Solo Developer Success

It’s been over a year since I last posted and there have been a number of changes in how I’m managing life as a solo developer. Since my last post I have continued to struggle with finding a system of task and project management that helps me stay on top of everything I need to accomplish, yet not stifle my ability to take action by causing me to feel incredibly overwhelmed.

I have tried a number of different systems and methodologies.  I loved TRO and the Outlook Add-In along with Franklin Covey’s Outlook Add-In, but I really don’t have a laptop with the horsepower necessary to run Outlook along with my development environment. In addition, I have an Android phone now and there isn’t really a nice way of syncing Outlook with the Android. I have also tried other applications such as Remember The Milk, My Life Organized, Project Pier, Redmine, and Trac to name a few.  It seemed that everything I tried had one of two drawbacks:

1. The wasn’t an easy way to manage actions by project making it easier to feel overwhelmed looking at a huge outline or task list
2. There was too much work required to manage tasks, tickets, or issues.  This resulted in my spending more time managing the system and not enough time completing tasks.

All through this journey over the last year, I kept coming across a website called Action Method (www.actionmethod.com) by Behance.  I had taken their online application for a test drive a long time ago but didn’t really think it was something that would be useful for my situation.  However, I recently revisited their site and was pleasantly surprised by the enhancements they had made to their Action Method Online application. I was also excited to see they had an Android application, driving me to investigate further.

Before I was willing to just jump in and try migrating to another system, I decided to read the book Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky, the founder of Behance.  The Action Method has been touted as a method for helping creative professionals make ideas happen.  As a programmer who can’t draw his way out of a paper bag, I never really considered what I do as falling into the same category of creativity as a graphics designer, writer, or advertising executive.  Now, those people are creative!  

After reading Making Ideas Happen, I came to the realization that I was very, very wrong in that assumption.  What I do, along with anyone else who writes code for a living, is very much engaged in a creative process. This led me to seriously wonder if maybe the Action Method is something that might be more in line with what I need to help maximize my productivity and shift more of my focus toward completing actions instead of managing projects. The more I read, the more it made sense.

I also spent a good bit of time investigating their other website, The99Percent.com, reading over the articles and tips related to the Action Method. What I liked about their system is that they openly admit it’s not a catchall solution but simply a tool to use to help you focus on actions and less on managing actions. Kind of sounds like GTD, doesn’t it?  There are some similarities, but the Action Method is much simpler to get your head around.

The Action Method centers around Projects and every Project has three components: Actions, Backburners and References.  Actions are exactly that, actions that need to be take in order to move the project forward. Every action is written as a sentence starting with a verb, “Call Bob re: …”, “Modify module x logic…”, “Email reply to …”, etc. Backburners are ideas you might want to do but are not imperative to the completion of the project, at least not at this time.  References are collections of information helpful to the project.  These could be admin login information for a Joomla site, web links to articles for a development problem, or notes for a future blog post.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words and a real-life example about eight hundred, let’s look at an example. One of my projects is “Update and Maintain SDS Blog” (this site).  Currently I have the following Actions:

• Write Action Method Blog Post
• Clear old spam comments from SDS
• Post Action Method blog article
• Email Behance that I have posted about Action Method

My Reference items for this project includes the URLs to Action Method and The 99 Percent.

My Backburner list has some ideas for future posts related to my experience using the Action Method:

• Write post re: AMO and Paper
• Write post re: Google Docs and local folders for Reference
• Write post re: AMO and Email – 4Followup folder

Once I complete this post and fire off the email to Behance, I’ll review my Backburner list items and create one or more Actions for the one I want to tackle next. Notice, I didn’t say I would change the Backburner into an Action. In the Action Method Online application, that feature doesn’t exist. There have been some forum posts from users who feel it is a feature that should be added the application. I can see why it’s not, though. Backburners are often just ideas, not necessarily specific actions ready to be worked on as is.  Take a look again at my list of Backburner items. Not a one of them is a specific enough action, in my opinion.

For instance, my AMO and Paper post idea isn’t something I could just sit down and write. To move it from the Backburner list, I would probably generate the following actions:

• Document how I sync AMO and Paper (Ref)
• Create three AMO and Paper examples (Ref)
• Write Syncing AMO with Paper blog post
• Post Syncing AMO with Paper blog article

See, I really don’t really have my head around how I am managing paper files in conjunction with the Action Method. I need to create at least one or two Reference articles with examples.  The (Ref) in the Action let’s me know that is where my document and examples are going to exist. Once I complete the first two Actions, then I’ll be better prepared to write the article itself.

If you’d like to hear more about my adventures using the Action Method Online system, along with the Android application and their paper products, please leave a comment.  Just hold off on pushing your SEO marketing pitches and offers for various enhancement drugs.  All comments are moderated so nobody will see them but me before the head straight to the trash.