Ask HN: How do you track issues, todos, features?

Oh, where to start!

So Asana is a todo list. Everything is a task. Tasks are assigned. Tasks can have subtasks. They can also have comments, tags and attachments. The top-level organizing construct is the project; projects have tasks and also team members. Oh, and within a project, tasks have order (something which doesn't really work in practice).

So far so good. Most of the problem with Asana is in the UI. Asana is all about lists. Unlike Trello, for example, Asana only has one view: A vertical list of tasks. This list UI is very much like a classic outliner or even text editor, in that there's almost always a cursor that's editing something. You can use the keyboard to navigate around. This leads to some immediate weaknesses: Since there's usually a cursor, typing something will typically have the text land in some random, unpredictable place. Hitting Enter creates an empty task. So if you're not super careful, your lists will be littered with errand characters and empty tasks.

This information-dense view means there is never a place to "rest". I can't keep a single task open. There's a split screen that allows you to maximize a task, but it's not quite the same. So in Asana, you never feel like you're in a specific location. It's always the list. It's easy to get lost because there's little or no sense of hiearchy, even though the data model is hiearchical. This UI is doubly problematic because Asana is a heavy single-page app (it takes several seconds for it to "boot") that doesn't lend itself to being opened up in multiple tabs. So it's not very web-app-like.

Really, this kind of editor-like "live" UI seems more appropriate for personal todo lists, but not for collaborative ones. In my mind, a task is a kind of mini project, and a task with subtasks is a bigger kind of mini project (usually you use these for multi-step tasks like launches or big features), but Asana treats them all with equal lightweightness. In fact, in your "My Tasks" view (also a list), Asana will comingle subtasks and top-level tasks, making it confusing because subtasks don't carry their context with them — so "My Tasks" will list something like "Add CNAME", which on its own makes no sense, until you click on it and see that it's a subtask of "superproduct.com launch".

There are lots of minor flaws. The editor is horrible — pasting and undo/redo tend to make the cursor lose its place, there's basically no support for pasting code (no syntax highlighting), the keyboard shortcuts are non-standard and weird (they use tab (!) instead of alt or ctrl as a modifier), and you can't turn off the stupid rich text mode (no Markdown). As mentioned, startup time is bad, and the main page loads as a POST, so if you restart the browser, the browser needs to ask if you "want to submit this form", which is bizarre.

The more I talk about, the less I like it. Unfortunately, so far I haven't found any alternatives that look good enough to migrate.

Sounds like you need a general project management system? I would give basecamp a go, if your needs are simple. If your needs are simpler, a text document is great and can take you fairly far. It works for a lot of people and use cases.

Most of the time, as a dev working on a client codebase, i do just fine with github issues.

But for everything else, if you're like me and have a lot of different things to capture and track, I haven't found anything that cuts it. So I'm close to launching a data platform for when you want to have your own workflows, analytics, monitoring and reporting of... anything. So you could use it to get an email every day of your open todos, or to nag you until you workout, or just simply act as a place to keep bits of information.

Any trick you use to get all your tasks into Pomodoro (<30 min) size? How do you handle a coding task that might take half a day?

Excel sheet on office online. Urgent tasks go on the top left. Quick tasks go up.

Microsoft Outlook contacts: put the word todo in the comments field. Any notes also in comments. Everything is searchable. Common items come up together on search by keywords.

A todo folder in the file system full of text files backed by a Git repository. This is kind of the equivalent of microsoft outlook contacts for me.

Flags on emails.

The search for a perfect todo, project management app and bug tracker is the perfect distraction. I think what we want the most is the ability to schedule and forget about it until the time it's ready to be done. I've used Todoist, Trello, MantisBT, my own home made todo list and a dozen others. Nothing ever beats pen and paper or just a good review. I'd say Trello, Todoist and a good bug tracker are enough for any small team. Larger teams, I can't speak for.