Scrumpy Blog

Six tiny tips for better to-do lists

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:25:00 -0700

The seed from which Scrumpy grew was planted for the team in our work in Agile software development and a read of David Allen's Getting Things Done - don't worry, no prior knowledge required! These methods have their crossovers and these little tips come from these similarities. Time to make your to-do list a help not a hindrance.

Breakdown your tasks
When you look at your lists of tasks it should be immediately obvious exactly what you need to do and what you need to do it, be it internet access, a phone or your significant other - by way of example:

BAD: Arrange birthday party for Fred
GOOD: Call The White Horse about hiring a room for Fred's birthday party

A task should include all the information you need to get started - no further thought required! If it's a big project, break it down into component parts and write them down as individual tasks.

Review your tasks daily
Your task list needs to be at your finger tips at all times. By writing down your tasks you're freeing your brain to work on achieving things rather than weighing it down with the job of remembering things. To be effective you need that list to be accessible wherever you are.

Keep other people updated
If you're working on a project that involves other people the best way to keep others up-to-date with where you're at is to let them see your task list - it's a clear breakdown of what you've done and what still needs doing.

Share the jobs
Remember, if you're not the best equipped person to deal with the task you might be best to pass it on - like a hungry monkey.

Don't ignore your tasks
It makes sense to pick a task that's appropriate to the time and environment you've got - best not to call that recruitment agency back when you're sat at your desk at your current employer! Once a task is written down though, it's best to tackle it as soon as you can. It might be tempting to ignore the challenging ones but in the long run, not particularly helpful!

Use Scrumpy
Hey, you knew it was coming right? Scrumpy is a web application to help you do all of the above better. We're rapidly developing the application to help people get stuff done together, better. Why not sign up at www.scrumpyapp.com - it's free and open to all.

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New features for Scrumpy

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:59:00 -0800

We quietly released a new collection of features to Scrumpy over the weekend. Here's a taster of what's new and a view hints as to what's coming up.

You can now add other people to your taskboard and allow them to see tasks and move them around
This is the first step towards our aim of making Scrumpy the easiest way for teams to work together and track their progress online. Try it out. We'll be adding lots more features that will help you collaborate in the near future.
We've added a 'People' page
You can now see all your contacts on Scrumpy and what taskboards they're on. You can also remove them - just in case you've fallen out.
You can now have spaces in your taskboard names
We'll hold our hands up here, this probably shouldn't have been a problem in the first place! And now it's not - let's pretend that never happened.

That's about it for now but keep your eyes on this very blog for more development and please let us know any feedback or bugs you've spotted in the comments.

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A blog for Scrumpy

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 06:06:11 -0800

A little overdue but we've finally got a blog going for Scrumpy. What is Scrumpy you ask? Simply, it's a new way to manage tasks, work in teams and get stuff done. You can find out more at www.scrumpyapp.com

We're currently readying a new code release that will bring some new features - when we do we'll update you. In the meantime, you should follow us on Twitter and become a fan of Scrumpy on Facebook.

Now, back to the brewing.

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