Keeping digital logbooks for individual projects

Question

I'm trying to improve my workflow, and one of the things I'd like to move away from is hardcopy logbooks. I find that, when I make a logbook, I never really use it, aside from as a coaster for my mug. I think the problem is that everything I do, I do on a computer. It's irritating to work on a computer, then stop and write something down that could as easily be copied from a file. What I'd like to do is start keeping digital logbooks.

I've used Evernote for this in the past, but I didn't really like keeping everything on a server like that. What I'd like to do is be able to have a project folder containing a nice hierarchy of directories containing things like design documents, schematics, source code, and the like, as well as one directory containing a project logbook. In this way, the logbook is integrated with the project the same way a git repository, for example, is integrated with the project. Does anyone have any recommendations for how I could do this?

Edit: I should clarify a bit. The project directory would exist, with or without the logbook. What I would like to use is something like a wiki or content-rich notebook that can be stored in it's entirety within the project directory.

Answer 1

I think this is a moving target, perhaps it always will be, because of the number of collaboration tools that seem to multiply daily.

Anything "cloud-like" can be an issue with IP and concerns about control and storing company information remotely. And some times there are contracts where you have to be able to prove access or inability to access (military, government etc.)

It has to work for the people involved, just like you are finding paper to be a break in the work flow, any new tool , even on the keyboard can be as intrusive to someone else. I've found that the tool that gets used, no matter how kludgy was the best one. Just make sure that the "database" is human readable and portable, so some sort of markup or markdown aspect, so that when you change and adapt things can be ported over.

What has worked well in the past is a combination of Wiki, bugtracker and SVN band-aided together. The bugtracker tied into the Wiki nicely and soon because a Incident, Idea and To-Do list. The Wiki took in extra documentation, *.pdf's, Notes, meeting minutes, pictures from white boards and SVN (I suppose now you'd use Git) was used not just for source code but even internal documents and revision control with log stamps (which are necessary for legal reasons).

Something that is browser based and able to re-sync upon attachment is advisable so you can work off line.

Most importantly it can't be a bureaucratic response i.e. "thou must write this way" rather it's better to say "You know that Jill likes to dump meeting minutes into the revision control, you like the wiki - make sure there are obvious links for her to find what you write and vice versa" what would evolve is that a top level calendar appeared with meetings and links to notes. And here a meeting might be two people brainstorming at a white board with pictures to an official launch meeting. If it was easy to use, people would gravitate to it. With different teams having different compositions it's hard to predict how to best compose the tools, so be flexible.

I've looked at Asana and various on line tools for remote collaboration and they seem to be too inflexible and the cloud aspect is an issue for security. Evernote is handy, so snipping clean shots and down loading to a local *.pdf to be dumped into a wiki seems to work best for the occasional web reference, I couldn't use Evernote for any other than just web snaps.

Huge design databases get siloed separately, but with repository information being dumped into wiki's via scripts for ease of search.

Answer 2

Maybe you could use something like Trac in conjunction with GIT.

If you don't care about keeping your files in the cloud I would recommend BitBucket, or if you are working on open-source projects there is always GitHub.

All of these options have issues tracker and wiki pages, and they can be very helpful in documenting your project.

Answer 3

I use My Notes Keeper to maintain information on my PC. You have tabsheets, but instead of a tabsheet being a single document, you can create a tree (like the folders in Windows Explorer) of rich documents for each tabsheets. Rich documents means formatted text, tables, hyperlinks and pictures. The tree allows you to structure more complex projects.