As someone who frequently manages people and projects, I've long felt the need for a cohesive system within Emacs—one that ties together projects, tasks, and people, leveraging Org-mode's power. Over the past few weeks, I've started building an Emacs package that aims to support my workflow around these needs.
This is a first draft: a collection of functions, experiments, and utilities. The architecture—and even some core concepts—will certainly evolve as I refine my ideas and adapt them to real-world usage.
You can follow development or try the code from the public repository: github.com/guilherme-salome/management
Core Concepts
The big idea is to:
- Centralize information about projects and people using Org-roam
- Synchronize and manage project tasks, project status, and personal assignments
- Integrate with external project management tools (like Jira)
- Visualize assignments, tasks, and progress directly within Org files
Key Components
1. Utilities for Navigating Org Trees
Functions to find or create outline headings within org files programmatically—ensuring sections like "Planning" or "Working On" exist and are nested correctly.
2. "Working On"—Automatic Personal Task Views
Each person maintains a "Working On" section, listing all their active tasks from across projects. The function management-people-update-working-on automates this.
3. Project & Task Creation
Org-roam capture templates for both projects and people, providing consistent structure out of the box.
4. Jira Integration (Alpha Stage)
Connecting Org-mode project trees to Jira, fetching data from Jira APIs and mapping tasks/epics to Org outlines.
Next Steps
- Further solidify the framework, converging from rapid prototype to stable workflows
- Enhance interactive dashboards and summaries within Emacs
- Robustify Jira and third-party integration
- Expand documentation and publish more guides
Follow the repository for updates: github.com/guilherme-salome/management