New York Design Agency Loves Strike's Simplicity
Scott Cranfill, Lead Designer at Rochester, NY agency Stratejus, says Strike is ideal for handling long term tasks. He agreed to share his approach to task management below.
What do you do?
I'm the Lead Designer/Developer at Stratejus, a small web agency in Rochester, NY, that mainly serves small-to-medium-sized businesses. I'm only the second full-time employee, so I do a bit of everything, from the strategy phase to design and all the way through development and launch. Though most of our work tends to be on the web, we'll gladly handle our clients' print needs, as well. I love the web, but also like our dalliances in print, especially since my college education was largely print-focused.
How do you manage and prioritize your tasks?
It's a rather loose, simple system. Because we're such a tight team (we work 12 feet apart in one large room), most of our days start with a casual "What are today's priorities?" chat.
I keep track of things that need to be done in two places, depending on how the tasks were generated, and when they are due. Tasks that come in via e-mail and that have very short target response times are flagged for follow-up in Microsoft Outlook; given a due date, if necessary; and set to remind me audibly if they need to happen at a specific time of day. Everything else is handled in Strike.
How does Strike help you?
I use Strike to keep track of longer-term tasks that don't have specific due dates, particularly tasks where I have to wait for people to give me some kind of input before moving forward. These kinds of tasks, where I'm not actively working on them for days, perhaps weeks, at a time are the ones most in danger of completely falling off my radar. Strike's simplicity makes it ideal for simply adding these tasks (or generic project identifiers) and quickly reminding myself of them each time I take a look at my Strike list, which is 2-3 times per day.
