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Task Management Tools

Task management tools I can remember using over the years as a designer, developer, or product manager; roughly in order; often overlapping; whether voluntarily or otherwise:

  • Teux Deux (and probably other simple tools scattered throughout)
  • Bugzilla
  • Goes to Work
  • Email / Gchat / Slack / text files / bubblegum
  • Jira (for like, one client)
  • GitHub
  • Trello
  • Microsoft’s clone of Trello (Projects?)
  • OneNote
  • Azure DevOps
  • CrBug (Chromium bug tracker)
  • Microsoft To Do
  • Analog
  • Paper notebooks
  • Shortcut, for like, a week
  • Github again
  • Notion

Nothing is perfect. For me the important bits are:

  • The tool is as close as possible to where the work actually happens (tricky when in multiple places)
  • The tool is flexible to organizational needs, but critically enables the team to hide or ignore complexity where it is irrelevant
  • The tool reliably enables async status-sharing, vs serving as a burden / TPS report hellscape
  • I can track the nitty gritty PM details (which are usually too granular for broad consumption) in a way that makes sense to my brain

What’s your list like?

Responses

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  • Melanie Richards on

    Love to casually write, build, and deploy a new blog post from my phone 💁‍♀️ melanie-richards.com/blog/task-mgmt…

  • Reply from charlie on

    from your phone?

  • Reply from Subhendu Ghosh on

    The nity grity PM details are always the interesting part. Need to track details how, what, when, but need to stay out of the flow. Nothing beats a good program manager as a partner.