My Project Management Workflow; An In-Depth Explanation

Thanks for your kind words!

Tracking time is admittedly a short coming of my setup. I kind of do that by writing down how many hours I work a day on a project with this Hours property found in the daily not template:
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I can thus only track how long I have worked on a project itself by adding up the hours once it is completed in the individual project pages.
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For me this system works quite well, but Iā€™ll try to think of something to track individual tasks. Of course you could just create multiple daily notes for the same Project on the same day and split the tasks like that, but this will balloon your vault up considerably (which I wouldnā€™t recommend).

Iā€™m not sure if there even is a ready to go solution, like a plugin to handle individual task-time-tracking.

In the GitHub repo it is called Hours!

Small update:

  1. Added this stack pinned tabs snippet.

  2. Changed Limbo Dataview table to now also display open tasks. Technically there shouldnā€™t be an open tasks when a project is in Limbo. But you can create a new Task to display why or for what the project is in Limbo. This makes it easier and more comfortable to have a quick overview of what you are waiting for!

  3. I also removed Responsible from the Limbo view because I didnā€™t find it necessary.

this is awesome, thanks for sharing. I have a very messy system, but it kind works for me. I also keep 1 daily note per project and that helps me keep track of my tasks for each one. I will surely implement some ideas from your template in my system. Sadly its already overwhelming to fully migrate, perhaps on vacation. thanks again, great work.

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Hey, thanks for the reply! Yeah, migration usually is a massive headache. Maybe its easier to copy parts of the functionality into you vault directly instead of migrating your notes into a new vault. You could just start using the functionality with the new projects or notes. Thats what I did whilst going through the different itterations of the vault. I have put them into a separate folder. I will probably not have to use them again, but they are there just in case.

I love how youā€™ve laid out your project management workflow! Itā€™s super clear and gives me some good ideas for my processes. One thing I found helpful is using a mix of task management tools, like Trello for visual tracking and Slack for team communication. I also like setting small, achievable goals each week. It helps keep the momentum going and makes more significant projects feel less overwhelming. Have you tried any templates or guides for fine-tuning your workflow? I found some helpful stuff at https://www.advisedskills.com/business-skills/change-management-foundation that helped me streamline my approach.

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Iā€™ll have to take a look at that. Thanks for your kind words. Iā€™m thinking in looking into maybe creating a note that displays all tasks form all projects. I found that when working on multiple projects at once I can quickly lose the global view of things.
Iā€™m missing something like an extra small window, directly showing me all my open Tasks. Having it there on the side (instead of the calendar) would be fantastic, but I donā€™t think I can do that without creating a plugin.

@Painkkims I created something small and I donā€™t know yet if Iā€™ll be using it. only time will tell:

I essentially created a note and pulled it into the side bar. (sorry for the heavy censoring)

I created two small task codeblocks. One filters for tasks on projects I actively work on (task state = TODO and the second one with task state set to ā€œin progressā€. These task are the ones that are associated with projects that are put into the limbo state. The two also use ā€œgroup by headerā€ to group the tasks by project.

This solution isnā€™t that good though. You have to manually set the task state. Itā€™s done rather quickly, but there is a risk that you can forget. You do that directly in the Taskviewer Note by right clicking the checkbox and selecting TODO or In Progress. If a task is done you just have to click the checkbox.

The only reason I split them is to keep some clarity and overview in that Note. The Limbo tasks donā€™t actually interest me that much, because they rely on things that are out of my control. They can be helpful to checkup on colleges that are a bitā€¦ unreliable.

To automate the switch of task status from TODO to in progress Iā€™d need to bind the task status to a property. Iā€™m not sure if that is even possible. And Iā€™m not sure if I even want that. That would be convenient but pretty restrictive.

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Hello, thank you for this vault sharing. I followed all the steps, but still new project button does not work. Could you please help me to understand what did I miss? Thank you in advance

so my QuickAdd setup was incorrect, now Iā€™ve corrected this, but still the "New projectĆ© button doesnā€™t work and if I enable run on plugin load, I get this error message. please help. Iā€™m desperate
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@Lolika Sorry for not responding earlier, Iā€™ll take a look at it tomorrow and respond. Iā€™ll do a test download and run it on another computer to see it it works for me.

@Lolika Ok, I tried it out and it worked on my end. Supposing you didnā€™t change the vault to light mode, I think you might have chosen the wrong folder to import as your vault. I will change that in the download instructions, sorry. I think GitHub has added its own Root folder in which the readme is included. You donā€™t want to use that one. Instead you want to select the folder ā€œProject Managementā€.
My path is: D:\Obsidian-Vault-Project-Management-main\Obsidian-Vault-Project-Management-main\Project Management. Iā€™ll have a look if I can simplify it, so the readme is in the Project Management folder to eliminate one unnecessary intermediate folder.

Edit: Done, hope that itā€™s easier now! Sorry again, for the inconvenience and I hope you havenā€™t given up just yet.

Changed the layout a bit, adding Hover Editor, Note Toolbar and Tabs. The latter two allow me to compress everything. Iā€™ll use it for a bit and decide it its something that works for me or not.

It looks quite clean though! One thing that also needs improvement is the big DailyNote block. Unsure what to do with it for now though.

Thank your for sharing this - Iā€™m getting some great ideas from your implementation. Iā€™m trying to revamp my project management approach in my current vault.

One thing Iā€™m curious about: You have the 2 true/false checkboxes for Completed and Limbo, which is cool. Why did you opt for that approach vs a multi-variate property, like projectstatus, which you could set to ā€œcompleteā€ or ā€œlimboā€ or other statuses?

Iā€™m curious, because I use a number of other statuses for projects like deferred, canceled, complete, blocked, planned, etc.

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Hey, you are welcome!

My main reason is that itā€™s a thing that I have carried with me since very early into the ā€œdevelopmentā€ of the vault.
I have just checked and I have it since Properties were introduced in Update 1.14 (31.8.2023). I didnā€™t realize I have been tinkering with it for so long :scream:.
In any case, I started with them because they were a new feature, worked for me, and thus never changed it. And I like to click completed. But you are definitely correct, having a property like you describe would be better.

And please share your vault or screenshots, once you get to a point where you are satisfied! And donā€™t hold back if you have a nice mechanic or process you have :slight_smile:

What would you suggest to do in the event where I want a Parent project with child projects underneath it? Ive been playing around with this setup and porting my notes over. Its been great so far

I think I found a solution for my usecase. I set up ā€œdepartmentsā€ for each of the parent projects and then lump all projects under the parent. Ill play around with this idea for a little bit and see if it fits.

One item to note is that the list for departments is still generic ā€œOption1, Option2, Option3, ā€¦ā€. So you may want to add something in your write up about changing this to something usable. Its not hard to do, but I am more tech-capable than alot of folks

Hey, thank you very much for your comment! I wasnā€™t sure if people would actually use my vault.

Good you found a solution! I would have done the same thing honestly. Simple and works.

Thank you for the feedback as well. I tried to keep it as simple as possible, but that should be something I add. I think Iā€™ll add a chapter called customization, where I explain, how and where you can change and customize the vault.

I am still trying to figure out the layout, but the Tabs solution I had come up with doesnā€™t really work that well, because editing it is a bit of a pain. I have set up this one, with a column plugin with looks nicer IMO. I still canā€™t edit the text but it feels better, for now at least.
The addition of the Note toolbar was excellent however. Removing the two buttons has made look way nicer and cleaner.