Project Management is better in Docs

My company spends over a million Euros annually on project management software that nobody actually uses.

It’s worse than that: we actually had two pieces of software for project management, and a team that I’m part of had to transition from one usable project management software (Asana) to one that’s essentially unusable (Jira). The reasons were basically the same as any other dumb decision in tech: that everyone else also uses Jira in the organisation; that we, one plucky band of renegades, were the last holdouts globally not to use Jira, so it was difficult for people to collaborate with us; that we were costing the company north of a million euro a year for our Asana licence, and would we just move already; and that we could have enhanced help from the IT management team if we agreed on a bulk move. In fact, the IT team would dedicate us a special person to do the move so that we didn’t have to stop working; one day we’d come into the office, and we’d just find everything in Jira, it would all work, we’d have walked into the light and the golden sunshine of Collaborative Project Management.

We were bullied into moving from something we liked to something that everyone hates using; and for reasons which have nothing to do with our productivity or preferences or anything subjective and squishy like that.

But it’s even worse than that!

Even though we prefer Asana to Jira—and even that comparison is invidious, because both pieces of software are terrible—most of our project management happens in Google Docs.

It’s really simple. All of my meetings are a bunch of people staring at a Google Doc that someone is sharing live on the Big Screen in the meeting room. On the doc will be today’s date. We discuss where we’re at with things, make some notes of what we’re saying underneath today’s date, and then we assign some tasks directly in the doc to whoever is going to do the task. To labour the point a little: we’re using Google Docs, an essentially free piece of software, despite having a million euro licence for a dedicated project management software that can do far more than ‘just text.’

I’m sure if we were a Microsoft house then all of our project management would happen in Word; and I’m sure if where I worked was artsier or scrappier or whatever we’d use something like Coda or Notion or whatever the cool kids are using.

Actually, no. Neither Coda or Notion have the exact right feature, which is just a blank page and the ability to write three things:

1. Dates
2. Text
3. Tasks

With the optional functionality of tagging people on the tasks they’ve been assigned. So we’d use Google Docs or Microsoft Word or Libra Office Online. We’d use them because this is the absolute best project management software, for the simple reason that all you need for project management are tasks, notes, and dates.

Surely, project management couldn’t be this simple, why does this barebones setup work?

A project is a series of tasks with a deadline. Any sort of system which marries tasks with deadlines is a workable system. It works great for individuals. Add on a feature where you can tag people on their tasks and you’ve got a system fit for teams. Google docs will suffice for that.

But we don’t just have tasks on a project, there’s also meetings—which, if you are sufficiently cognizant of the fact that in the future you will need some kind of guidance—which generate notes. It’s vital to keep your notes right next to your tasks. Notes are the context for the task, so they live together. The more context you create, the easier it will be for you when you come to do the task. The thing is, when confronted with a single line—I mean sometimes it’s just a noun— description for a task, it’s really helpful to have something, anything, around which gives context to whatever it is you’ve now got to do. Even a few bullet points is better than blank space in jogging your memory. Taking notes also means that you’re paying attention, and not, say, using your phone to catch up with the news..

The other thing docs does well is limit the amount of stuff you capture. Task managers like Todoist or Things 3 let you have essentially infinite tasks. Sure, they have complicated systems to surface the things you need when you need them; but the problem is a task you maybe created three years ago no longer speaks to you. A google doc only lets you capture so much, otherwise you have to spin out a new google doc. That is, docs encourage finitude and brevity. It’s why bullet journals are so popular: you only commit to doing so much in any given slice of time, and you only note down what you need to note down.

This way of working is the polar opposite of something like Jira, with it’s infinite backlogs and difficult to find substasks.

And we’re not the only team!

Every team in my company manages at least some of their projects in Google docs. Especially those projects that involve another team: it’s just easier to spin up a doc than it is to create a Jira board for a single short lived thing. Talking to people who work in other companies–whether in Tech, or some other industry which requires people to be in offices, but which as at best vague requirements for getting work done—they all use some version of ‘a big document with all our notes and tasks arranged by date’ as the unofficial method of project management.

So it begs the question: why do companies even bother with Jira licences, if nobody actually uses them? The answer is simple, if depressing: Jira (and other software like them) reports statistics on who did what and when. Every year my company (and basically every other company on earth) sets out a kind of Socialist Plan, setting Key Results (KRs) which it needs to hit to achieve its long term goals (set out, I kid you not, in a Five Year Plan). These KRs can be things like “reduce costs by 3%” or “fix this broken business process.” (I just illustrate here, they are not our actual KRs). Then we measure our progress against the KRs with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which often seem like they’re pulled from Satan’s backside. The whole company has company wide KPIs, each function has KPIs, each department in each function has KPIs, and each team in each department has KPIs. All these numbers flow together in a massive KPI tree letting every employee know how their work contributes to the entire company’s performance. So we can see why Jira, or some other software, is mandatory: with Jira’s reporting functions, the company can tie individual contributions to projects and projects to KPIs which flow all the way up from single teams to the company’s overall performance. This is all another way of saying that it’s more important that the company measure productivity, even with ass backwards tools like Jira, than it is for its employees to be actually productive.

The upshot of all of this is that you only need one thing to be productive: a place where all of the context for your projects to live alongside the tasks you have to do, and the dates those tasks are due. Google docs (or Apple notes or Microsoft Word) works just as well as anything else. The moral is that you shouldn’t sweat the organisational stuff, that should be a light scaffold over the important thing, which is that you’ve actually got to sit down and do the work.