A few months back, I struggled with finding an adequate ticketing system that tracked everything I needed to do in order to run Mad City Coders efficiently and ensure my clients weren’t being left to wonder what happened with their requests. I like to think I have a good memory, but I knew in order to provide better customer service for my clients, I needed to start tracking this stuff.
It also came at a time when my business was growing. I was developing 3 new websites, while still being contracted by my largest client on a weekly basis. Things were heating up and I didn’t want to let anything slip by, so I knew I needed a “ticketing” system to track everything.
At Full Compass Systems, we leverage RT (Request Tracker) to track all of our work. Out of the box, it’s a pretty simple and robust solution and I wanted to implement it for MCC. To keep costs low, I leveraged Docker and loaded up the environment locally, and started adding my tasks.
Everything was working great…
…until I lost everything…
Docker somehow lost the data I was using and I had to rebuild it. Not a huge problem as I was just getting started and didn’t have much in there. Maybe a dozen tasks or so. I re-entered all of my tasks and proceeded to move forward.
I lost everything again the next week.
Frustrated, I realized I was trying to track these tasks leveraging a very complicated setup that someone who needed to track a task wouldn’t normally go through the hoops of setting up. I then started to think about what I really needed.
- A simple way to track was needed to be worked on by when
- Log of completed tasks to report back to clients on work completed for the month
Enter Google Sheets.
I decided to go convert everything to a simple Google Sheet document. HOLY SMOKES! It was so simple! Then I started laughing and asked these questions:
- Why was I trying to make it so complicated?
- Why didn’t I start here to begin with?
- Are there other things I am doing that are overly complicated that doesn’t need to be?
Keeping things simple can greatly increase your productivity and decrease your level of frustration. “Simple and Clean” is now my new secondary motto, right after “Keep Moving Forward!”
