NorthWest Miscellanea

The software i mentioned a little while back, MasterList Professional is definitely fullfilling the need for organizing my projects, -scheduling regular tasks to update websites I have, quickly creating new tasks, etc..
However, I also wanted this program to replace the free web-based ‘feature/bug management program’ I was using, (called “Mantis”)..

So I’m using MLPRO to also keep track of bugs/features for new websites/programs I write. I’ll see as time goes by, how it works to integrate absolutely every project and their tasks into one program.

One of the other ways I use GTD (i.e. MasterList) in Software Dev’t :

One of the practices of following David Allen’s Getting Things Done practice is the active maintaining of permanent lists, and keeping them in one place.

Especially the type of lists where you’ve previously gone over repeatedly and wastefully, (time wastage) re-written this same always-applicable universal list because you need to go over the items/action items in this list, as part of a project you’re doing.

I recently created a checklist in MasterList, called OOAD principles. These are the principles from the Head First Object Oriented Analysis and Design, a book I recommended a few entries ago.

The benefit of having this as a permanent “fixture”, is the ability to attach this list (in MasterList Pro) to a new task.

If you’re a fan of Getting Things Done, you know that it’s never a good idea to create a task that doesn’t have a super-defined specific first step. That’s the benefit of being able to attach a checklist to a task, but of course applying gtd is possible with other applications that don’t have “checklists”.
(In this picture, you see the checklist (not actual checkboxes), which is something that can be “attached” to a new task.)
Because, with each new software project, you don’t have to think about which principle that you have already picked up in your reading or previous usage, that you might be overlooking, and not even putting into practice.

The potential for lists goes on, when it comes to programming.

Another idea: If you are just starting to use a new technology/framework, whatever (such as cakePHP for a website like myself), you can have a “recipe” checklist so that the next time you need to add a “View helper(a cakephp term)”, you can go to a central place, in whatever list-organizing application you use, to get just the essentials of how to do this, i.e. what files to change/add to.

This is better than rummaging through doc files (i.e. blog posts that step you through it, or tutorials i find through Googling) , and then maybe also reading the code for the last Helper you wrote, and doing this for every time you have a need to write another “helper”.
You can instead summarize it into steps and put this in a central place where you always look when you want to know how to do something.

An excellent web-based list: http://www.rememberthemilk.com

Another one, but much simpler if you don’t need so many features:

http://www.tadalist.com by 37Signals, creators of Ruby on Rails

Misc mention: http://www.cakephp.org