Project notes / organisation question

[Treks]

G'day

I find an area I'm struggling with at work is managing notes for projects I'm involved with or steering.

I know how to manage projects at a high level, but what I'm struggling with is a system for organising my notes as I go.

An example: Early on in a project I noticed a potential issue, raised it, got an answer, filed the email in the project folder. Many weeks later, when we came to sign on the bottom line, my brain flagged the same issue again, forgetting I already had the answer. Although I have a very basic and somewhat muddled 'project page' in OneNote to help me track, I hadn't put the answer to that issue in there, and I didn't check the emails, because I forgot I'd even flagged the issue.

Does anyone have any tips, advice or experience on how to arrange project notes?

Many thanks
Treksie

 

[Laika]

I think this will depend on whether you have to share the organization of your notes with other people. If not- almost anything will do so long as you can remember it. If it does have to be shared, it will depend on the nature of the material and what you're trying to communicate.
Organization can be a problem as it can be too rigid and breaks down with new material or too lose and suddenly you end up with more stuff in one section that deserves to be separate. A good way to approach it is to break it down into bullet points, and then subdivide it into sections with more bullet points. This would work fine for an argument or presentation- and you can add bullet points at will and it will work as a outline for the finished product. An alternative might be chronologically which can be useful, but sometimes a bit clumsy as subject matter doesn't link up neatly as they are happening in different times.

I confess I'm really bad at organizing my ideas, and my rubbish bin is overflowing with waste paper from chaotically sketching stuff out when inspiration strikes. But for what is worth, I keep a note book and jot down my thoughts in the course of the day so I can go back and figure stuff out if I want to. As this is Stream of consciousness, it means what would be chaos to anyone else kind of flows. this would probably work fine if this is creative such as keeping tracks of ideas as a writer or maybe if you follow a schedule and can therefore keep track of what you're doing and thinking across a day. this doesn't have to relate to what your doing or have an precise order or anything, but it clears my head and helps me remember stuff better for knowing it's written down somewhere. This is more for personal use than anything more professional (as this is in the jobs/careers section) but it might be a useful idea.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Hey Trekster!

I am crap at this, actually, but I have been momentarily decent at it, occasionally. And I've seen it done well.
Best simple method I have seen was as follows;

Use OneNote to record minutes, or project meeting notes, and ensure each meeting or topic is given it's own tab. For me, I tend to arrange by topic, not by meeting, but that depends on need, and project structure I suspect. But basically I would have a tab in OneNote per project topic, a separate file per project.

Then, you use the same tags as you have used in OneNote to tag your emails. This one is pretty reliant on what email you are using. I was using corporate g-mail at the time. It allowed the user to add as many (or as few) tags to an incoming or outgoing email as you want. So when an email comes in, you could take it as 'Project X', 'Customer set-up', 'Design Meetings', all on the same email.

Long story short, the use of metadata like that lets you pull up your OneNote records on the subject, whether on tablet, pc, phone, as well as your webmail email trail on the same topic very quickly.

Now you'll tell me you use Outlook I suppose...lol

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Oooh...should add, whenever possible I use a web-based bug/support system as well.
I'm currently using one that allows some customisation, is completely hosted off site (no installs, access from anywhere with a net connection) and a flat fee (unlimited users) of around $30 per month.

Happy to PM details if you need something like that as well.