August 30th, 2010 by Jade Robbins
Today I am proud to announce that Robert Lund, Mark Sanborn, and myself have launched a new web project: AgileTask.
What is AgileTask?
AgileTask is a to-do list application that follows many agile project management philosophies. We focus primarily on having a backlog (Icebox) of all tasks you need to accomplish and selectively moving those backlog tasks up to your current iteration of work (Today). We also focused on making it easy to add tasks, allowing software integrations (through a RESTful API), and creating an achievement system to encourage you to use AgileTask as much as possible.
The AgileTask Story
One day at work, my coworker Pol Llovet mentioned that he wished there was a task tracking application that followed an agile approach. He thought that being able to organize his to-do list into things he needs to work on today and a backlog of items that he needed to work on would be flexible, agile, and more productive. I agreed and soon approached my friend Rob and Mark about trying to build an application that did just that.
Why another To-Do App?
Because no other did exactly what we wanted! While there were some desktop apps that came close, but we had a feeling that agile principals were important enough to warrant their own application.
What’s Next?
Bug Squashing – We’ve already received a couple bug reports, so we will be constantly squashing the ones that are found!
User Interface Polish – We plan to clean up the user interface and add a little more polish
More Achievements – These keep the application productive and fun, so we will be adding more constantly (the only way to find them is to use the app!)
Thanks
Big thanks to Rob and Mark for being an awesome team with me on this project. Also thanks to my wife, family, and friends for being supportive and tolerant of my lack of free time. And finally, thank you to everyone that has let me talk about the app, used the app, tested the app, given me advice, and gave me encouragement. You all kick ass, thank you.
Tags: agile, agiletask, api, Mark, restful, rob
Posted in AgileTask | No Comments »
January 13th, 2010 by Jade Robbins
Email is the go-to technology in the world today. Everyone has adopted it, and everyone uses it as their de facto communication standard. Being it’s so ubiquitous, email can be over used and to many professionals today overwhelming. That is why I adopted the David Allen “Getting Things Done“
model to my email.
Create a “Action Needed” Label
The second best thing I ever did for email (the first, coincidentally is switching to Gmail) was to create a label telling reminding me that I need to do something for that email. Even something as simple as needing to read the email in detail later can save you when you are plowing through 20+ emails in 30 seconds. Quickly labeling something with “Action Needed” allows you to keep your inbox empty but still remember that the email still needs your attention.
Create a “Waiting for Reply” Label
This is the hardest step of the process, but it will save you time and time again. When you send off an email and are explicitly waiting for a reply be sure to label it with “Waiting for Reply”. While this process will help you get YOUR email in order, many other people out there will forget to reply to you (don’t worry, your “Action Needed” flag will prevent you from doing the same!). This label is a great tool to help remind you of who you are waiting on, and whether you should nudge them to reply back to you. Also, don’t forget to remove the “Waiting for Reply” label when the person actually replies to you!
Use “Multiple Inboxes”
Multiple inboxes is a Google labs feature that helps you put multiple inoboxes on your Gmail home page. Why would you want multiple inboxes you ask? Simple, with this system you can create an “Inbox” for your labels! That way on your Gmail home screen you have your regular inbox, an inbox with emails labeled “Action Needed” and finally an inbox for emails labeled “Waiting for Reply”. This way you can archive the email from your regular inbox, but still see prominently on your Gmail home screen emails requiring some action or ones you are waiting for a reply to.
To enable multiple inboxes go to Settings ->Labs and enable Multiple Inboxes. You now should have a “Multiple Inboxes” tab in your settings. There just set Pane 0 to “label: Action Needed” and Pane 1 to “label: Waiting For Reply”. Now you have your GTD labels on your Gmail homepage as special inboxes!
Use “Move To” to keep things right
When someone sends you an email that requires you to eventually do something, use the Gmail “Move To” button to quickly move that email to the “Action Needed” label. The Move To button in Gmail allows you to quickly move emails from one label to another.
And there you go! Some simple rules and procedures to help keep your email in order. If you have a different system (or one similar) let me know in the comments!
Tags: action needed, email, gmail, google, gtd, waiting for reply
Posted in Management | 9 Comments »
July 1st, 2009 by Jade Robbins
Often on the Faceoff podcast, Mark Sanborn and I talk about how much we love APIs and accessibility to 3rd party tools. While I still agree with that opinion, always make sure that your third party content isn’t bogging down your site. I just went to site who had SO MANY social “add this to XXXXX” buttons that it took a good 30 seconds to load!
There are quite a few ways to prevent this. For example, if you are noticing a slow down because of social “add to” buttons or subscription chicklets, make your own image for them! This will also ensure that your buttons match your sites design and won’t create site loading slow downs. If you are using another site’s API and think that it might be the culprit, do things like cache the API information and update the chache periodically.
Remember, using an API or other people’s storage is great, but don’t do it at the cost of a snappy page load.
Tags: api, chicklets, faceoff, load time
Posted in Daily Life | No Comments »
