I have a Trello board for each project. On each board, there are five lists - Backlog, Bugs, Staging, Completed and Won't Do.
Everything starts on the Backlog (or Bugs) list and migrates to either Completed or Won't Fix over time.
Ask HN: Solo devs, how do you plan your development?
161–170 of 190 posts
Re: Ask HN: Solo devs, how do you plan your development?
#162I started using plain to do lists in org-mode, then tried using GTD (Getting Things Done), but ultimately ended up building a webapp which combines elements of both and which I can access from all my devices:
It's pretty basic, but it's the right balance for me. Feel free to try it out.
P.S. I also built it because I wanted to learn ClojureScript, and I can say it's been a very positive experience.
Re: Ask HN: Solo devs, how do you plan your development?
#163I eventually learned (the hard way) to start getting users from day 1. Before I start coding something, I start with paper and pen and find a user.
I build (quickly, usually always hardcoded stuff) it and show to user. They like / dislike it, and I go back and I fix it.
At the same time, I get more users (usually through meetup groups and making friends). People are flaky, they stop using my app eventually so I plan to make a steady stream of friends / users.
Eventually I find someone who wants to help. We go out to get users together and share weekly what features are most requested.
Now I have 8 developers. The people who interacts with the most users have the biggest say in what to work on next, whether it be refactoring, bug fix, or feature build. We started using post-its, but now we are using gitlab issues list and monthly milestones.
I hope to continue this forever so I don't lose touch with what is good for the user. I don't care about data nor the people who create the data, I want to always interact and make friends with my users so I can always make vision driven decisions and not get manipulated by misrepresented data.
A trick I've come up with is to "fake" the initial product. One time I put a loading time of 1 day to process some data, but I'm actually doing it manually when I got home. Eventually, to save my time, I write a script to automate my work away.
Re: Ask HN: Solo devs, how do you plan your development?
#164I'm insane, so I just create a parent task in taskwarrior: "build real estate app for client x" Then anything that falls directly under that is a blocking task: - "build backend to serve api" - "build frontend" (this might be blocked by the one above, or not, depending on what it really does) - repeat ad naueseum until those big tasks are broken down enough for me to visualize Using a project might be nice to get a p…
This is the same process I use on a whiteboard to plan out complex projects at work with my team. It's a nice way to see what tasks can be worked on simultaneously in non-solo work too.
As a side project I'm currently working on a tool to do this planning visually.
Re: Ask HN: Solo devs, how do you plan your development?
#165Everything starts to sprawl into tree-like hierarchy. I think mindmaps are messy but if you can branch them by file it works fine. Freeplane with nodes that link to other files are best, then from there you can migrate some of that to kanban boards, which are more rigid and ordered. As a side note, that is also the best solution to multiple tabs, if you've ever had a pinned set in chrome. Best just to make them freeplane links.
Re: Ask HN: Solo devs, how do you plan your development?
#166Kinda depends on how large your product / project is. I work as a (mostly) solo dev on very large projects that are typically completed by teams of 5-10 and take 6-12 months to complete (even for a those teams). * Pivotal Tracker is IMO the best agile PM system. * I break each project into Epics, then down into discrete Stories, basic agile stuff. * I only score stories at 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13. Anything larger MUST be b…
> I absolutely do not open an IDE until this process is done
How do you deal with changing requirements? Or when your understanding of the problem changes midway into the project? I find that one or the other happens frequently. It's nobody's fault (most of the time), just the result of the reality that customers don't always know what they want and are frequently unable to accurately communicate what they want.
Re: Ask HN: Solo devs, how do you plan your development?
#167I have a file called todo.txt, with the current tasks at the top, and everything else below that. It is in version control. As I finish stuff, I delete it out of the file. I add new stuff towards the top if I want to do it soon, towards the bottom if I want to save it for later. For things which are just ideas, I have a second file called brainstorm.txt.
todo.org
Org-mode realllllly makes it better. I keep it open and have 'Pre-launch' and 'Post-launch' todo items, plus major design features have their own heading with steps broken out.
Re: Ask HN: Solo devs, how do you plan your development?
#168Solo dev with an intermediate experience here!
I create a GitHub project (now that private repos and projects are free) with more or less the same type of boards like yours. With that triaged, I reference each card as an issue to my repo and work on milestones -- which shows the progress % :).
I used Asana before this, but I like GitHub now.
Re: Ask HN: Solo devs, how do you plan your development?
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also use a text file to keep a daily development note, like a blog post but keep it in the project’s root just for me to see what’s I’ve done and what I’m planning to do in the next day.
Do you add a new entry every day to the top of the file? Do you check this into git?
Almost everyday, or days when I work on the project. To the bottom of the file.
Re: Ask HN: Solo devs, how do you plan your development?
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you elaborate on how things get messy?
For me: Trello: boards get stale Txt file todos: more todos are added each day, none get removed because of new ones added! Basecamp: same issue as Trello. In this second half of my career I've dealt mostly in startup development. MVPs just pivot too much. It's a ride.
what do you think about auto delete tasks?