Speed of the New System
Saturday, September 24, 2011 at 10:30 In my last post I reported on my surprise at the speed at which the Final Version is getting work done. (Yes, I know, it’s still me who does the work unfortunately).
I have decided that this is something worth monitoring. So I’ve picked on two key indicators to monitor how fast the system is working:
1) The number of days’ work left in the system. The tendency of all to-do lists is to expand faster than the tasks on the to-do list get done, and the number of day’s work your current to-do list represents is a good way to monitor this. It can easily be measured by dividing the number of unactioned tasks on the list by the average number of tasks actioned per day. So for example, if you have 200 unactioned tasks on your to-do list and you take action on an average of 20 tasks per day, the 200 tasks represent 10 days’ worth of work.
2) The age of the oldest task on the list. The tasks that have been hanging around longest tend to be the ones you least want to do. So monitoring the age of the oldest task is a good way of showing how well the system deals with the more difficult or challenging tasks.
I’m starting a new list in order to monitor how the list expands right from the beginning. I’ll post my first set of results tomorrow.
Reader Comments (2)
I've tried various ways of getting started on this system. The three main ones were:
1) Consolidate all old lists into one backlog list, put "Backlog" as a task on the the Final Version list and re-enter the tasks as necessary into the Final Version list once some action has been taken on them. In other words backlog tasks cannot be entered on the main list unless some action has been taken..
2) Enter all tasks on old lists straight into the Final Version list. This worked well with some of my earlier versions of the system, but is unsuitable with my present rules.
3) Enter tasks as and when they come to mind or come up in the course of work.
Number 3 seems to be the one that works best. The others both seem to result in the list getting bogged down in stuff that is no longer really current.