August 10, 2004
Checkin System
One of the subjects I find myself thinking about a lot is how to track projects. It impacts many areas in life, from life management to politics. Regular readers have seen me write about these subjects before.As a programmer it's my job to take complex requirements and narrow them down to simple concepts. Todo-item software has interested me for a while, and I've always been vaguely dissatisfied with kind of todo software you see in applications like Outlook and Entourage - due dates, percentage-done, etc.
In the background, I've been working on a registration and login system as an excuse to play around with new styles of software architecture. Now that I've finally developed a system that works for me, I'm able to rapidly develop new applications just to try them out.
I've got one of them online now - the app took a day for me to write, although much longer for me to integrate into the registration system and to launch.
It's an effort to explore one way of dealing with ongoing projects. Basically what you do is create a new subject that is an ongoing project. For me, I have things like "Buy House", and "Launch New Website". These are large projects that might not have a set due date, but require many different steps.
Then, within each of those projects, I identify several subdeliverables, and I make status updates. Any time I have news to report, I make a status update to contribute to the historical record of that project. Any time I complete a subdeliverable, I check it off.
Each time I finish with a session, I might update the "checkin" date. If I say two days from now, then the project disappears for two days.
Then basically what I do is I check in to the system whenever I want - sometimes a few times a day. The system checks to see which projects require my attention, and asks for my status updates. When I'm finished with the overdue projects, then it's considered all up to date, and I know I'm caught up with all my projects.
I've used this system for a couple of months now, and it works a lot better for me than any due-date/calendar system, where I'm always adjusting deadline dates and feeling irresponsible for it.
It's online now. It's just a prototype - poor graphic design and badly documented - but it is usable. If you're interested in trying it out and making suggestions, go ahead and drop me a note.