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.