So one of the challenges that we run into as product managers is
managing different tools and different context of where
things are happening. Especially for focusing on supporting
multiple product teams.
Those product teams may use different project management
tools, different workflows, and more.
That said, it's incredibly important that, in our role,
we're focused on having systems that help keep us on task and
give us the perspective and the context that we need to quickly
dive into whichever area we are supporting on each team.
So I want to share some of my own workflows that I use to help
stay on top of these things.
So let's take a look.
So, first off, two of my key favorite tools I like to use are
a really great calendar app and a task management app. Over here
on the left is my favorite calendar app of choice called
Fantastical.
I have it on my iPhone as well. But what's really nice about it
here on the Mac is that it allows natural language
processing to quickly add new calendar events.
But especially, when managing teams across multiple time
zones, I like being able to come over here and just quickly shift
between time zones so that we can see, like, if I'm going to
schedule something Eastern time, what is that going to look like
for the Central Time Team or the Pacific Time Team?
Being able to just quickly do this at a glance helps mitigate
the time zone juggling that is very easy to come across.
Over here on the right is my favorite task management tool of
choice. I've gone through a lot over the years but this one has
stuck with me the most and this is Todoist.
One of my favorite features of Todoist in this process where
I'm looking for ways to support multiple different tools from a
single workflow is the ability to link out tasks to specific
context anywhere on the Internet.
So I'll give an example. Here, I go ahead and create a new task
in the inbox.
I'm just gonna go ahead and add these brackets in parentheses,
and then in the parentheses I am going to add a URL to a Jira
issue. And then in the actual bracket itself I'm going to give
the name of the task.
All right.
So there we go. And we can actually see here that it is
showing just the actual name of the task and if I go ahead and
click on that it will pull this up right here in Jira which is
where my team is working.
So this is a really great workflow. You can use it for any
case where you're trying to link out to any specific URL. Even
slack conversations as well can be really great to link out to
and have really helpful context.
And now, all that being said like when you're working on a
multi contextual workflow you can also add tags within
Todoist.
So actually I'd like a Jira tag here to talk about, you know,
this is something that is happening in Jira.
I want to go ahead and see all my tasks that are associated
with Jira, I can do that. But there's also lots of other
helpful contexts that I can add here such as I think this is
something that is going to take me 15 minutes to do.
It's definitely a top priority task and I can also drag it over
to any of the projects that I have over here on the left hand
side.
One of the other awesome benefits of using Todoist is
that it allows you to create advanced filters so that way you
could replicate something similar to an Eisenhower
Priority Matrix where you're trying to figure out like, what
are the not urgent but super important things that help move
your needle forward in terms of advancing your team?
And so, I actually have one over here called the "not urgent and
important" filter and this lists all task within my Todoist
account that are of high importance but not necessarily
something a client or a team member is waiting on.
So, one of the other really powerful tools in my personal
workflow for managing multiple projects is Evernote. So
Evernote is something you might be familiar with.
It's been around for quite some time and it's a very powerful,
very flexible note-taking tool. There's actually this little
widget up here that allows you to just quickly capture notes.
So this is really beneficial. If I'm in an impromptu video call
with someone and something relevant is said, I can just
quickly jump in here and capture my notes and I can just quickly
send that over to Evernote.
What's really cool with Evernote (and kind of how this all
factors into that single unified workflow) is I can go in here
and I can actually copy an internal net link and then I can
open up a Todoist widget and do that same thing where I actually
include a link out to that Evernote and say something like
maybe, "review meeting notes for next steps".
And then, if we go back over to Todoist and go into the inbox,
you can see that it was captured here and actually there's an
integration where it's showing a nice little Evernote icon.
So you have that context of like, "Hey yeah this is a note."
And when you click on that it will open up the URL right to
that specific note.
So one of the benefits of this unified URL-based workflow is
being able to quickly turn a Slack conversation into a task.
So let's pretend I'm reviewing Slack and I see this note here.
One of our internal apps has gone out the TestFlight. So I
want to go ahead and copy the link from the timestamp and go
in and drop that into a task in Todoist.
And again, it's sent over to the inbox here where it will link
right out to that unique slack conversation URL.
In any workflow we all have to deal with emails. My email app
choice that I use is one called Spark and Spark is really great
because it's kind of like Google inbox and if you remember Google
inbox, it would sort your email automatically by categories like
social and personal and more.
This allows you to quickly figure out and filter what is
important, what needs to be an action item and what can you
defer for later?
So I really like Spark because it has those features. But, it
also has awesome integration with some of the core apps that
we use like Todoist where I'm actually able to create a
Todoist task based on an email that comes in directly export
unit out of Spark and into my Todoist inbox so I can take care
of it and task it for later.
On top of that, there's also other integrations. We use them
for video conferencing and so I can easily set up a Zoom meeting
within Spark as I send out a request for that meeting to
happen.
One of our favorite tools at Crema for collaboration is Miro.
It's a digital white boarding tool and when we actually create
a new board it helps us quickly jump into either doing a story
mapping exercise, a retrospective, creating a
product roadmap, and more.
We actually have our own templates as well based on
strategies and things that we have learned about how to best
push product teams forward.
So just kind of using this as an example, again, the tie-in where
Miro fits within my workflow as a product manager is, let's go
ahead and drop in this Lightning Decision Jam template.
So this is for a Lightning Decision Jam exercise which we
run from time to time with our clients.
But let's just say that this sticky, at some point through
that exercise that we're hypothetically running here,
became something actionable. So one of the things that's really
cool about Miro is that all elements on the board actually
have their own unique URL associated with them.
So I can actually right click on the sticky note and click "copy
link" and again, going back to the Todoist workflow, I can go
ahead and drop a link specifically down to that sticky
note.
So that way I can follow up on the specific task.
And again, here we go. And just clicking that will prompt open
Miro and pull me right down to that sticky note.
So with these examples in mind this URL-based workflow really
centralizing a lot of connectivity between the tools
is something that our team at Crema really looks for whenever
we're pursuing or adapting a new tool.
We want to make sure that tools are flexible and powerful enough
that they don't become something that we're necessarily locked
into, but can customize to our needs. When there's specific and
digital workflows at mind too, we want to be able to account
for those and allow our system to be really elastic.
So if you thought this was valuable let us know in the
comments down below and we can go deeper into this. In future
videos, we can pull apart multiple workflows and various
schemes that we can use to help you manage your workflows as a
product leader in whatever you're doing.