Let’s build an action tracker

No python today, but a wish…

Many years ago, I worked at Digital with a PHENOMENAL team. Truly, one of those “peak work experiences”.

One of the cool things we had (this was the early 90’s) was a projector hooked up to the terminal in the conference room, and we would “work on the walls” during our group meeting.

A memory I carry with me to this day was our action tracker, just as simple thing, which was built on top of a simple database table with a spreadsheet-type interface (VAX Teamdata) in which we could capture our action items.

Basically a one-liner with info such as:

  • date created
  • DRI (“designated responsible individual”)
  • what to be done – deliverable is implicit in clear description
  • by when (date)
  • status – e.g. open, blocked, waiting, on-hold, done, cancelled
  • wait, here’s an update to status:
    • defined (initial state)
    • in-progress
    • complete
    • waiting (typically on someone else, use comments)
    • deferred (or withdrawn)
    • withdrawn
    • BLOCKED
  • requestor — who’s asking for the work, or the primary beneficiary, who can be consulted about the action
  • outcome

A quick recap after a few days thinking about this:

  • ID (#)
  • WHO
  • DUE (date in form of END BY this date)
  • STATUS (see above)
  • WHAT (meat of the request)
  • FOR (who)
  • CLOSED (date)
  • RESULTS (or COMMENTS)

One fancy enhancement that comes to mind is also a field for:

  • notes – comment(s) about status and/or progress    What’d be cool here is for this to be a timestamped log or audit of the action item.

I miss this simplicity, and in my new job, I need to have something that can quickly create and update such a record/records.  Getting way too swamped with action items and missed promises.

SO!  How about we create this in Python?

Right – and I want it accessible over the web.