Agile iPad Part I: Taskpaper and User Stories

When I recently purchased an iPad, I thought it would be something that I could use to poke around the web from the couch in the evenings. I’m finding that I use it just as much at work and it is becoming an integral part of my toolkit.

One of the most heavily used apps on my iPad is Taskpaper from HogBay Software. I previously dabbled with TaskPaper on my Mac, but I had to drop it because it didn’t have any type of cloud based syncing with the iPhone. HogBay recently added support for syncing via a Google App Engine based app called SimpleText.

Neat, but how does Taskpaper and an iPad help me be more Agile? A picture is worth a thousand words here:

As you can see, I have an Inbox project for tracking incoming tasks. I borrowed this from the GTD methodology. I also have an “ABC Company” project for my client. I have a high level task for the current story I’m working on and underneath it I break down underlying tasks that I need to get done in order to complete the story.

The nice thing about TaskPaper is that it has become ubiquitous. My list is with me on my mac, on my iPhone, on the web, and on my iPad. All are kept in sync.

You’ll notice in order to complete the “Add ORM to Villian table” task, I need to ask Captain Caveman a question. Captain Caveman doesn’t always come through clearly, so I capture exactly what he said just in case there is any question later. I capture this as a note shown in light grey.

I also add other questions as I think of them to the underlying tasks. As soon as I save the document on my Mac, the SimpleText client syncs with the web site and the notes are available on my iPad. When I need to correspond with the users, I can simply pickup my iPad and take my list with me. I can even add notes on the iPad and I’ll have them when I’m back at my computer, pounding out code.

Each day during the daily scrum meeting, I take my iPad and bring up my list. I’m able to see exactly what I completed the day before, so it makes it a bit easier to keep track and burn items off of our sprint planning wall. I also add tasks I’m planning to work on today, so that I’ll have those available to mention as well.

Taskpaper is simple. It mimics paper and lets one organize lists however he pleases. If you have an iPad, I encourage you to try it on your Mac and if you like it, then buy it for your iPad/iPhone. It has greatly simplified my day to day task tracking and helps me stay focused when things get hectic.