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My CollaborationWare History

What CollaborationWare have I used?

Gardening new system late-2022

I started out doing interstitial journaling in a gdoc shared with my boss (and everyone else), to make transparent how I'm spending my time/energy.

Then I added a to-do-list to it.

When that list became messy, I created a "map" in Miro

  • I could have done this in FreeMind, but (a) it wouldn't be web-visible, and (b) Miro encourages me to capture some things as a FreeForm MindMap before organizing.
  • I keep the non-map misc (or to-be-prioritized) items in the other gdoc.

The org has been using Jira, so I'm starting a fresh Confluence TeamWiki.

Jan'2023 update: realize I need a kanban view

....so I can track things I'm considering, prioritize resolution/etc., including getting into dev queue. Or maybe as I get "enough" context there will be fewer smallish open loops.... heck I might just use a googlesheet for now

also tried Quire.com which gives me graph-task-list, but that becomes overwhelming...

Aug'2023 update: still messy

Back to a Miro map to give me over-view.

Dec'2024

Trying Obsidian for my work tasks. Still using Miro for overview, and interstitial journaling for progress.

My DayJob system 2021

("Product Management", lots of collaboration with non-devs.)

The below feels like a horrorshow, writing it to help me ponder how to simplify.

  • I most wish I could dump Asana and put everything in BaseCamp

Created annual roadmap/plan gdoc with sales-ops head, much might have no dev aspect. I refer back to this ~monthly to see whether I should push someone on something.

Wrote a personal "priorities" gdoc that includes roadmap items plus smaller items, in rough order of short-term priority, with NextAction for each (at at least the top 5) (and link to primary doc for each).

  • Key use/purpose is WeeklyReview → MIT shortlist
  • top 3 items copied to my slite/draft chrome extension, so every new tab nags me

Have gsheet to share, line per initiative, columns for factors for evaluating/prioritizing candidates, plus column per week for tracking action-progress. Has 2 purposes

  • keep WIP shorter
  • prioritize (and remind-priority) of candidates for attention
  • track what happened last week, what's happening this week, what's expected down the road (to have right amount of stuff ready to go into execution WIP)

There's also a more summary-level cross-team column-per-sprint spreadsheet.

BaseCamp mainly for shared ToDoList, because no incremental cost to add people in side teams.

  • most initiatives are small enough that I have an umbrella-project, with a separate ToDoList per initiative
  • a challenge to get others to use it, every has their own primary system, and every person has their own sloppy private mess for tasks

Additional confluence pages (best for integrating into other docs) and/or gdocs (best for co-editing, or sharing with execs who don't use confluence).

  • Often have both: a stub/link confluence page for discoverability, linking to a gdoc, and the BaseCamp list

Asana for my immediate tasks, because nice instant UI for adding, and for dragging what I prioritize to the top of "My Tasks" (BaseCamp is especially bad at the latter).

  • I'm the only active user of this, though other PMs have license and could see it
  • I have a list of projects defined, otherwise I don't organize, tasks are pretty disposable

Freemind for meeting notes (and occasionally private brainstorming), because fast to write, and easy to reorganize.

  • Sometimes (not enough) notes get pasted in Confluence (where they style nicely as bullet list), BaseCamp, emails, etc.
  • Items that are Tasks I flag with an icon, then go back later and add to Asana and/or BaseCamp, etc.

Jira for

  • dev tickets (a given BaseCamp ToDoList will usually have at most 1 ToDo representing dev work, linking to ticket or epic - just for cross-reference)
  • my own tasks that involve doing analysis, because I can create a trail of SQL queries and thoughts, linking to gsheet/etc. So if I ask a Data person to vet/systematize an analysis, they have a starting point.

Sometimes a gsheet to prioritize/summary-share bugs, or story-build-order, because Jira is pretty bad at those.

Miro for visual diagrams: diagram of effects, decision trees, opportunity solution tree, etc.

And of course slack, email, etc.

older/summary notes

At NCSA Sports

  • when I arrived
    • the dev team was using JIRA (having used Asana in the past)
    • they have used Confluence in the past but moved to GitHub-wiki, which they weren't adding too much
    • PMs weren't using anything (besides MsOffice)
    • so I started using/spreading Confluence
  • I started frequently using Google Spreadsheet and other Google Apps when MsOffice sharing was painful
  • we also use Slack.com...
  • the Marketing and Sales teams both use Asana
  • Jul'2020 PMs are moving to BaseCamp, but it doesn't seem to be replacing anything.

For Family Financial Future, since it's just me, I use Private Wiki pages and MindMap As ToDoList.

At AEP I put in RedMine.

At DailyLit we used TracWiki.

At Living Independently I put in TracWiki.

At Axiom Legal we used Wiki For CollaborationWare. See that page for lots of detail.

At Medscape I used InfoDepot plus a Mac Discussion Forum app.

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