Something like issue tracking system for family projects

Question

Sometimes my wife and I keep a google doc going for ongoing projects that require a lot of phone calls, updates, information tracking, links, etc. Examples would be arranging services and activities for our child who has some special needs, buying a house, some larger home projects that require research.

To-do lists just don't cover it. I looked into cozi.com, but it just has to-do lists.

I would love something like github issues where you open an issue, it relates to a larger call like a milestone, and you comment and update the issue as it is worked on and information comes in. Eventually, you can close it.

I could just create a private repository for our home stuff. I'm a programmer but my wife is not. She's a much more hands-on person. It would be nice to have something a little friendlier for her. I could fire up a Jira site, but that would be way overkill.

I thought about putting a private discussion forum up on my web server, or a gitlab instance to save the monthly cost of a private github repo.

Any better suggestions? Something with a mobile app (like github or gitlab or jira would) would be a big plus if not essential.

Answer 1

Yet, another alternative you should consider is Trello. With a programming background, you may be familiar with the Agile/Scrum and Kanban methodologies. Trello steals from that by providing “boards” that represent a “project”. As with Agile, etc., you can creates tasks, collaborate, and update the state of your “projects”. Trello also borrows the concept of moving a “project” (card in Trello terminology) from one column to the next (eg. “To Do”, “Doing”, “Done”). At each step of the project, you can add comments to further update the “project”.

You don't need to know Scrum/Agile/Kanban to use Trello. The interface can be customized and makes using Trello easy. Trello is also free to use and has a corresponding phone app.

Answer 2

Have you considered Google Keep:

• Store notes, tasks, images, etc.
• Reminders including repeated items
• Lists of tasks, etc., can have tick boxes and can be re-ordered
• Items can be shared with collaborators
• Web, Chrome, iOS & Android Apps
• Items ticked off in one App or by one collaborator are shown as done in all.
• Light weight.
• Free
• While it doesn't track who checked off an item or when you can add those to the item as you check it off.

Answer 3

Me and my friend are building an idea development tool — it's not exactly, what you may need, but you could give it a shot. Essentially, it's a mindmap combined with a kanban, where any node can be opened as a kanban board, and you can create tasks on each board. You can break down bigger project into parts, like buying a house — you have a root node 'Buying a house' with children nodes: ['Financials and Banks', 'Realtors and agencies', 'Open houses', 'Exploring neighborhoods']. Each node can have other children, like 'Open houses' can have children based on neighborhoods, like ['Manhattan', 'Brooklyn', 'Queens', 'Staten Island'...] if you considered those places and lived in New-York. Each of those nodes can have actual tasks like 'Schedule to see X', 'Check if there is a good school nearby', etc. It's free now: cubismore.com — there is button "sign up and try" in the top right corner.

It doesn't work on a phone yet, but it already has instant collaboration — you can see what your collaborator doing right away like in Google Docs; progress calculation. Lots of cool stuff is planned.