TaskBerry - the fun of discipline. » cooperate http://www.taskberry.com Get the most out of the things you like and find the things you might like in the rest. Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:37:43 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 Sharing tasks http://www.taskberry.com/2009/04/27/sharing-tasks/ http://www.taskberry.com/2009/04/27/sharing-tasks/#comments Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:13:50 +0000 adam http://www.taskberry.com/?p=85 pencilSuppose we want to set up an online task management system. We do some initial brainstorming, market research, etc. to find the idea feasible. We both have a lot to do, so we split the tasks according to our expertise and interest. You have your list of IT-related stuff, I have mine with items like “plan ads”, and “get a graphic designer”. But not all tasks were born equal, some resist being categorized so easily, “make a webinar on how to use the program”. They should be on both lists. You could collect key features to be introduced, I could make an outline for the course. Well, it’s easy once we chunked it down into smaller pieces. But it takes some discussion or at least thinking in the first place. This is a shared task at first glance. And that brings the beauty of cooperation.
Suppose furthermore that we can’t meet in person. You have your task list in time zone X, I have mine in time zone Y. I’m just processing my list and I face a task that could belong to any of us. And any task may turn out to be this kind, a marketing decision on my part that would have a huge impact on the software, or the other way round. So the task is lying in front of me, I have a number of options,

  • Work on it for a while
  • Work on it and finish it
  • Dismiss it as something having low priority
  • Dismiss it as something that you could do better
  • Put it off until we can discuss it
  • Find a subtask which is clearly mine, then deal with it, leaving the original one untouched

So far so good. Now, suppose we have some special tool to synchronize our task lists. Hey, we are talking about an online task management system, anyway. How should this task be synchronized? If I ticked it off, shall we automatically consider it done? Or you might have objections, like “oh, you did the marketing part nicely, but it would cost a lot to implement, so let’s think it over”. There are some clear cases, though. If we both assign low priority to it, then it gets dismissed. There are options that we might not want to be options at all, like putting it off to be discussed later. Do something about it now, or forget it.
I don’t know the answers yet. But I know it’s challanging to look at our shared tasks, see our options, and find a way to harmonize them.

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