This summer at Big Sky Dev Con 2017 I was fortunate enough to give a quick lightning talk on the nature of user stories and how to take them to the next level. I want to thank the organizers for the opportunity to speak and putting together such a great event! For more information you can check out my slides as well as Jeff Patton’s book and the New York Times Discovery Activity Guide.

Let’s do this:

1. Sit back and relax. Find a comfy, quiet spot that doesn’t have distractions
2. Close your eyes, try to clear your mind. If you have a particular meditation you like to use for this, go for it.
3. Visualize and enter your workshop.

There you go. I intentionally leave the 3rd step vague, the real key to the workshop is to not be prompted and visualizing what you consider to be your productive space.

When you went to your workshop what did you picture? I really think the first image that pops into your head tells you quite a bit about the kind of environment you prefer to be productive. If you didn’t have a clear image, sit and think about it longer. Really get into the rich details of a place in your mind you can go to.

I’m going to describe my workshop, but do the exercise yourself before you read about mine! You want you to have a natural, unbiased vision of the workshop that is best for you!

My Workshop

My workshop is an old, dusty farm shed.

It’s about 30’x15′, with a large garage door sized opening at one end. It’s sturdy, but time and the weather have taken it’s toll on the building’s appearance. The framing is pine logs and the walls are aged, grey wooden slat boards. There are work benches surrounding the wall, as well as an old work table in the middle, sitting on a dirt floor. It’s quiet, only the subtle noises of birds and the slight breeze outside. Various hand tools are mounted on the walls (using nails in framing, or the occasional pegboard). While not perfect, everything has a place and it organized to get things done. Through the door I can see a green field with the blue and white snow capped rocky mountains in the distance, a very slight breeze outside swaying the grass in the fields.

I think it goes back to summers I spent on my time growing up here in Montana. My family always had some sort of shop, barn, or shed that we did work in. Some summers I would spend all day in our “shop” just messing around, trying to fix things, breaking stuff or exploring my Grandma’s farm buildings, looking for cool things to tinker with.

Tell Me About Yours

Now it’s time for you to describe your workshop! Leave a comment or hit me up on social media so that I know what kind of place puts your mind at ease.

You can still use your wonderful Gnome-ness in Ubuntu with little hassle. When logging in, click on your user, and down in at the bottom there is a little selection box that says “Ubuntu”. Click on that box and select “Ubuntu Classic” and finish logging in.

There you go, Ubuntu without the terrible Unity Desktop! (Image courtesy of XPG4.net)

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.

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!

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.

Remember that if you have suggestions or ideas for Faceoff to go to our feedback page and let us know!

You can read his article on Nixtutor to find out how yourself!

If you are into video games you should check out some of these great posts from Montana Fragfest:

1. 5 Biggest Differences Between PC and Console Gaming
2. My Stance: Spawn Camping
3. Top 10 Mario Paint Song Recreations
4. Lan Party No-No’s
5. I Spy a Spy