Mastering Organization: Developer/Consultant’s Guide

Evan Sanning April 9, 2024 Consulting, Soft Skills Leave a Comment

In the fast-paced world of software development and consulting, staying organized isn’t just a luxury; it’s a necessity. Here are some tips from my experience as a software developer, but they should help anyone, developer or otherwise.

Taking Notes

My first tip is to take notes. Taking notes at the beginning of something new helps me focus on what is being said. Some people like to use pen and paper, but I prefer OneNote, so I can search the notes later if need be.

Taking notes can be tedious! After a while, I allow myself to stop taking detailed notes but only after I understand the project well and need to engage more in the meetings. Switching from actively listening and taking notes to actively engaging and asking questions helps validate my formative understanding. I can ensure that my perception is accurate.

Side note (haha), I always add any new endpoints/URLs, credentials, servers, or things people send me into my OneNote (wherever it makes the most sense at the time). I can quickly reference everything if someone has a question, allowing me to become the go-to person for information. We used to have to remember people’s phone numbers, but now we have contact lists on our phones!

Staying on Task

When we have tasks that aren’t on a board (Jira, Azure DevOps, etc.), I keep a OneNote section just for tasks. Doing this for when one-off things occur and need to be tracked has helped make sure that I don’t forget about any requests. After solving an issue, it is also a good habit to write the solutions down with the task so you have a reference in the future. Leaving little breadcrumbs like that allows you to help your future self not have to worry about so much!

Setting up OneNote

Since I’ve talked about OneNote so much, I thought it would be good to show how I templated mine out, which helps when starting a new job. I add different sections along the way.

Notebook for Notes
- This notebook is for all notes, creating a new page for each day’s meetings.
- Create a section for general meetings (sprints, 1-on-1, etc).
- Create a section for specific projects. This helps when wanting to go back later and look at all notes regarding that one project.
Notebook for Projects
- You could also put meeting notes in this notebook. I don’t because it gets full of other sections.
- Create sections for an overview of the project, different apps that need to be changed, workflow diagrams, etc.
- With OneNote, you can save images, which is nice when someone shares a diagram.
Notebook for General
- This is the main notebook I normally use.
- Create a section for Tasks and separate pages for current tasks vs completed tasks.
- Create sections for Environments/Applications (URLs, servers, credentials, etc.).
- Create a section for Setup, and add notes on how to do certain processes at the current client.

Transferring Data

This one pertains more to consulting and moving between clients, but thinking through some of these things helped me even before I did consulting. I use the Chrome sign-in to move bookmarks from my Keyhole laptop to my client’s laptop. There are links that I’ll want to have no matter what client I am on, and I have a folder for the current client I am on to store those links.

I also keep multiple browsers installed and use them for different purposes.

Chrome for general browsing/searching.
Edge for another chromium-based browser I can have different bookmarks on for all the application URLs that I need to have access to at the client.
Firefox as a non-chromium-based browser that also has those other bookmarks (don’t forget you can export/import bookmarks from other browsers to easily sync changes).

Final Thoughts

After 13 years (minus 1 month) of professional development experience, organization has been the one differentiator that has allowed me to stand out. Anything you can do to increase your productivity now will pay dividends in the future.

You don’t have to go this far, but creating a custom homepage with important links is a great way to stay organized (also animated cats running across your screen can brighten a bad day).