks left (or too many post-it's) on a page will I rewrite the TODO list.
How do other "paper-TODO'ers" handle building dependencies in their lists?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I can vouch for the GTD process, and if you want a more pragmatic (and less Amway-sounding) take on it, check out these two sites:
Geeks using GTD on Macs:
http://www.43folders.com/
A great merger between GTD and 7-habits using a PDA:
http://www.dkeener.com/keenstuff/index.html
http://www.dovico.com/
I've been dealing with a similar problem and came across dotproject, which looks like it would fit your needs. Allows for tracking companies (internal and external), projects, tasks, files, tickets, contacts and has a calendar.
I worked for a company that developped a web based project management application. It might seem a bit complex at the begining (includes task management, timesheets, test plans...) but it helps you keeping a To-do list and dispatching tasks to the different teams. http://www.e-val.be/e-val_web/doc/products/orchest ra.html
I really like to use knotes application from kde. Advantages:
1) You don't have to save
2) you can access it from the taskbar (it minimizes as an applet)
3) a lot of things for quickier finding: you can rename, change background color, put always on top
But you can't put images. For urls you can, as in any application, just select them and middle click on a browser window.
I could recommend http://www.treffpunktsystems.com/
Of course, it's mine so I'm biased.
** Martin
Mozilla is working on a calendar program called Sunbird. It's still in a beta stage at this point, but it's fairly interesting so far. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/
Try either of the above products--they're free, web-based organizers. You can find more info at http://www.37signals.com/>, but in a nutshell: Ta-da List are to-do lists you'll love doing: The web's simplest, easiest, and fastest to-do list manager. Make lists for yourself or share them with friends (or the world). Addictive usefulness. Backpack is easy: Gather your ideas, to-dos, notes, photos, and files online. Set email and mobile reminders so you don't forget the little things. Easily collaborate with others.
Go read "Getting Things Done" by David Allen and make yourself a Hipster PDA. No joke, this system is magically effective. It keeps popping up on slashdot.
Simple people talk of people, better people talk of events, great people talk of ideas.
i mean if you can't get a PDA or microsoft project or outlook to organize your projects, then you are either completely retarded or suffer from a very unique situation that no one else's solution will solve. certainly ask slashdot isn't the place... these people obviously have problems with their work schedules to be bothering themselves with your problems.
In the spirit of the endless text editor wars, may I recommend the emacs planner mode? But seriously, if your personal choice of text editor is emacs, then this really is the major mode worth looking into for keeping up with your tasks.
You're wel...(*snore*)
Populicio.us pointed me late last week to voo2do, and I am impressed.
Shameless plug for Brett Walker
Test signature: Brett Walker
I've been waiting for the community to chime in with some suggestions...
I'm also a sysadmin, and I find myself with the same problems in logging and keeping things organized. A couple of issues that I haven't seen any project management app address include:
1) Overlapping projects (i.e. projects which shar resources such as computers or software components) with contextual views. If I want to make a note about the Exchange server's antivirus autoprotect status, I want this particular system (and the note I attached to it) to be visible both to the Exchange Maintenance project AND the Antivirus Maintenance project.
2) Making on-the-fly references. If I add an entry to my DNS server maintenance log regarding changes to Active Directory provisions (_sites, _msdc, etc.) then I'd like to be able to insert a reference to the Active Directory server. If other admins click on the link, it'd take them to the information page for the AD server.
3) Revision history and multi-user awareness. Actually, this is covered by most of them, including Trac.
So basically these requirements boil down to this:
I'm looking to (either get or implement) a Project Management application that lets me define object instances (personal contacts, diary entries, projects, computer networks & components, trouble tickets) and lets me instantiate them and reference them anywhere. Revision history is important, as is multi-user access, the ability to define view filters, and the ability to attach objects to other objects (for example, adding a diary entry to a System object in order to make a work log for that System).
I think that the Wiki approach is simple and elegant, and would not require too much coding.
- Roey
1. Stick a wiki up where you can get to it from anywhere.
.plan.
2. Use your favorite source code control application to sync text files with your
If keeping track of everything is difficult, technology can definitely help... if you use it, of course. I'm biased toward a virtual approach -- having everything available online through a hosted service (NetOffice in particular) that makes all your information accessible through a browser on any Internet-connected computer (PC or Mac). You can list and track any number of tasks, link them to calendars (deadlines), colleagues and/or co-workers, and files and be able to logon from anywhere to check on or update the information. You can even integrate email (standard or, for sending out information to larger groups, automated), faxes, and voicemail (it's part of the standard NetOffice package) so that all your communications can be consolidated in a single location. If this sounds viable, go to www.netoffice.com.
I agree with what many others said: getting a handle on this is more about personal discipline than software. But software can help develop good discipline.
I wrestled with this problem for 15 years. I started as a developer, became a product manager, then a VP, then a CEO. I finally latched onto some techniques that worked, but there wasn't any software to support them. NOTHING I found did what I needed:
- Keep track of who is working on what;
- Replicate this info to everybody on the project team;
- Have the person doing the work keep a status up to date and then replicate the status updates;
- Work both online and offline (so I could do stuff on the plane; web-based was non-starter);
- Didn't make me wrestle with with Gannt charts. Forgive me, but MS Project misses the point when it comes to ongoing management of a team. It may work when you're planning a large, autonomous project; for most people, it doesn't map well to what is needed to simply manage a team doing lots of stuff.
- Get a quick "How's it going" view in a table that I could slice and dice based on various selectors;
- And isn't email. Email sucks as a way to manage a team. Period. (Don't get me started.)
So I started a company to build software to do this. I've looked seriously at the issues. It isn't perfect yet; but it's getting pretty damn good (IMHO). Chirp is the result. It's now in Release 2. Go give it a 30-day trial. You won't hurt my feelings if it doesn't meet your needs.