Making My Learning Backlog Public

Over the past few weeks I have been reworking my website, in the aim of actually getting back to posting. And part of this includes making personal backlog available publiclly online. I haven’t (yet) added a link to it from the nav bar or similar, but you can find it here. And its split based off the fairly simple split of todo, doing done where I can move items as I look at them and can update to add more information.

Why?

I have been using a trello board in the past to help track things I wanted to learn, but generally found that it was best to clear it out so I didn’t have anything I could go back and review, so I decided to put it on my website for several reasons:

• I can store it in git, and get the benefits of source control
• I can point people (and myself) at it to show what I have learnt and my brief (or sometimes more in depth) thoughts.

Defining an learning backlog item

First I assume I’ve got the current model wrong, but its in git, I can try to fix it and revert if necessary. But I’ve started with a few simple elements:

• Title
  • A short introduction to the idea
• Category
  • Have I done, or want to do it
• Resources
  • A collection of links to external resources I found useful, or want to try, and others might too
• Details
  • Before I’ve looked into it, the types of things I want to focus on
  • During, if its a long running thing will be my running thoughts (very likely to change)
  • Afterwards, I will fill this in with my brief opinions. If I need more space then it will become a link to a full blog post

Lifecycle of a learning backlog item

If I hear a cool idea, or somehow else get an idea of something to look at it will go as a very brief item into the uncategorised section of interested. Periodically I will review the uncategorised items and either delete it or move into into upcomining. At this point I will also add any first thoughts on particulars I want to look at. When I run out of next items I will review the upcoming and choose the next few to be promoted to next items. This is the last point I will delete an item.

And when I want something to learn I will pick the next item, move into doing. This will be kept up to date with my ongoing thoughts and resources I am using. When I am happy with my current knowledge level on the subject it will move into done, with a refined version of my opinions and resources.

Repeat

What next

• Get the backlog as a link available elsewhere on the site
• Make the github repo public so people can review it there if they prefer (my current design could definitely do with some work)
• Improve the design of the backlog so its generally more usable, but I’ll find out the issues I need to address as it gets used