Bonderblog @ BruceOnder.com

Bonderblog @ BruceOnder.com

Bruce Onder  //  

Sep 9 / 11:53am

Triple Windsor: I am a pivotal tracker project

This is a project for tracking myself. The things I should do, don't do, wish I did, etc.

"Bugs" are things that I don't like that I aim to change. They can be given by anyone at "failin.gs" email, or submitted in person. (nailbiting and the like)

"Chores" are things that I need to do that don't add business value directly. (unimportant meetings, cleaning the gutters)

"Features" are things that do add business value, ie. things that I enjoy, improve my skills, and benefit my relationships with others.

I found this fascinating blog article on treating oneself as a software project. Last summer I tried using a kanban board as a personal project management system, but I got bogged down in weird little details that kept making the board either ineffective or stale.

For example, I would put different kinds of things on there: "call Jeff about Frankenstein's Ford" would be on the board right along with "Clean driveway" and "Write blog post".

I had queue limits on the various states these items could exist in. So "Call Jeff" could sit around in "WIP" (work in progress) if I had called and left a message.

Which meant that either that card was slowing down throughput of other items (since I could only have 2 cards in that status at a time), or I had to invent some sort of waiting queue in order to let other things move forward (another thing to manage).

I have put the "personal kanban board" on hold, but might consider dusting it off again if I can think of a few experiments to run to make it work.

Anyway, please give Evan's article a read and let me know what you think about managing yourself as a software project!

Filed under  //  personal development   project management