The more tasks we have, the more it gets complicated to keep track of our actions. Let me explain that to you with a simple example:
- James is sending a mail to the editor of a local newspaper. At the same time, he gets a phone call from one of his contacts and fixes a feature while talking. After dealing with these issues, James wants to finish his email but gets distracted by…
- …Francois who wants to get James’ IRD number. Francois is also putting together a mailing which will keep people connected to the PocketSmith community. Then, Francois is afraid that…
- …Jason will come back to him with the question: “Hey you Frenchman, how many people did we send an invitation to?”. Before I can even say something (in French btw :p), Jason would already have moved on and gotten the PDF feature fixed (and wrote down one or two mails to the Malaysian Mafia
To sum up, we are all pretty flat out at the moment, especially due to the diverse nature of the nature of our tasks (dev, design, marketing, sales, pr, business development…) SO, I figured out that because I am (definitely) not a tech guy (even I DID get the story about migrating the app to the server running Ubuntu!), I would better ensure that these guys can switch from one task to another as quickly as possible. The good point is, a lot of tools are there to help me doing that. Being Google Apps users, we have access to a large range of free online tools. I am not a big fan of monopolies but I must admit Google Apps are simple and useful.
However, something I have learned is whatever tools you have, it does not do the magic by itself. As a consequence, I do have to update the CRM and feedback documents regularly to make sure we got the last piece of information available. Having worked a bit around KM (Knowledge Management) theories, I will been keen on putting together a Google Site to create a place to share useful information and enhance collaboration (wootwoot 
That’s gonna be for tomorrow then!
If you would like to share your experience with structuring your startup or small business, please leave a comment!
Tags: business, Google Apps, Structure, Tasks
Having a look at Redmine at the moment. It’s an issue tracking system, similar to Trac. The UI is pretty clean and seems quite intuitive so far. If you have some time, check it out.
Thanks a lot Dan, I’ll definitely check it out