
Checklistomania makes it easy to keep track of relative tasks - hugs
https://18f.gsa.gov/2016/04/21/checklistomania-makes-it-easy-to-keep-track-of-relative-tasks/
======
ArnoldP
It isn't clear from the description, but does this allow you to have tasks
become 'triggered' for lack of a better term once a task has been completed?
eg I want my task list in the morning to say make eggs and bacon, then once
I've done that a new task pops up for me to do the dishes.

~~~
Throwaway23412
MyLifeOrganized has that (look at 'Dependencies' \-
[http://www.mylifeorganized.net/#comparison-
table](http://www.mylifeorganized.net/#comparison-table)) but I think it's
probably too robust (and expensive) for the average person.

~~~
UniZero
I use MLO to keep track of my professional work. I agree it can be overkill,
but it's perfect for managing tasks that depend on other tasks.

Some additional features I find useful are:

\- the ability to add multiple tasks (line separated)

\- you can automatically generate a list of tasks ordered by urgency and
priority (can be customized)

\- you can easily nest tasks into folders

\- you can easily edit many tasks at once (priority, dates etc.)

\- folders flagged as "projects" display a progress bar overlay

\- you don't need to go through any menus to add/view task-related notes;
notes appear in the sidebar depending on what's selected

\- great for multi-tasking because it dynamically combines all your task lists
into one

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nathantotten
In case you want to quickly try out your own version. I created a fork that
uses Auth0 for authentication so you can use any identity provider plus it has
a deploy to heroku button. You can try it out here:

[https://github.com/auth0-samples/checklistomania](https://github.com/auth0-samples/checklistomania)

------
jawns
"When a new hire joins the federal government, existing employees complete
over 60 tasks to bring them on board."

"This is particularly useful in government, because we need to complete quite
a few training sessions and pieces of paperwork."

I can see the value in building a tool to track all of the moving pieces in
what appears to be a bureaucratic, inefficient system ... but I would love to
see more work put into resolving those inefficiencies.

Can any of those tasks be automated?

Is there any way to reduce the amount of paperwork required?

Can the training sessions be replaced with online tutorials?

Etc.

~~~
melodykramer
We're automating what we can - i.e. accounts and stuff.

But a lot of the tasks are training related i.e. "You have to learn about this
or that."

You can see the work we've put into onboarding here:
[https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/12/01/how-we-dramatically-
improved-...](https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/12/01/how-we-dramatically-
improved-18fs-onboarding-process-in-3-months/)

The biggest efficiency, I think, is creating a Slackbot that trickles out a
lot of this information to new hires: [https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/12/15/how-bot-
named-dolores-landing...](https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/12/15/how-bot-named-
dolores-landingham-transformed-18fs-onboarding/)

We've also rolled out a handbook and classes — the checklist is basically to
make sure people have seen what they need to and so they're not overwhelmed
the first day. (Something like learning how to travel is something you need to
learn, but maybe not until week two...)

~~~
tedmiston
You're doing government contracting but allowed to use Slack...?

~~~
konklone
We're federal government employees (and are allowed to use Slack).

~~~
tedmiston
You don't have data confidentiality issues? Perhaps working for the Federal
government directly is quite different than the DoD.

~~~
melodykramer
You can see our negotiated ToS here: [https://slack.com/terms-of-
service/government](https://slack.com/terms-of-service/government)

------
devonkim
This could be applicable for user-side documentation of any form of
bureaucracy as either an employee or a customer (most enterprise fiefdoms
basically have to consider other employees their customers) because it tends
to follow a really long Gantt chart combined with a digraph (potentially
cyclical, unfortunately I found). It also happens to address the usual
problems I have with most to-do systems where I can have so many unforeseen
problems that it is pretty much impossible to set and achieve goals within a
certain allotted timeframe (the GTD system, for example, makes zero promises
that you'll be able to achieve any of your set goals even if you follow it
perfectly and to your best abilities, after all). It reminds me all too much
of writing a nasty mess of nested asynchronous calls where the instant
anything went wrong you'd probably wind up at square one.

It's unfortunate how this kind of to-do list is something I've almost never
seen considered in an enterprise workflow for UX design because it shows a
great deal of integration points that are weak and could use improvement,
potentially with minimal resourcing. In my limited practice, I've only ever
seen the Fortune 500 basically write pie-in-the-sky Visual Studio sticks and
boxes or the equivalent of a nasty nested asynchronous call stack.

------
zhynn
After running a local version, I thought I would add some notes about my
experience:

\- This seemed really cool since we have various processes and this would let
us both document and operationalize the processes. Things like: add/change
user permissions or create a new vm/container, etc. We could make it easy to
show where documentation is and what should be updated.

\- Installation is simple, but it is hardcoded to authenticate against Github
and look and see if you are a member of the 18F group. If not, you are refused
access. Changing the group is just a simple edit to the app.js file, but
changing authentication from Github to another source would require adding
another passport config file into api/ (as far as I can tell), and possibly
additional dev.

\- The checklists are all json files, there's no UI for creating the
checklist. In fact, there's no CRUD for checklists at all, they are flatfile
managed with a text editor. This is not ideal, but building an editor might
not be too rough. The main thing is that checklist creation is a developer
operation.

\- There is no UI for associating checklists with role/users or grouping the
checklists. Everyone sees all of the checklists and then self-selects which
checklist they want to add to their plate. It looks like the tasks are all
user-specific, so you couldn't have a checklist that was divided up amongst a
team, it is all single-user focused. I suppose you could create a dummy team
user that multiple people had access to, but that seems icky. Similarly, while
you can see other user's tasks, you can't take one of their tasks and help
them out by doing it.

\- There's no context for the tasks. If you had two new employees or two VMs
to provision, you would have to do them one at a time. Adding a second
checklist while you have a first in progress just gives you a pile of
duplicated tasks that have no context as to which initial action they are
related to. You can add a note to the initial checklist assignment like "SE3:
Jane Doe" which will give some context for that assignment, but I don't see
where that is related to the tasks. If the tasklist showed "Checklist Name -
Checklist Note" in the table, then at least you could keep them separate.

Otherwise, I would _love_ for this to work. I am in academia where we have two
problems that this impacts: 1) we have lots of bureaucracy 2) we have lots of
turnover in IT staff because we pay poorly. For both of these reasons, having
a checklist tool would be fantastic.

Devs: please comment!

