Vue.js Template Part 2: Clickup, and how to Agile Manage Yourself

Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored article.

We all know the beginnings of anything. It’s new, it’s exciting and we can be easily consumed just by a thought of it. And this is applicable to anything — relationship, buying a new house or car, new job. Thinking about something new that is entering our live usually exciting. However, most of the people I know, including myself, sometimes struggle with the first step towards the new thing. So how to avoid unnecessary stress, confusion and the overall feeling that all that you are doing is to be doomed? The answer is — task management and solid project structure.

Good, we got that figured out, but now we are facing the endless possibilities starting with simple Notes and ending with waterfall hierarchy of Jira and Confluence combination. It has been on my mind for some time and I’ve been looking for a platform that would provide me with flawless workflow, clear UI and option to customise the space I am using. It has been a long search with so many obstacles but than I discovered Clickup. I know, sounds like an old advertisement for religious sect and as it turns out, it kind of is.

How I found faith

When I found this platform, I instantly knew that this is what I want in my life, that this is a path I can take and be enlightened by the holy spirit of project management. Clickup is a tasking platform that combines several of the major feature that you might need when running a project. The hierarchy is fairly simple and doesn’t take much time getting used to.

I would strongly suggest, that you re-create a project from a past and try to put everything you did together in the platform. That’s how you will learn about all the necessary features for the next project.

So I got the tools, I got the idea and now I just had to go!

Project breakdown

First, I had to figure out how to go about spreading the project into specific tasks. That took about an hour to do and the result was simply a mess. I figured I first need to start working on the html and app structure, than realised I can’t work on that unless I have an app structure and so on. This is how I got to the bottom of it all. There was really no need for me to find the ultimate recipe, no need to impress anyone with the structure of the project. So I simply started writing everything that came to my mind and then arranged it into subjects, those subjects into tasks, those tasks into lists and boom — I had a project in Clickup.

Tasks and their friends — to do lists

See, unlike any other Agile or Task Management system, Clickup build Checklists into the tasks. And it makes sense. Creating epics, tasks and subtasks might seem effective, but unless you are able to differentiate between them through either design or some other visual structure, you will be caught up in endless loop of trying to figure what is what. Clickup has very intuitive structure of guiding you through separate tasks and make s you actually focus on each and every one whether you want it or not. And that’s exactly what I needed. n interface that combines the features of Agile/Scrum environment as well as nice way to show these features through thoughtful UX and UI.

Most of Agile features are to be found at one place which is brought forward on the screen and you can pay attention to it while working in the environment.

Is it all rainbows and unicorns?

The answer is no. Clickup is really a great tool that checks out most of the needs on my list, but still misses a few. But as we know, the great tools simply cannot cover everything. Most of products such as this one are based on a very thorough UX research and build upon the needs of the focus group, therefore some features that were not implemented were not implemented for a reason. And it’s fine, because the majority of the ones I need are there and I can see that there is a lot of work behind it.

Conclusion

I’m working on a new project that will require lot of learning. I’m using a tool that required some time to get used to and there won’t be many people following the board. But the bottom line is this — I am very organised person and I have to have everything written down somewhere in order to provide a good service and do a good job. This app helps a lot. I’m able to navigate through it and see that that is how I will go about building the template. I can change anything and my friend know what and why I have done it. I would sincerely recommend this tool to anyone who is either looking for a less detailed substitution of Jira or someone who just wants to experiment a bit with a new tool. I believe it can be very useful for big projects as well as for the small ones.

So let’s stop talking about it and start making progress with it.

Until next time!