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by 0x5a177 5203 days ago
I keep 2 plain text files:

1. backlog.txt - a list of all potential ideas and tasks

2. changelog.txt - a list of iterations/versions/milestones

Whenever I have an idea or bug, I add it as a line in backlog.txt When I want to actually work on code, I pick 3-4 tasks that I want to complete and move them to changelog.txt. The number of tasks depends on how much I can do in one or two sittings.

backlog.txt is in a format like this:

* Fix IE9 compatibility

* Refactor CSS

* ... etc

changelog.txt looks like this:

1.1.0 - next release

--------------------

* Fixed IE8 thingy

* SSL encryption enabled

1.0.9 - March 10, 2012

--------------------

* Fixed null-pointer crash

* Catch exception in sendmail.java

* Enabled websockets transport

Keeping everything in plain text helps me from fiddling around too much with the tool, which I am very prone to do. (Meta-bonus, my product is a text editor so I can organize my product with itself.)

1 comments

Thanks for this. What a simple concept! I have so many docs trying to manage myself that they have become almost unmanageable. I've been using Google docs, Evernote and Trello. I recently took to using Trello as an electronic diary. Not to mention, I still scribble in an actual notebook!