Managing chaotic situations by building “the list”

Hah! Laura, I’m afraid I don’t have much to add here. “I grew up building technology in relative chaos” and “always on the hunt for ‘just enough’ process” pretty much describe my professional life as well .

“The list” is my modus operandi too. Mine roughly follows the principles from David Allen’s GTD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done). I tend to use sticky notes to be able to move items from the “Next actions” list to the “Waiting for” list when an action has been delegated or is waiting for some external event, and vice-versa. Since I typically work in multiple projects simultaneously, I use different post-it colors to identify each project on these lists.

My lists provides not only the full view of all the outstanding requests from all stakeholders, like you said, but also UI changes that I want to propose given my own understanding of what might work best for the end user, identified conflicts in requirements that I’m waiting to address with stakeholders at the appropriate time, and any other thing I need to track, remember, or take action on.

I recommend trying the GTD approach to anyone dealing with a chaotic situation. It is an effective way of gaining control and perspective on your tasks, projects and priorities.

I think everyone has some form of list that frames their working and social lives: lists of birthdays, special events, groceries to buy, things to do, etc.
The difficulty with the lists, and why they don’t work as well as they might for everyone is two-fold: prioritization, and as Laura mentioned, the “grooming”.
Lists typically fail by not adhering to Stephen Covey’s quadrants made up of Important and Urgent (or any other consistent form of prioritization). While this is a rationale way of handling lists it usually fails due to emotional implications. Yes, it is more important and urgent to get that report done for the Committee and a favored co-worker’s request is also somewhat important. Rationally we know the Committee report should be done first, but emotionally we want to help out our friend. Besides, the job for the co-worker is easier and can be dispatched more quickly and that gets one of those pesky TODO’s off the list and brings about that great emotional feeling of completion.
Grooming is equally important and is not simply prioritizing and re-prioritizing. According to the rationale time experts entries on the TODO list should be of equal work effort and take approximately the same amount of time to complete. This is the same principle as WBS. The “grooming” is the constant review and revising of the list to break some tasks down to smaller activities and to combine some small tasks for efficiency. Most people find that larger, more complex, more time consuming tasks on their lists are put off more easily because expected interruptions will break the flow of completing that task, so they do the smaller, shorter duration tasks – like straightening the desk, sharpening the pencils, or checking email – instead. Again, the emotional payback of removing tasks from the list comes into play.
Lists are natural and necessary to make progress, or at least give the appearance that progress is being made. The problem is in the manipulation of the lists once they are created. And the subtle evil – spending more time rearranging, re-priotizing and re-grooming the lists to increase the emotional payback of crossing something off the list. This includes adding something to the list – something that perhaps has already been accomplished – just so you can move it to the Done side. The over-riding danger: instead of manipulating the lists to make our lives more productive and efficient, the lists start manipulating us.