

Ask HN: How do you manage projects? - dangrover

Since February, I've been running my ISV/startup full-time. I've done a terrible job and released very little, but at the same time I've been lucky in that sales have quadrupled and I'm making more than I did at my job. And I finally have some idea what's going to happen to the company over the next 6 months or so, and a couple new products in development.<p>However, I've realized that to get over the current hump and be able to meet <i>next</i> year's goals, I'm going to need to be a lot more disciplined.<p>There have been a few weeks this year where I've been able to stay focused for most of the day and get a lot of stuff done -- usually I set micro-deadlines for particular features or aspects of a certain project. But that's pretty rare.<p>Lately, I tend to wake up and work on whatever strikes my fancy out of the available things to work on, get demotivated after a few hours, then go do something else or do administrative work/support. It's absolutely pathetic, especially compared to some of the better weeks I've had.<p>I've gotten better at estimating how long stuff will take and figuring out the complexity of a project before doing it, but I've had the hardest time lately setting schedules for any of my projects. Even when I have most of the project mapped out. And as a result, I wake up and burn a lot of energy trying to figure out what to work on next.<p>So I need a better framework for planning things out on a day-to-day/week-to-week level. I get pretty uneasy whenever I sit down to do it and never come up with anything.<p>Most software packages for project management seem to be extremely complicated. And a lot of books (e.g. the recent Scott Berkun one) seem to be focused on managing projects in a big company with lots of people and dependencies.<p>So where should I go to educate myself about this kind of thing? Is this something I really need to learn about, or am I just procrastinating by thinking about something so meta?
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greaterscope
Sounds like you might have become disinterested in your project? Maybe there's
too much on your plate? Maybe there's not enough risk/reward pressure going
on?

I don't think a piece of software can help you. What about bringing someone
else on-board that's a naturally hard worker to help pull you more in that
direction?

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ricardo
Basecamp is great tool for lightweight project management. It won't solve your
motivation problem but it will make it easy to keep things organized. My
suggestion: make a to do list about a particular function/feature and quickly
jot down those tasks needed to make things happen. Any time the planning urge
strikes you jot down some more. After a while you'll have a decent backlog of
work to chew through. When you're feeling less motivated about work and
planning start working your way through that list. This prevents you from
trying to force yourself to plan when you run out of things to do.

The key to project management is the same programming. Keep breaking up the
problem into smaller chunks that are easily tackled. Find the quickest system
that allows you to document this without spending more time figuring out a new
PM tool on top of your normal priorities.

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Skeuomorph
Try GTD, aka David Allen's "Getting Things Done".

Book: [http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-
Produc...](http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-
Productivity/dp/0142000280)

Read the book, then get a tool like "Things" (for OSX) or try web software
like <http://vitalist.com/> that works cross platform and supports some group
collaboration too.

And about those software project management books -- the guy who evangelized
software engineering for the past three decades just published an article
saying he was wrong: <http://bit.ly/pRrkd> (links to PDF).

