project planning in markdown
Project description
markdown-plan
markdown-plan
is a project planning syntax based on Markdown.
# Example plan
1. [x] This task is done
2. The next task is bigger
- With some sub-tasks
- This task is unique
- This one depends on @(unique)
Writing your plan in Markdown offers some unique benefits:
- Tracking it in version control
- Plotting progress over time to calculate better ETAs
- Documenting changes to the plan
- Visualizing a plan (e.g. as a DAG of tasks)
- Easily sharing a plan with others
All of these things make planning more transparent and, hopefully, fun.
Examples
A burn-up chart made from tracking a markdown plan in git:
Vizualizing a markdown plan as a DAG of tasks:
A Gantt chart generated from a markdown plan (by topological ordering):
Syntax
Any line formatted as a list item or header is a task.
# Title task
- child task
Everything else is ignored by default.
- first task
This paragraph is ignored.
- second task
```
A code block, also ignored.
```
Tasks can be organized into hierarchical lists, ordered or unordered.
1. First
- These two tasks...
- Can happen in parallel
2. Second (must happen after First)
A task can be marked as "done" with a [x]
at the beginning:
- [x] my finished task
- [ ] todo
Tasks can also have explicit dependencies using the @(...)
syntax, although this is rarely needed.
- task1
- task2
- must be last @(task1, task2)
Each dependency is a unique substring of the task it depends on. The substring cannot include commas.
Parsing
Any valid plan can be parsed into a tree or a DAG, depending on the user's needs.
It is possible to create cyclic dependencies using the dependency notation above. A plan with cyclic dependencies is not a valid plan.
Tools
This repo ships with some basic CLI tools and a parsing library.
Install
pip install markdown-plan
Usage - command line
Changes to a plan can be tracked with git
, where each commit effectively links a version of the plan to its timestamp.
This history can be used to make projections about when the plan will finish, i.e. by plotting statistics over time.
mdplan history example.plan.md # outputs json
mdplan plot example.plan.md # opens a plot (using that json data)
Usage - library
Users are encouraged to create their own tools as they see fit. The parsing library is designed to be easily extended.
from mdplan.parse import parse_tree
# ... get the plan text ...
tree = parse_tree(plan_text)
# count the leaves
num_tasks = len(tree.leaves)
# display the root task's description
root_node = tree.roots.pop()
task = root.value
print(task.description)
# ... see the Tree, Node, and Task classes for details
from mdplan.git import GitHistory
# ... get the path to a plan ...
history = GitHistory(path)
# a history is just a chronological list of version
dates = [version.datetime for version in history]
trees = [version.tree for version in history]
statistics = [version.task_statistics for version in history]
# ... see the GitVersion class for more details
Used by
Motivation
The main goal is to make planning easier and more useful. Ultimately, planning should help us answer questions like:
- "When will this be done?"
- "How are we doing so far?"
- "What actually happened?"
Good plans should be:
- easy to create
- easy to adapt
- easy to share
Plans that are hard to read or write are difficult to share.
Plans that are easy to edit encourage adapting to change. Editing is easier if the history of edits is never lost, and each edit can be documented.
If a plan is easy to parse, people are encouraged to build their own tools to help interpret the plan.
Acknowledgements
This project was inspired by Thomas Figg's "Programming is Terrible," Andrew Steel's gantt repo, Dave Farley's video "How to Estimate Software Development Time," and Allen Holub's talk "No Estimates" (itself inspired by the book by Vasco Duarte).
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