Notes on pricing, choosing and switching project and issue management tools.
Working with clients, contractors and partner companies leads to mix-ups more easily, because they don’t share your background. This article explains how to write requests and review requests, how to choose your words, and how to decide what to show.
Are “Not started, In progress, Done” enough? This article covers how many task statuses to have, rules for who changes them and when, examples by type of work, and how to write progress reports around what’s done, what’s remaining and what’s next.
Saying OK, asking questions, sending work back, reporting it done: in task comments, the basic rule is the conclusion first and your request last. This article covers how to write for each situation, how to say difficult things, and templates you can use as is. For teams that want less back-and-forth.
“Let’s all work on it” and “ASAP” are how work stalls. With examples from any industry, this article explains why each task needs one assignee and how to choose them, how to set due dates people keep by giving a date and a reason, and how to rewrite “ASAP” and “urgent.”
Tasks that are too big hide how far along they are; tasks that are too small take more effort to enter and update than they’re worth. Using trade show preparation as an example, this article gives a rule of thumb for the right task size and steps for breaking work down.
Get fewer “What happened with that?” and “That’s not what I meant.” Keep the title to what needs doing, and put the purpose, the steps, the definition of done and the materials in the description. Includes a template you can use as is.
When you start entering work into a management tool, the first question is how to group it. Using examples from any industry, this article explains how to split projects by job, by department or by period, and what to go by when you aren’t sure.
Decision tasks, the reasons behind choices, agreements with clients: when you keep these records, AI can help draft tasks and weekly reports. To wrap up the series, this article covers what you can hand to AI, where to draw the line on what you share, and what to keep in your task management tool.
With AI, more work gets done by one person alone, and creative teams talk less. This article looks at why quality turns into a black box and new hires stop growing, the strengths teams need from here on, and five practices for getting conversations back.
The faster AI makes the work, the more waiting for client approval stands out. Using examples from creative and client work, this article shows how to send what you need decided as a list with deadlines, whether to invite clients into your management tool, and how to record their answers.
With AI, you can produce as many copy or banner options as you like, so it gets easy to lose track of which ones you showed, which you chose and why. Using examples from creative and client work, this article shows how to treat AI output as decision material and record the options you compared and why.
Once AI speeds up the work, what holds a project up is often a pending decision, not the work itself. Using examples from creative and client work, this article shows how to set up statuses that separate waiting on your team from waiting on the client, and how to change your weekly meeting agenda.
Working alone, do you even need a project management tool? For freelancers with several clients, what slips most is admin such as invoices, sales and contract renewals, not the client work. Learn who needs a tool, who doesn’t, and how to manage client work and admin in one place.
Now that AI has sped up the work, tasks that only say “make X” no longer show where a project is stuck. Using examples from creative client work, this article shows how to split out what needs deciding as its own task, with a template you can paste straight into the description field.
Ready-made project management tools can be expensive, packed with features or a poor fit for your work. So why not build your own? We compare four ways: a spreadsheet, a no-code tool, writing code and having AI build it, and when building your own makes sense.
AI can now produce wireframes and copy options in minutes, yet projects don’t finish any faster, because the slow part has moved from making to deciding. For small creative and client-work teams, this article explains how the role of a task management tool changes.
Read the comparison articles and still can’t tell which project management tool to pick? In plain language, this article covers six things to check before counting the checkmarks in a comparison table, and how to trial candidates with real work.
Project management tools often stop being opened within a few months. In plain language, this article covers five reasons tools go unused, five things to agree on as a team before you start, and how to run the first month.
A small team of two to five people can often get by without a tool. In plain language, this article covers four situations that are hard precisely because the team is small, and how to decide whether you need a tool with three questions instead of headcount.
Requests get lost in chat and email not because someone is slacking off. In plain language, this article covers six reasons requests slip through, how far better chat habits can take you, and how to keep discussions and requests in separate places.
Once an Excel sheet is shared, the “which version is the latest?” problem is mostly solved. In plain language, this article covers the five limits that remain, when a team can stay with a sheet, and how to bring your sheet along when you move to a tool.
A project management tool lets everyone see who is doing what, by when, and where it stands, all in one place. For small teams running their work on spreadsheets, email and chat, this article explains in plain language what changes when you start using one.
How Jira, ClickUp, Asana, Notion, Plane, Redmine and other project management tools charge for AI features, sorted by pricing model, with monthly cost estimates for teams of 5, 10 and 20 based on official pricing.
Thinking of installing Redmine on shared hosting? Based on the official requirements and installation steps, this article covers what gets in the way, where well-known hosts stand, and three options when Redmine will not fit.
No Docker, no VPS: a comparison of project management tools that install on ordinary shared hosting. See how Leantime, Kanboard and GeckoFlag differ in requirements, installation and updates, and how to tell whether a tool will run on your host.
