Monday 24 June 2019

Hobby project management - trello

Every Hobby Season I write [or re-use the same] hobby 'To Do List'. I have a couple of apps on my phone to tick off when things are TO DONE! but I've not really been dilligent about it for a few years. Usually I just cross them off on my To Do List blog post and have a showcase. However, I wanted a better representation of projects and their progress and decided to have a look at trello. This is a site [and app] some of my colleagues were using for project management and I thought I'd adapt it for my own nefarious hobby needs.


So I set up my 'board', unfortunately my efforts to embed it directly in the blog have failed but you can view it here: https://trello.com/b/NssOU5zc/40k-list

I have my first list of Things To Do, granted it doesn't match my Hobby Season To Do List, but it's a little more fluid. It's difficult to explain the criteria but these are projects that keep imposing themselves on my consciousness and I had to just acknowledge their existence, even if I'm not actually doing them.

From there I have the Building list, clearly these lists are pretty self descriptive, so obviously these are things being built. Basing is the next stage, which again speaks for itself and then the Painting list. I've tried to colour-code priorities with the most important Green, but you know how I flit from one thing to the next. Again these are mainly guidelines, although I appreciate the irony of going to all this trouble to organise my efforts and then dismissing them, but the hobby is both order and chaos so I'll persevere :)

Finally I have the TO DONE! list, so I can further record what I've completed. A number of my recent blog posts have been trying to reconcile hobby and home life and this isn't a solution to that problem; but when you're constantly thinking about projects and possibly trying to find a way to not spend time hobbying, this is another form of 'methadone' to at last feel like I'm on top of things, even if I'm not actually doing something

Anyway, thought I'd share. I'm sure there are other tools to achieve a similar sort of thing or you too may find this useful.



3 comments:

  1. We use Trello at work and I've had a sneaky board for very much this thing going for a while now. Its a nice alternative/equivalent to a KanBan board.
    If you haven't already, take a look at the Butler add-on as it allows you to create a load of automated features for shifting cards around and adding things like checklists. I've got a button to create cards for new projects, and can get it to move cards as I complete steps.

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    1. Interesting I'll have a look. At work we have a job recording system that I hate, partly because we're the only part of the business that has to justify our time this way and we're always the ones that get 'reviewed' despite it justifying what we do.

      However we have some whiteboards with post-it notes for jobs that is much more functional. We can then shift them round and move them into the limbo of 'customer aporoval'. It's really simple and effective and also shows to the rest of the staff how much work we've got on as they drop in asking us to create something last minute for a meeting they've known about for months but couldnt be bothered to prepare for until the day before!

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  2. This is such a great resource that you are providing and you give it away for free. I love seeing blog that understand the value of providing a quality resource for free. project management article

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