Brain Murmurs

The number of task management applications in the world today is mindnumbingly vast. In fact, it’s partially because of the multiple apps for task managing individuals and groups that we developed Mentat. The chaos of using existing project management tools within our company was a key motivator. We checked out a few other proclaimed holistic project management tools, like Basecamp, but found them lacking in critical areas and often stagnated in development.

While there were tools available that we used for planning projects, keeping notes, prioritizing, and bug tracking, everything was disconnected. Keeping track of what needed to be done and communicating it to the team was sometimes more work than the actual tasks themselves. Project managers use a tool like Omniplan to plan the project, team members use a separate tool like Notebook or Microsoft One Note to organize their tasks, and we tracked bugs in GForge. In developing Mentat, we sought to combine the necessary features of several project management apps, while maintaining a simple, powerful interface for speedy task capture. Creating, prioritizing, and filing away tasks should save work, not impact work.

We decided one product needed to handle all of this and close the gaps, for our own good (and now for any subscribers), all in one clean package. This is what sets Mentat apart:

1. You should be able to choose who’s in a project, and members should have access to the same live data regarding task status- what’s new, and what’s done.

No disconnect between project managers and employees on the tasks. If you’re in the project, you are in the loop. Unlike Basecamp Mentat Teams also lets you choose who sees what, while maintaining a private set of personal tasks, and gives you the option to create a mix of these in a personal agenda of your own. This drag & drop todo list sampling from any of your projects is unique as far as I have seen.

2. You should be able to capture a task and file it away (crucial to Getting Things Done) anywhere.

If you are out to coffee, and an idea comes up, you need to be able to capture it right there quickly, without breaking stride. You can use the Jott voice messaging service to create a new project task from your cell phone or use our mobile interface to add or update tasks manually. I have yet to see an application that handles task capture as quickly and painlessly as these methods. You can read more about how to setup the Jott feature here and before diving in if you want.

3. We need simple but robust task and project management. Closing tasks, reassigning and delegating should come with built in comment options so those following the project are notified of how and why, instead of just vanishing tasks. Priorities and due dates should be available for anything that might need them.

We opted for minimalism, function and simplicity over color schemes and flash, to keep focussed on the project and not visual noise. Sites like GoPlan or Zoho Projects provide colorful features, but lack simple functions like being able to prioritize tasks (you can open priority tickets in GoPlan , but tasks are limited to checkboxes). Basecamp is a decent and widely used product, but only allows due dates for ‘Milestones’ in its task system, and also only seems to have checkboxes. Comments, tasks, milestones, tickets, etc. can all make for a lot of visual noise if you are just searching for what tasks to do today.

Because Mentat’s roots are in collaborative software development tools, it provides an unusually robust task model compared to its competition but never sacrifices simplicity. Each task supports its own comment thread, and individual users can add private annotations to the task throughout its lifecycle. You can rename or reassign a task, change its due date, or priority, just by clicking on it and making the desired changes.

4. You should be able to aggregate all of the projects you have in your life into one view.

Mentat provides one simple, unified interface that allows you to manage multiple shared projects in one place. You can share household tasks and grocery lists with your family members, internal projects for your company, and collaborative projects with external partners, managing your roles in them from one place. For example, Daniel, our CEO, uses Mentat to manage about 14 different projects he is involved in between Brain Murmurs, our customers, and his home life.

Mentat is also continuing to grow in capability, while keeping the same simple interface. Our project roadmap includes more mobile support including J2ME, being able to transfer tasks from one project to another, reminders and integrated Gantt charts. We are committed to answering our customer’s needs, and await any news of features we have missed so that we can consider them. While many projects offer similar services, and some even offer things we do not, I have yet to use one that maintained enough functions for staying in communication with my team and on top of tasks as clean and easy as Mentat, and I have certainly been trying. Of course, I am biased, but that’s also the truth.

-Erik

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