"To-Do" List: Feature Sets

Question

This is a multi-part question.

1) What do you use to manage your to-do list?

2) How do you evaluate which tasks you prioritize?

3) What feature(s) do you currently use most?

4) What features do you most wish existed for your to-do list system?

Answer 1

1). Microsoft Outlook Tasks... still looking for an OTA Task Manager that will do server push for my iPhone though. If anyone knows of one, can you please point me in the right direction.

2). I evaluate tasks based on a whole bunch of criteria:

• Most interesting to least interesting for me to code.
• Biggest bang for the buck as far as the client is concerned, i.e. what would be the quickest for me to code but give them the greatest benefit from an efficiency standpoint.
• Deadline.
• How inclined I am to completed the task.
• How many more interesting tasks I have to complete.
• What's going on on Stack Overflow.

3). Features? Of my to-do list? Put tasks in, mark tasks as complete

4). OTA server push synchronization with my iPhone.

Answer 2

1) Outlook express

3) We can use follow up option to add emails to To-Do list

4 a). A stand alone client application on my desktop tray which sync to Outlook To-Do list will be nice

4 b). I should be able to update it from anywhere on web, but not by accessing the entire Web email.

Answer 3

1. Octabox Web Platform (I developed it, so go figure ;) )
2. • Deadline (how much time is left)
   • scope
   • priority (critical to minor)
   • possible time-saver (speeds up other tasks)
3. Add/check tasks, assign to colleagues/clients
4. An auto-completion feature?

Answer 4

My Outlook inbox is my todo list. When it gets a scroll bar, I get stressed. When it's empty, I code for fun. Alas, it's never empty anymore.

When I need to task myself, I just email myself. As for priority, typically oldest is most important unless something is on my mind.

I've seen some others use this strategy. It's worked great for me for almost 10 years.

Answer 5

I use a memory-aid that I wrote for Eclipse that lets me jot down things quickly, and it combines it with information that it collects automatically from the IDE about my actions (what I was editing, looking at, etc.) to create this sort of "journal" of my work. This is especially useful when I'm coding and have those tiny to-do ideas that come up while I'm already working on a task and there isn't anywhere convenient to write them.

I don't have too many active tasks at the same time, so I don't need any complex bugzilla-like searches though my tool allows me to assign priorities.

I also use something that highlights calls to methods that have //todos embedded in them (which I Sometimes leave around while research programming), this lets me know that I haven't finished implementing something that I thought I did.

Answer 6

1. I use Tudumo as my action list manager. It's simple and works like a charm.

2. I've been making daily lists of the six most important tasks, an idea from The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes (I've found some of the sales principles applicable to productivity in general). That gets me through the big stuff. Then I go with whatever's left according to my time available/energy level and where I'm at physically.

3. I use Tudumo's tagging feature to tag my six most important items and then filter everything else in various ways throughout the day, so I only see the tasks that are relevant at a given point in time.

4. Web-based sync -- but the author is currently working on that, so hopefully it won't be long...

Answer 7

we use trac. every ticked in trac has at least two parameters - priority and severity that can be set from trivial to blocker. then there is simple logic - you have to make tasks of high severity and high priority first.

Answer 8

1) BugZilla, Internal Wiki, and FIXME/TODO tags in eclipse

2) Own judgment / morning developer scrums / generally in client priority order

3) Everything in 1) except the FIXME/TODO tags in eclipse. Most of the time developers overlook them because they don't have the Task List open in their perspective anyway.

4) Labels and Categories. Wiki gets too unwieldy and BugZilla is too terse. Every three months we regurgitate our bugs/requests onto a whiteboard and spend a couple hours sorting them all out.

Answer 9

I use JIRA from Atlassian - includes features for planning each release; keeping the feature roadmap in the same place as the defect list makes it easier to ensure each release is balanced and gives me just one place to go for the list of things to do. Recently, have been using the time tracking support to give project velocity, which the Project Managers seem to like.

Planning involves a balance between concentrating on changes that will deliver the most value for users and on "architectural necessities". Eg: The end users might want fancy reporting, but without a persistence layer, there's nothing to report on.

The #1 features I wanted is now available - a "personal use" edition I can use at home.

Answer 10

Todoist. I use priorities a lot, I wish I had time estimates.

Cheers