"Colored pencils" - an ideal task accounting system

Like any serious team, we have a real task accounting system: with projects and working groups, with separation of user roles and access rights, taking into account the time and life cycle of the task. But life, as usual, is a multifaceted thing, and it is not always convenient to fit into the cold logic of the task tracker. This is especially noticeable on long-term projects, when it is necessary to make a team breakthrough and accomplish the impossible in a few days ;) It was in such situations that we had this unexpected approach that I want to share.

We keep track of tasks not in a solid task tracker, but in a ... text file. More precisely, not just text, and in the shared document Google Docs. It happens like this:

• We write down the arising tasks in ordinary black font in the form of a usual unnumbered list.
• Font size note the priority of tasks - the larger, the more important.
• We mark the tasks assigned to a specific person with a color - each developer is assigned a different color.

At the beginning of the file we usually put the "legend", so that you can always remember where the color is. Here's what it looks like:


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We have been using this approach for several months now. Among its merits (which we had time to feel on ourselves):

• Speed ​​of use - no need to fill out large forms and press buttons - just type or copy a couple of phrases into an already open document.
• Dynamism - changes in Google Docs are saved quickly and are displayed on the screens of colleagues almost in real time.
• Flexibility of the description - as a task, you can literally insert a couple of words with the note "kick me - tell you," and you can copy a piece of TK, letters, or text on the site.
• Convenience of visualization - all the tasks of the project are before the eyes of each team member, there is always a general picture that shows the priorities marked by the font size. Crossing out the tasks clearly shows the progress of the work, the color marking of the contractor helps to grab their tasks with a glance and at the same time see their place in the overall picture.
• Hierarchy of tasks - interdependent tasks can be recorded as nested lists, irrelevant or deferred - transfer to the end of the document, divide the document into parts, insert text explanations.
• Change history - Google Docs allows you to see who, when and what rules in the file, and if you need to pull out the dead tasks from previous versions.

Here is a live (well, almost alive ) example of a task list from one of our projects , which was done just in a very short time:



Of course, our decision is not a panacea. There are no ideal solutions at all ( forgive me the loud title of the topic ), and this also has its own problems and limitations. At least such:

• There is no ability to sort or filter tasks, you have to manually regroup
• It is inconvenient to insert large chunks of text as a description of the tasks (the document is blurred), the presence of folding blocks here would help
• There are flaws in the google docs engine itself - for example, sometimes there are glitches with formatting (especially when there were a lot of inserts from different sources)

But despite the shortcomings, our scheduler works well. In what situations this approach should be applied - I think everyone decides for himself. Just try it - at least it's fun ;)