Doing the work
Projects, task lists, tasks, and subtasks
Which one do I use for this piece of work?
sjTasks has four ways to organise work. Each answers a different question. Pick the smallest one that fits; you can always move things later.
| Use a… | When the work is… | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Project | a body of work with its own people, files, and reporting — usually a client, a product, or an initiative that someone will ask "how is it going?" about | Acme website redesign, Q4 marketing, Office move |
| Task list | a grouping inside a project that helps you read the project: a phase, a stream, a backlog | Phase 1 — Discovery, Design, Bugs, Backlog |
| Task | one thing that one person can own and finish | Write the homepage copy, Send the contract to Acme |
| Subtask | a piece of a task that needs its own owner, due date, or estimate — but only makes sense as part of the parent | Homepage copy → draft, Homepage copy → client review |
The rules of thumb
If someone will ask "how's it going?", it's a project. A project has its own page, its own watchers, its own files, and shows 12 of 20 tasks done. Any view can be filtered to it. Every team starts with one project called General for the things that don't belong anywhere in particular — quick to-dos land there automatically.
If it's just a way of grouping tasks you can already see, it's a task list. Task lists don't have owners, dates, or progress of their own; they're headings. "Phase 1 / Phase 2", "Design / Build / Launch", or "Now / Next / Later" are all good task lists. If you find yourself wanting a due date on a task list, it's probably a task — or a project.
Every project starts with one list, called Tasks, and there is no screen yet for adding more. Ask us and we will set a project's lists up; the picker beside quick add appears as soon as a project has more than one.
If one person can own it and say "done", it's a task. A task has a priority, a due date, an
estimate, an owner, and a reference like ACME-142 you can say out loud in a meeting. Most of
your work should be tasks. When in doubt, make a task.
If a piece of a task needs its own owner or date, it's a subtask. Subtasks are real tasks —
they have their own reference (ACME-144), owner, due date, estimate, notes, and files —
that happen to live under a parent. Use them when a task has hand-offs: draft (you), review
(the client), publish (you again). The parent shows 1/3 progress.
Subtasks go one level deep, on purpose. If a subtask needs subtasks of its own, the parent was really a task list or a project. Promote it.
A subtask can block its parent. Tick blocks parent on a subtask when the parent truly can't be finished without it — the parent can't be marked done while that subtask is open, and shows Blocked by ACME-144. Leave it off for nice-to-haves. Nothing else changes automatically: finishing every subtask doesn't finish the parent, and finishing the parent doesn't finish the subtasks. You decide.
Things that trip people up
- Don't make a project per task. Projects are heavy on purpose — people, files, a page. If a "project" would have three tasks and be done in a week, it's a task list in an existing project, or three tasks in General.
- Don't nest to organise; filter instead. Priorities, assignees, and dates are what the Tasks table filters on. A deep tree is not an answer to a question.
- Moving is cheap. A task can move between lists and between projects (it gets a new reference; the old one keeps working). A subtask can be promoted to a task. Start small.
- Canceled is the way work goes away. Work that won't happen gets canceled — it drops out of progress counts and stays in the record. There is no delete control anywhere in sjTasks, and a project that is finished gets archived rather than removed. If something genuinely has to be destroyed, ask us.