3 ms·

There are no organizational queues. There are only our dreams. So, acknowledge that. Wouldn't it be cool if our project management tools actual admitted each

There are no organizational queues. There are only our dreams. So, acknowledge that. Wouldn't it be cool if our project management tools actual admitted each user has their own priorities, and just helped us communicate it clearly? Every user gets their own queue. Only that user can modify it. If the user's queue of "up next" tasks is out of sync with what a PM wants, the PM can see that... and they have to go talk to the person. There's a core mismatch in current tools between purpose and practical use: we let people use the planning tool as a cudgel in place of real communication. We need to have a shot at fixing that underlying issue. It's this hidden cudgel nature of issue trackers that spawns the more literal problems already mentioned in this thread (e.g. some people always want to add another field to Jira, etc -- which, sidenote, yes, oh my god). Worshipping the false idol of minimalism by stripping the ability to have custom fields won't help. Instead, redirect energy so there's simply no desire to add bureaucratic layers in the first place. If adding more custom fields won't give someone with a micromanagement complex any more power (either illusory or real) to poke your task queue around without communicating, then... why would they make custom fields? Incentives for bad behavior disappear, and so does the bad behavior. One of the coincidental UX wins of per-user task queues is there's an obvious visual place to highlight when one person has too much on their plate, and we can use patterns in the UI to try to help. Similarly, it gives a FOSS developer a very clear way to say "yes, I care; at the same time, here's absolute transparency on the short list of issues I'm currently moving on." On the other hand, one of the commiserate challenges would be ensuring everyone can navigate to the same places in the same way; breaking that symmetry between how different people navigate the tool makes it much more complex for group use. I've never seen a tool try this. Might be a bum idea. Definitely a little radical. The UX would be full of new challenges. I'd love to see it though, and would definitely be excited to try a system that thinks out of the box.

jacques_chester 11y ago
Tracker has this some of this. You can filter to just items that you are working on. I haven't seen it used much, because of the way we work at Pivotal Labs. The standard work method is to pick the next story, bug or chore off the top of the backlog and start it. Not much need for "what's mine?" filtering in that case. As for talking, I agree. That's why we colocate. I ask my PM by turning around.
- heavenlyhash 11y ago
  Well, I must admit I meant s/talking/any kind of direct communication/, but if colocating works for you... :) Just to offer the view from the other side, I'm currently working with a group that's very embracing of remote work and fluid schedules, and still easily ranks as one of the most highly communicative and well-organized places I've had the fortune of experiencing. It's hard to look straight at a good situation and say "why" the magic is there with any certainty. That said, from this group I've noticed our PMs are very focused on asking developers questions to help keep the issue tracking to reflect their work, and very rarely make any changes until discussing them out-of-band. Doesn't matter if it's in person or over Slack or video Hangouts; it's the pattern of involvement that seems to cause the spark. It's a habit I definitely intend to try to take with me. I'm not sure user-oriented queues could be completely emulated with view filters. Maybe it's possible, but optional views seem to have limited impact on the overall flow of work unless everyone in the team agrees to use them. As an aside, the abundance of optional views and filters is one of my biggest beefs with the likes of JIRA. The first thing I do if contracting within a new group that uses JIRA is ask exactly which views and filters the PM uses to navigate the backlog, because otherwise I'm hopelessly lost as far as getting on their wavelength... and this makes customizable view features quite the irony to me! Tracker mostly seems to dodge this bullet since everyone lands looking at the same lanes in the same order by default, which is cool -- that kind of informational inertia in layout and navigation is huge. (That concept of inertia also jives well with per-user queues: someone can freely organize their own tasks in a personally meaningful way without wrecking the inertia another user's view.) The trick is keeping that inertia feature intact when huge amounts of info gets dumped into the system. And I'm totally on board with the countpoint "you just shouldn't have that many tasks, because you're fibbing yourself anyway", but at the same time, I really can't recommend a big enterprise starts just haemorrhaging security tickets from the record entirely if they can't keep their todo list short enough. Perhaps length-limited per-user queues combined with different mechanisms for "not on anyone's radar today" backlog grooming can find a new sweet spot?

jacques_chester 11y ago

Tracker has this some of this. You can filter to just items that you are working on. I haven't seen it used much, because of the way we work at Pivotal Labs. The standard work method is to pick the next story, bug or chore off the top of the backlog and start it. Not much need for "what's mine?" filtering in that case. As for talking, I agree. That's why we colocate. I ask my PM by turning around.

heavenlyhash 11y ago
Well, I must admit I meant s/talking/any kind of direct communication/, but if colocating works for you... :) Just to offer the view from the other side, I'm currently working with a group that's very embracing of remote work and fluid schedules, and still easily ranks as one of the most highly communicative and well-organized places I've had the fortune of experiencing. It's hard to look straight at a good situation and say "why" the magic is there with any certainty. That said, from this group I've noticed our PMs are very focused on asking developers questions to help keep the issue tracking to reflect their work, and very rarely make any changes until discussing them out-of-band. Doesn't matter if it's in person or over Slack or video Hangouts; it's the pattern of involvement that seems to cause the spark. It's a habit I definitely intend to try to take with me. I'm not sure user-oriented queues could be completely emulated with view filters. Maybe it's possible, but optional views seem to have limited impact on the overall flow of work unless everyone in the team agrees to use them. As an aside, the abundance of optional views and filters is one of my biggest beefs with the likes of JIRA. The first thing I do if contracting within a new group that uses JIRA is ask exactly which views and filters the PM uses to navigate the backlog, because otherwise I'm hopelessly lost as far as getting on their wavelength... and this makes customizable view features quite the irony to me! Tracker mostly seems to dodge this bullet since everyone lands looking at the same lanes in the same order by default, which is cool -- that kind of informational inertia in layout and navigation is huge. (That concept of inertia also jives well with per-user queues: someone can freely organize their own tasks in a personally meaningful way without wrecking the inertia another user's view.) The trick is keeping that inertia feature intact when huge amounts of info gets dumped into the system. And I'm totally on board with the countpoint "you just shouldn't have that many tasks, because you're fibbing yourself anyway", but at the same time, I really can't recommend a big enterprise starts just haemorrhaging security tickets from the record entirely if they can't keep their todo list short enough. Perhaps length-limited per-user queues combined with different mechanisms for "not on anyone's radar today" backlog grooming can find a new sweet spot?