A task, and the six fields that matter

Title, assignee, state, due date, priority, size — everything else is optional.

In this lesson

What a task is

A task is one piece of work somebody can finish. Not a whole room, not a whole trade — one thing, with an end you would recognise if you walked past it.

Capturing one takes seconds. A title is genuinely all you need to start, and it is better to write it down badly now than properly never.

The six fields

Opening the card shows everything else you are allowed to say about it. That list looks long, and most of it you can ignore.

Six fields carry almost all the value. Who it is for, how urgent it is, when it is needed, how big it is, what state it is in, and the title you already wrote.

Who. An unassigned task belongs to everybody, which in practice means nobody. Youssef sends this one to Hoda, because ordering ironmongery is procurement’s job, not the carpenter’s.

How urgent. Be honest here. If everything on your board is critical, the word has stopped meaning anything and your team will start ignoring it.

When it is needed by. On a fit-out this is usually driven backwards from a lead time — the handles have to be on site before the doors are hung, not the day they are hung.

How big. A rough size, agreed by the people doing the work, is what lets a manager promise a fortnight of work honestly instead of hopefully.

And what state it is in, which you set by moving the card, not by typing.

The habit

The habit: fill in who and when at the moment you create it. Everything else can wait, but a task with no owner and no date is a note to yourself, and notes to yourself do not get built.

What just happened

  1. What a task is

    A task is one piece of work somebody can finish. Not a whole room, not a whole trade — one thing, with an end you would recognise if you walked past it.

  2. The six fields

    Opening the card shows everything else you are allowed to say about it. That list looks long, and most of it you can ignore.

  3. The habit

    The habit: fill in who and when at the moment you create it. Everything else can wait, but a task with no owner and no date is a note to yourself, and notes to yourself do not get built.

Open the board Opens Taskity in your own project.

Next: The board — where the work actually lives →

Put it into practice.

Boards, approvals, snags and client sign-offs — one platform your team will actually use.

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