Any tool to manage checklists?

Question

As a developer, we do various activities everyday each requiring a set of things to take care of or to complete before we can say that the activity is complete. It is impossible to keep all these 'things' in memory and hence we have checklists. There are checklists for things to do before you commit code, things that a code reviewer needs to check, things to do/verify before a shared database is updated, things to check before we send out a build to customer.

Anyone using any software, tool or mechanism (anything formal and not ad-hoc) to maintain ,manage and record all the various checklists that can exist in the day of a developer?

Answer 1

I am using Personal Assistant By ShellToys. Very elegant and simple for keep tracking your todo list.

Answer 2

For simple checklists that are common activities (such as what to do for a release), I find that a Wiki works very well. It's easy to update if things change, everyone sees the same checklist, and it's free and dead simple.

Further, if you are out then someone else can follow the checklist if needed.

Answer 3

If you're on the Windows platform, you may like ToDoList from AbstractSpoon (it's free). It allows you to create hierarchies of tasks.

I'm thinking that you could create a list of tasks and use them as a template (e.g. copy/paste/reuse).

Answer 4

I use rememberthemilk.com. Integrates nicely with Google Mail too. For example, you can set it so that when you star an email, it automatically creates a task.

Answer 5

Confluence is a wiki which has built-in support for a lot of nifty widgets such as checklists within wiki pages. I personally haven't used the checklist widget, but there's a nice WYSIWYG editor for creating and maintaining them. Unfortunately, Confluence is not free.

Here's a page detailing the checklist widget.

Answer 6

Just curious, is there any way that some of the tasks you do can be automated?

I used to do the daily build at one company I worked at and I tried to automate as much as possible but never made it all the way. The guy who replaced me got everything automated and made his life so much easier.

Answer 7

If you are familiar with GTD, you might like ThinkingRock. You can collect your thoughts quickly and process and categorize them later.