~~~
melodykramer
This is a great list. (I work at 18F.) Everything we do is available for
anyone to fork, adapt, copy, use, etc. Someone could fork our code as a
starting point and add the features you mention. I really like the idea of
adding context for the tasks.

As the person who converted the tasks to JSON, I can say IT TOOK A LONG TIME.
If there was a front end or an easier way to do this, it would be much easier
to use. An editor would be my #1 feature request.

\- We wanted everyone to see every checklist, but the idea of having
checklists shared by a team would be REALLY USEFUL for us too. Think about a
team who shares onboarding tasks for a user. I would love to add that
functionality.

\- If you feel comfortable, you could create these as issues in the repo so
that we could share them and see if folks want to tackle them. We saw this as
a first step to meet a need, and would love to see it improve.

\- Mel

------
trestletech
My tax dollars paid for 94% test coverage??

~~~
Flimm
Are you saying that's too high or too low?

~~~
trestletech
High, by my standards. But was tongue-in-cheek regardless.

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lcall
FWIW, a related product, more general but less mature (I'm the author):
[http://onemodel.org/](http://onemodel.org/) (AGPL). Highly efficient at
managing lists but doesn't yet share data between accounts except by exporting
the data as txt or html. I use it heavily, daily, to manage checklists/tasks
and notes on many subjects.

I see it as the beginning of a platform to change how individuals (or mankind)
manage knowledge overall. Future features involve exploiting the internals for
collaboration (linking instances, sharing data, subscribing to each others'
data, mobile, etc)

Feedback or participation are appreciated. If one has any interest at all, I
suggest signing up for the (~monthly?) announcements list at least.

------
cuchoi
Is this easy to deploy in your own shared server such as GoDaddy and
HostGator?

~~~
dflock
It's mongodb and nodejs, so yes.

------
tedmiston
A few years ago I worked in a research lab for the DoD. They definitely aren't
joking about the amount of onboarding tasks, training, verifications, etc. It
took most of my time over the first two weeks. Some of the offices are only
open for very limited hours and only on certain days and so they're always
backed up. This will be very useful. Even just having access to modern web
apps is a welcome change.

------
bodine30
This is fantastic, thanks for sharing! This gives me so many ideas I'd like to
fork and try out. Does this support recurring tasks?

~~~
anthonygarvan
Not right now. Pull requests are welcome!

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xigency
Don't forget about TopChart.io (YC) and Trello, two other very easy ways to
make checklists.

~~~
tedmiston
Trello doesn't have checklist dependencies.

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jack9
How is this different from Asana or Wrike or the glut of tasks-as-a-service
products?

~~~
tedmiston
The reason the government builds their own version of many popular consumer
products is to run on-premises behind complex firewall configuration. Because
they either don't or _can 't_ trust a third party with the data.

------
soyiuz
I hope something like that can be used in medical applications.

------
jcoffland
"When a new hire joins the federal government, existing employees complete
over 60 tasks to bring them on board"

They sound down right proud of their bureaucracy.

~~~
maineldc
I would argue they sound self aware and that's better than many orgs, large
and small. Many companies have no idea what the number of tasks are required
to bring a person onboard and would underestimate the tasks required by 50% or
more.

~~~
melodykramer
We actually have all of our checklists online:
[https://github.com/18F/onboarding-
documents/blob/master/Chec...](https://github.com/18F/onboarding-
documents/blob/master/Checklists/new-hire-checklist.md)

so you can see exactly what's required. The checklist program has made it
easier for new employees to keep track of the tasks (and is easier for many
people to follow.)

------
xigency
Not far different from the name of our list tracker - [http://youresam.team-
duck.com/listomania/](http://youresam.team-duck.com/listomania/)

~~~
cormacrelf
Not far different from the name of a Phoenix song
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF3reVVUbio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF3reVVUbio)

~~~
tantalor
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisztomania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisztomania)

 _In 1839 Liszt began an extensive tour of Europe, which he continued for the
next eight years. This period was Liszt 's most brilliant as a concert pianist
and he received many honours and much adulation during his tours. Scholars
have called these years a period of "transcendental execution" for Liszt.
During this period, the first reports of intense responses from Liszt's fans
appeared, which became referred to as Lisztomania._

