Structured Information Storage

    Quite by chance I came across one interesting video called Situating Personal Information Management (PIM) Practices within an Organization , read a document (the creators of PIM approached this problem thoroughly - research, tests, theories, it seems to me that some even defended their candidate and doctoral studies on this subject ) and it turned out that those guidelines for organizing the storage of information and quick access to it, which are set out in the articles, I have been successfully using for a long time in my daily work. And they came to me, as you know, not from a good life.
    It just so happened that when working with PM, the number of projects I did not fall below 5 and stably kept in the range of 5-10. Most of the projects were small, some 3-5 months long and 2-4 developers (well, plus network administrators, testers in the project team). But when production support and maintenance was added to this wealth and the number of important letters exceeded 50-70 per day, I had to think about an effective structured storage of project information, its search, and reminders of planned events. The following is a description of what happened and how ...


    1. A hierarchical repository that is created immediately - even before there is information that will need to be stored later. For me it looks like this on disk:

    <First Name \ Last Name \ Nick>
     | __ <Company>
         | __
              | __
              | | __
              | | __
              | | __
              | | __ <Any other project-specific folders>
              | __
              | __ - project documentation (project plan, project schedule, requirements, HLD, test plan, operation manual etc.)
     - external documentation (not created in the framework of the project - specifications, etc.)
    As soon as the project was completed, it was transferred entirely to  or . 
    

    The same structure was created in MS Outlook 2007, where all correspondence about project activities was stored.
    For naming files, I think it will be possible to use the ideas from The method of organizing project directories and files

    2. Dynamic folders. In MS Outlook, it is possible to specify Search Folders that filter the entire message flow based on the specified criteria.
    a) A special case of using this functionality is Follow up folder. In MS Outlook 2007 it is possible to create follow ups for any date and group them in View by date. Thus, I started my every working day with viewing tasks for today, then I processed input messages, arranged them according to follow up dates in the future, immediately forgetting about them :) And a new day from a blank sheet, usually containing 10-20 tasks :)
    b) If the message structure is well-defined (for example, defect \ suggestion \ inquiry messages with the specified text Priority or Area, then using Rules you can configure the setting of Categories (Area) or Color (Priority). And then use Search Folder to search, group, sort messages.

    PS Try not to leave unread letters at the end of the working day. “If you do not control the thing , then the thing controls you! There is no third option! ”Words to substitute instead of the word thing - letters, project, life :)

    Also popular now: