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Ask HN: Product management for solo side projects?

13 pointsOJFord27 comments

What do you use for 'product management' as it were - thinking about, planning, and designing different features - for your solo (or very small team, no dedicated product people) project?

I have ideas and sometimes I make crappy notes, sometimes I just hold onto (or forget) them, I'd like to do something better to allow me to map things out, see how they might relate etc. but the tools I've used or looked at seem too heavyweight for one person, whether in terms of billing or just to use.

I like Productboard for example, but it seems overkill (not to mention expensive) for a one man band.

So what do you use, or how do you manage without? Thanks.

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Are you making so much progress on your side project that you need additional tools to help keep track of everything, or are you looking for tools instead of doing work?

Not the OP, but I have a similar desire, not because I make lots of progress, but mostly because progress comes from many different directions, and then in some ways because I make little enough progress at a given time, between other things, that if I don't have an easy way to reload the context, there'll never be a way to string all the little bits of progress into anything coherent.

Err, maybe the latter? But as well as doing some work, and because it's holding me back from doing other work.

I understand what you're saying, and I absolutely do suffer from 'analysis paralysis', but I also think there's a genuine need for this kind of planning if you intend the project to become public and to have a future.

It also depends what you call 'progress': I have a tonne of ideas for one of them in particular, but they won't all be 'right' or worthwhile; I think I need a way to better capture them and work out what's worth pursuing. I don't think that's premature obsessing over tooling instead of actually doing work, I'm trying to work out what to work on (of too much, or conflicting things) if anything, not avoid it.

I use the Roadmap page template in Notion. I basically use it like Trello. I create issues for each idea I have and occasionally prioritize them into the next few things to do.

Best I could do, learn drawing with pencil, buy good tablet, and draw sketches, and write infinite todo with images connected.

But May be just enough, to buy pencil and draw at some quiet place (best if you have large river or sea coast nearby, or possible to use some quiet park), and than just attach photos.

Pencils and paper are very reliable, and even don't need recharge, just avoid wet.

You know, ideas are not worth too much, when you have not resources (mostly money), to just hire some freelancer and implement them.

What really matter, how you good on create OKRs (for example, Measure What Matters by John Doerr), and measure them, and make decisions on them.

Sure, to make good OKR, you also need to do few iterations "create idea for OKR -> try OKR from idea -> return to begin", but as you could see, this includes not easy part of TRY, on which you will spend much more time than on "create idea for OKR", believe me.

I use my neovim plugin note.nvim[1] to brainstorm and plan features as well as track day-to-day stuff. It's one of the few projects of mine that I've spent more time using than building - by a good amount.

I have a top level ~/notes/projects/foo. When the project is small I just keep everything in a single file. Each feature gets its own item hierarchy and I use folds to manage which 'scope' I'm seeing. After I decide on what (not) to work on, I can mark that node as "won't do" or "pending". When I pick up a task for the day I can deep-link to where I initially brainstormed the feature.

[1]https://github.com/gsuuon/note.nvim

I built a really amazing test automation capability for my side project. So when I have near term ideas I write the tests first. Of course those tests will fail since the feature is absent, but it sets the priority of effort with a dedicated end state already defined.

this is very interesting! i will try this if i get over my hatred for writing tests :P

I'm thinking more about 'product level' ideas, where you can't really write a test yet, even a playwright type system test, because you haven't worked out what you even want to do yet.

On a solo project, I write a journal, and start finding patterns in it. For e.g. if some parts are front-end related. i add some emoji, or colored text for this and it becomes a "topic". Over time I add Lists for TODO and TODO-later, where I move these items between. The simple act of having colors and graphics helps me keep a high level overview.

For teams, I am experimenting with Github issues. I have added labels for topics and urgency. I chose github, because (i) as a developer I spend a lot of my time there. (ii) I find its editor "quiet". google docs etc take time to load, I want a place to quickly jot down an idea to get it out of my head (iii) It keeps the project management alongside the code.

Depending on the scale of your project, two excellent free options that I've used for smaller projects are:

* Trello - simple and effective for smaller projects

* Linear.app - more powerful and beautiful UX with similar capabilities to Jira (free for up to 250 issues)

A Readme.md file in the repository, which resides next to all the other abandoned side projects.

One level-up (hypothetically, never made it this far) would be Google Sheets to track features broken down stories/tasks, estimated effort, estimated value etc. in a single table.

At work we're using Jira and DevOps, and even there I prefer to keep track of things in a single Excel, despite the manual sync needed..

I have a simple project journal/log text file I add to at the end each time I work on the project. This allows me to easily get back to the context next time I decide to move the project further.

I usually keep a couple of ideas to do next, outlined at the end.

If I forget what I was doing previously or am stuck on ideas on what to do next, then I just skim back up the file.

This works for me, and it’s dead simple.

I like redmine for this. tried others but stuck with redmine due to many features +enhanced wiki via plugin added (self hosted) draw.io/diagrams.net via plugin source code repos smartphone apps exist, allthough I haven't found one that does everything I want from it, so use multiple different ones

A notebook. Comments in code. If I get far enough Trello ToDo/Doing/Done style kanban board.

I use those for architecture thoughts, process flow thoughts, db schema, product features etc..

I wouldn’t pay a cent for a product mgmt tool until I have an actual working product and users. Even then it’s not high on my list..

Yeah I'm not that keen to pay for anything - hence not using Productboard as I mentioned. If the pricing was usage based (ideally with some amount free) vs. per user that might be ok. Like say if I could have 100 or whatever ideas before I had to start paying, fine.

Issues/kanban is the most I do, just looking for a little more than that (and more product vs project oriented to think of it from a much bigger scale perspective) - somewhere to distill ideas before they end up as actionable issues, where I can work out what the issues should actually be if that makes sense.

Maybe I just need a big whiteboard.

Yeah I’m pretty visual.. I draw in a notebook but whiteboard would be equivalent. Good luck! :)

Tried Notion, Todoist, Trello, Obsidian with many plugins, plain-text files, hand-written notebook, Things 3 and more.

Ended up at using Lunatask for task tracking and Bear as my wiki. I mostly do work on Mac, to separate gaming life from hobbies, so it works well for me. And is stupid simple.

Github issues/projects or just check a text file into the repo.

I just put issues on a GitHub repo then solve them when I feel like.

I do that too, for some further along but smaller (or that I plan to do less with) projects.

It just doesn't seem enough for the couple of projects that I have more different ideas in different directions, not certain when I first think if them how (or if) they work together etc. i.e. I'm looking for the thing beyond a to-do list, a sort of ideas/planning/roadmap type tool, but that doesn't feel overkill and clunky (or really expensive) as a single user.

I want a way to help think about features that might come in the future, and how that might affect how I implement other features today, the database schema, or even if other features are suitable at all. Or how pricing might work or grandfathered plans if it meant they had to change.

Not GH issues or Jira but rather something before that like Productboard - ideas which can be distilled into issues (or not) eventually.

I have a notebook that I carry with me everywhere made by zequenz

https://www.zequenz.com/product/zequenz-signature-classic/?a...

It's gridded, it's small, it's also indestructible except for fluids, like you can bend it any way you want, and the paper is really nice to write on.

I get them embossed with book <number>. Currently I'm on book 4.

Anyways this is where all my ideas go and then I colour code them, sometimes, using the different pens I find in my bag.

But I find a notebook to be better than any other tool on the market today for storing, iterating, and processing large conceptual ideas I have about things I want to do.

I like Pivotal Tracker for solo projects. It is free for up to 5 collaborators, too. PivotalTracker.com

I think JetBrains Space is pretty good for everything.

you should use a single document or physical piece of paper. go build your product

todo.md

And to avoid accountability:

    echo 'todo.md' >> .gitignore

org mode in emacs

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