User-Specific Prioritization
I think this is the last "dimension" or characteristic/property tweak that I really would need Checkvist to adopt in order to start using it more widely within the various companies I'm involved with. The issue right now, is that everything is shared on a given list, with very little user-specific customization or prioritization. So I can prioritize the list (via ordering, colors, etc) the way I see fit, but if it's a list that many people are working on (via assigned tasks and subtasks, for example) this breaks down. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that the only way to get a group on the same system is for that system to actually become the default "todo" or list managing software for each person INDIVIDUALLY. If you can't get most/all of the members to view it as a tool that they could "live in" and base their personal workflows off of, it definitely won't work if you ask a whole group to do this.
My suggestion here, would be to simply allow the prioritization (colors) to be user-specific. I think allowing different users to re-order the lists based on their personal preferences/prioritization is too hard, and you quickly get into situations where you're trying to then aggregate tasks from different lists into a mega "todo" list per-person. This is much like what Asana does with My Tasks - all tasks, from many projects, assigned to an individual goes into that individuals "My Tasks" bucket, which they can then prioritize themselves into Today, Upcoming, and Later. The key here is that this essnetially allows two levels of prioritization: the task itself can have a due date of two weeks from now, but for the person working on it they can categorize it as "Today" if they know their next few weeks are crazy and they need to get it done ASAP. This is really important to allowing group prioritization/categorization, and individual prioritization/categorizatin, to co-exist. While I think this works, and is elegant, it's too much for checkvist and ruins the simplicity and flexibility, turning it into a full-blown project management app which isn't necessarily the use case. I love that checkvist is flexible enough to allow for many use cases.
That said, there is the issue that it's not possible for individuals to look at the same list and prioritize, or otherwise categorize, it differently from the "master" list view. This is essential. Rather than re-ordering tasks so that each person has a different view of the list, or bubbling assigned tasks from different lists into a My Inbox for each individual where they can prioritize/categorize/order them as they link in what is essentially a personal sandbox, I think the right approach is to stick with the master-list view but allow people to "color" the tasks differentially. So I could color some stuff red/green/blue (using priority), which for me corresponds to Today/Later/Someday, but that doesn't have to show up to other users looking at the same list. this allows me to drop in, categorize the things that are really urgent for me to do, but still allow others to do the same.
I think this, or something similar to it, is really really important. I know Checkvist doesn't want to become an asana-like project management tool, but this seems like a fair middle ground without adding too much bulk/complication/etc. Something that allows individuals and groups to prioritize differentially is a must.
I think it may be possible to do this via private tags, but they don't sort very well and aren't really built for this purpose. If they are, or if there is a better way to do this with private tags, I'm open. I think private tags right now are the only dimension that behaves user-specifically. Or am I missing something?
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Hello Jonathan,
You're right, when I started reading your message, private tags pop up in my head as one of the ways to do user-specific prioritisation. Also, tag colors are not shared, they are individual.
Another user-specific thing we have is a due page. By default, due page shows only those due tasks, which were set by the current user or were assigned to this user. You can read more about it under "Due notifications improvements" at http://checkvist.tumblr.com/post/49167719257/repeating-tasks-and-due-notifications-improvements
But this won't solve the issue with different Due for different people.We plan to implement issues like http://checkvist.uservoice.com/forums/2121-general/suggestions/1578087-list-of-links-to-tasks-cross-list-tasks and http://checkvist.uservoice.com/forums/2121-general/suggestions/86089-create-a-checklist-of-checklists - this will allow people to create custom lists from existing data.
But first, we'll prepare an initial version of our mobile offline app - we're actively working on it.
Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts and needs.
KIR