Tools for long term, low activity, planning?

January 26, 2015 9:09 AM

My work has asked me to help with planning for our internal quality program, we are a smaller company so it isn't a full time job. Basically I have a short to-do list, some things with strict deadlines others with just "get this done sometime", that I need to ensure get done from year to year. How do people do that? (special snowflake details inside)

My workplace is an engineering consulting company and a lot of what will be on the plan is maintenance for the various certifications we need to have. These certs expire at different times, and so the plan from one year to the next won't be identical. Currently all the things will need to be renewed within a three year block.

My first thought is to just set up a shared calendar, in outlook, and put all the things in there. But some things don't have specific due dates, they just need to get done sometime in a given year or 6 month period. Also the total number of tasks is pretty small so many months there won't be anything going on.

What are some ways of tracking all this and not forgetting about stuff?

posted by selenized to Work & Money (2 answers total)

I use outlook for things like this - I set a reminder in January (when I normally renew LLCs) that the FL renewal of XYZ is due 5/1. I can then snooze that reminder if I want, or move it to the next month, but I both have a reminder to do it, and when it is due. I'm definitely interested to hear what other people do.
posted by needlegrrl at 9:44 AM on January 26, 2015

That sounds like something that could use a very basic Gantt chart plus calendar reminders. The visual of a multi year chart showing when each is due helps people plan better than just a list of dates, in my experience.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:03 AM on January 26, 2015