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About how to put chaos in order, do it every day, and not waste time on it

I appeal to you, collective habramere, here with what question. Does my idea have a right to life, or does it have a place in a closet with other “bikes”?

And the idea is about what.
I am a web studio project manager. And every day in the process of processing I have at least a dozen tasks. From small operational to more serious and long. For proper ranking, most often there is neither time nor desire. As a result, chaos.
The same thing happens with performers. The contractor is assigned several tasks, and most often he is not interested in how long they are assigned. He can begin to do a task, the urgency of which is small, simply because he did not see its deadlines. Or get the task in advance, but at the time of its relevance to forget about it. Determining the sequence of tasks, reminder and control falls on the shoulders of the manager, who already has enough tasks.
In the end, it all comes down to the fact that every day you have to make a detailed action plan not only for yourself, but also for each artist. But this time, effort. And somehow I want to optimize this routine task.
And here's the idea: to create a system that automatically creates and updates a sequential list of tasks, based on these project schedules.


So what we take as input.


This is a task pool with assigned resources and specific deadlines. For example, we assume that they are taken from Redmine, in which I lead all projects. We also take into account that the graphics are kept up-to-date, and the performer cannot receive a priori tasks that are not physically possible (for example, the layout cannot start before design).
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Technique


The basis of the calculations will take the Eisenhower method. Who does not know, Google to help. I will only briefly describe how this works. All tasks are evaluated on a 10-point scale according to two characteristics: urgency and importance. Then a chart of coordinates is drawn up, where the X axis is Importance, the Y axis is Urgency. Tasks are put in accordance with the values ​​(red dots in the image). The graph is divided into 4 quadrants, and then the sequence is compiled according to the principle: 1. Important-Urgent, 2. Impaired-Urgent, 3. Important-Non-Urgent, 4. Unimportant-Non-Urgent.
image

That's the way a good solution for this method: http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/services/98591/
I really liked it. Although not very convenient for me, I use it periodically. Well done guys, thank you.


Difficulties


The first problem we encounter is “What to do with tasks that fall into one quadrant?”, Which are both urgent and important. And everything turns out to be simple. It is necessary to divide this quadrant on the same principle, and so to the necessary degree of detail. For example, I shared two more times.
image

Now the task sequence is fairly obvious (numbered with blue numbers).

The complexity of the second. How to assign the necessary importance and urgency statuses to existing tasks? And if the importance is constant, what to do with the urgency that changes constantly?

Importance from a technical point of view is solved quite simply. Probably, in any task manager there is a field “status” or “priority”. It is just suitable for our purposes. In Redmine, in particular, you can even customize the directory to assign points.
The importance is assigned to the task at the stage of its appearance (creation) and in accordance with the situation. Here, I am afraid, there is nothing to automate. The quality of the importance assignment depends on the qualifications and experience of the manager.

As for Urgency, I found this way out. Link the Urgency Score to the start date of the task. That is, let's say, we have a task that starts in 2 days, its Urgency will be 8. And there is a task that should start today, its Urgency will be 10.
But it will work only if the task is given a deadline for exactly its implementation, and not so that “here's a two-hour task for you and a deadline for the week, do it when you want, but by the end of the week the task is ready”. Although in this case, the system will work, just not as effective.

As a conclusion


Well, perhaps the whole idea. There is, of course, where and what to modify. And the formula needs to be developed and thought out how to combine long-term tasks (over 6-8 hours) with small operational ones, and a lot more.

Anticipating the comments of programmers, I want to note that here I tried to solve only a logical problem. I did not consider the technical implementation methods. In any case, I will accept all comments, both positive and negative. Preference is constructive.

Thanks for attention,
Your Habrash!

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/120517/


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