Nothing beats them for me… you could burn hours on complex specification writing or technical texts for a project - but that time could be better used on the project itself. Checklists are short, able to be prioritised, stacked and grouped and they allow you to track the progress (plus set yourself quality control points). Why overcomplicate things, that’s what I say - I am much happier using this to-do list program than I was doing complex organisation methods. 
At the time I installed TF, Time Tracking was a custom mod, not part of a special version. I installed it and it worked fine; however, our team found we weren’t using it and it was taking up valuable screen real estate. So, when I added some custom fields (guided by a forum thread) I did my best to purge it from the system. A few pieces still remain, however…
While we’re on custom fields, they’re not easy to add & manage, but doable for anyone with PHP skills, referring to the above forum thread.
[FONT=“Georgia”]Hey, thanks a pretty nice app. I’m trying it out now for this website I’m working on.
The app reminds me a bit of “Things” for Mac.
I’m a little disappointed that the “Time Tracking” part of the Taskfreak app is so difficult (with vague instructions) to install on its own though. I had to give up on it.
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If it’s a large project that will take months or even years to complete then you honestly have to provide some kind of preview environment. I would urge the client that the website is going through continuous changes whilst your working on it.
The way we worked with smaller clients is to publish something on a testing environment internally, and then to preview it to the client if asked or just prior to completion. Sometimes we gave them a preview, but we found many clients did not have the time to go through this.
With large projects you find that even the highest person in the company get’s involved. Very scary sometimes, particularly if it’s a very big company, I even had them shout and swear at me.
What gotchas are there in web-design that could be embarrassing while showing a site to a roomful of client staff ?
I was famous for doing this. You should not care, at least they know you’re working on it.
For a great guide to usability testing, including sample scripts I believe, you might want to read Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. He really goes into the details of how a test should be conducted.
I am agree with shaun, he is very right in this matter. when you are talking about the usage of software then em openly say I never relay on any of software of such type and only depends on my developer. M I doing right ???
[FONT=“Georgia”]Sorry to be blunt, but you’re wrong.
I used to do things that way you described. No real plan through the project, just take tasks on one at a time as they’re needed.
That’s been good enough for the type of clients I was getting at that time.
As I’ve been trying to step up my game (and my income) recently though, I’ve found that I’m being counted on more to be a manager and an agent, and less of a coding genius. My recent clients more are after someone to take over the project, report at the end, and be reliable enough that they can feel safe with the project in my hands. So it’s been seeming anyways.
My older approach (similar to what you described) has been getting me through so far in the year, but getting more busy (and therefore less attentive) caused me to miss some of those “details” in my most recent website last month. It was a well paid site too, so it reflected really badly on myself.
So all this has been leading me now to finally start thinking about it. Rather than “over-think”, this is the first thought I’ve spared it in a long, long time.
Anyways, all the suggestions and feedback so far have been wonderful. Taskfreak has been a great suggestion too! It really has been helping with the “overwhelmed” feeling I’d been experiencing the past two months. That alone has made this thread worth it.
But anyways, time to keep at it with this new approach and see how it goes.
Thanks again, everybody! :tup:
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I liked the concept but it was not very straight forward as I would have liked, therefore I will not be using this. Nevertheless thanks for the link.
I just tried it, it’s like Inspiration but free.
I use Freemind (xMind or another mind map would work of course). It’s way more flexible than a physical whiteboard as you can move things around from one branch of the planning tree to another. I use the Freemind icons to keep track of status on items - priorities, whether they’re done or not, etc.
I don’t think you will be the only one. I would draw rabbits!
[FONT=“Georgia”]hahaha, If I had one of those I’d draw smiley faces and cartoon cats all over it.
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[FONT=“Georgia”]Well, that’s exactly where the list comes in.
I think combining that with just being generally more organised should get me there. Still doesn’t help in situations when I have to report to client or show them something unfinished.
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Get yourself a big whiteboard and several different colour pens.
I use the paid edition but I started on the free one and found it so useful that I bought the thing (usually a good sign of quality). I’m not a fan of web based project managers either from both a security and a “I need web access, it’s gone down!” point of view. Mission critical stuff for me needs an offline port and MyLife Organized has done the trick. It’s basically a To-do list manager on steroids so it’s not complex (in what you need to enter to get it working) and I can recommend it.
Do you use the free edition?
To be honest I am not a fan of web based project management things.
I used todo in Thunderbird, worked alright, but ideally it’s best if this was kept outside my email client.
At work we used something call bootcamp, but sometime you just need something simple.
First, develop the layout. Then, go through the functionality required by the client, adding chunk by chunk until it all comes together. Once the functionality is good and the layout is good, go through and design the inner components to look good as well (the visible stuff inside the layout).
Always use a CSS reset too… It will help with the gotchas of layout design! Also, using a frameworks for the various technologies involved (PHP, JS, CSS) can alleviate a lot of hassle and fix a lot of tedious bugs (JS frameworks, for example, normalize functionality between browsers).
My bad… 
made myself look like a fool :goof:
Thanks for the link, I will put it on my server and test them out.
Huh?
TaskFreak is a web app; should run fine on any platform that supports PHP/MySQL.
Same deal with Redmine, though just now I can’t remember if there was something Linux-server-specific about the app. My server is Linux, naturally