Core Ideas
NUU Operations is a delivery graph. You need a small set of nouns to use it. Each noun below is one thing. Do not treat two of them as the same thing.
The nouns
Workspace. A workspace is the place you work. It is either personal, or it is an organisation you belong to. See About Workspaces.
Project. A project is the top container in a workspace. It holds deliverables, sections, and deployments. It has one backlog section.
Deliverable. A deliverable is a scoped chunk of work inside a project. It holds sections. A person marks a deliverable done. See About Deliverables.
Section. A section is a group of tasks with one purpose. It is one node in the delivery graph. A section has one home: a deliverable, a project, a deployment, or the workspace. A section can depend on other sections. See About Sections.
Task. A task is one unit of work. It lives in a section. It has a state of to do, doing, or done. A task can have subtasks. See About Tasks and Backlogs.
Subtask. A subtask is a task under another task. Subtasks form a tree. A subtask lives where its root task lives.
Backlog. A backlog is a section that holds work that is not committed yet. Each project has one backlog section. The workspace has one master backlog section.
Deployment. A deployment is something that you keep running, for example a site or a service. An active deployment has an inbox section for the work that comes up while it runs. See About Deployments.
Address. Every project, deliverable, section, task, deployment, and notepad has an address. An address names one record exactly. See About Addresses.
Calendar. The calendar is a time view of the active workspace. It shows open deadlines. It also holds day labels, which are banners across one or more days.
Map. The map is a picture of the organisation delivery graph. It shows deliverables as blocks. It shows sections and the links between them.
Plan. A plan is a shared, left-to-right graph of steps. Many plans can exist at once. A plan answers what is workable now across projects.
Strike. A strike is a personal target. Strikes are yours. They are not shared with a team. See Run Your Day with Strikes.
Deadline. A deadline owns a date. It can stand alone, or it can attach to one or more records. A record does not own its due date. The earliest attached deadline is that date.
Activity. Activity is the feed of what changed in the active workspace. It names people and the records they touched.
How the nouns relate
A workspace contains projects. A project contains deliverables, sections, and deployments. A deliverable contains sections. A section contains tasks. A task can contain subtasks.
Tasks live in sections. The backlog is a section too. When a task sits in the backlog, it is not committed yet. When it sits in a section of a deliverable, it is committed work.
A deployment has an inbox section. A deliverable can come from the inbox of a deployment, and it can ship to a deployment. That loop is how a running thing gets its next piece of work.
Deadlines attach to projects, deliverables, sections, tasks, and plan steps. The calendar plots those dates. The personal deadline view shows dates from every organisation you belong to.
Plans and the map both read the same delivery records. They do not replace the section graph. They are other views of work.
Strikes sit beside this graph. You can use a strike to run your own day. You do not need a strike to deliver a project.
Notifications and the changelog sit beside the graph too. Notifications tell you about assignments, moves, comments, and due dates. The changelog tells you what is new in the product.
Done and not done
The service derives the status of a section. You set the status of a deliverable.
- A section is done when it has root tasks and every root task is done.
- A section is blocked when a section it depends on is not done.
- A deliverable is done when a person marks it done. A person can also reopen it.
This keeps "we did the work" distinct from "we delivered it". The sections can all be done while the deliverable is still open. You decide when it is delivered.
Getting around
Ops keeps a live list of the places of the active workspace: its projects, deliverables, sections, and deployments. Three tools read that list, so they open with no wait:
- Go to (Cmd+K) takes you to any place.
- Quick create (
CorN) makes a task and suggests the place for it. - Move (
M) moves tasks or a section to another place.
See Create a Task in the Right Place and Move Tasks.