Keep the Thread - Half-baked Ideas

Half-Baked ideas is my attempt at getting ideas out of my notes app and into the world. They are generally mini solutions to problems that I come across in my life - be that personally or professionally. Ideas that I think have promise, but have not been thought through.

Keeping the Thread #

The Problem #

I work as a product manager (PM) for a technology company. The role of PM involves a lot of cat herding. Following up with developers, design, legal, stakeholders, and senior management, on array of different subject matters with independent time lines.

In addition to this, it is often (almost always) your prerogative to be the one to keep things moving.

This means that I will often have a variety of loose ends that need chasing, follow-ups, or conclusions. Making things difficult to keep track off.

Couldn’t you just use…. #

There is a world where I could adapt my usage of some of my existing tools to this use case, but I am yet to find something that is compelling and that I have been able to stick with long term.

Using my todo app - These threads are often not my tasks but rather things I need other people to do and get back to me on. Having them mixed in with more actionable todos is frustrating as they tend to just sit there for a while. And there is often little I can do, beyond pestering a colleague.
Flagging/tagging messages - Most of my communication at work is done through slack, with some email. Both of these have some mechanism flagging or tagging messages, which could be used. But from experience things would get messy quickly, and a system in two places doesn’t sound like fun.
Jira (?) - A ticket per thread with comments for follow-ups would probably do the trick. But I don’t like Jira, it’s just sooo slow - and I already spend too much time using it. So I want avoid using it even more.

User story #

As a user, I want the ability to track, update and close “threads” (longer lived collaborations with colleagues), so that I am able to efficiently follow-up with my colleagues as required to progress work.

Features #

First pass of functionality that I think would make for a decent MVP and beyond

Text input for a thread (MVP)
Ability to update a thread to add more information (MVP)
Ability to mark a thread as OPEN or CLOSED (MVP)
List view of OPEN thread (MVP)
List view ofr CLOSED threads (MVP)
Reminders to follow-up per thread (MVP)
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Quickly start thread from anywhere in desktop
Quickly update thread from anywhere in desktop
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Automated thread expiry/reviews for thread that have not had interactions in a while
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