Retiring a category

10-19 Concepts 11 Core Concepts
1

Hi all!

I’m new to the forum and to creating my JD system, and have a question I’d love help with before I dive in too deep!

I am a consultant who works with a few, very large clients at a time. Each client has project areas, and within these areas are multiple projects and workstreams.

The only way I can get a reasonably shallow structure, is by having the client at the highest level.

Client A
----Area 1
--------Project 1
--------Project 2
----Area 2
--------Project 1
--------Project 2

Using JD would be something like

00-09 System
10-19 Client A
----11 Area 1
--------11.01 Project 1
------------File 1
------------File 2
--------11.02 Project 2
------------File 1
------------File 2

This gives me 99 projects for each client, which I think is sufficient.

BUT I want this system to last a long time, and over the years, I will have different clients. With the above system, I would archive 10-19 Client A, and then create a new group called 10-19 Client H.

Is this sensible?

Over a longer time, my archive will have 10-19 Client A, 10-19 Client H, etc.

Is this a problem? I’m unlikely to need to access the files from that area often (if I solve a problem for Client H that is similar to Client A, then I’d need to find it).

How would you recommend I organise myself to navigate this, or if the same as me, some reassurance would be wonderful! I don’t want to find out in 6 months that my system is a nightmare because of setup mistakes!

@johnnydecimal’s example on his site uses this as the current system, but once you have more than 10 clients (which you might over your career), what do you do?

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2

I think this is the way. Where possible, standardise area/category numbers so that each client looks similar. This will help you over time.

I’m in the process of updating the site and have a new project naming standard that I think is going to become the recommendation.

Rather than the project ID being 3 digits, as in my screenshot above, I’m using letter-digit-digit:

A01
A02
...
Z98
Z99

So you get more of those than you could ever possibly use. But don’t just start at A01 and work your way up: pick something that works, semantically.

I currently work for a company whose name resembles L43 if you squint the right way, so that’s my prefix for my project there. One single L43 project covers my internal stuff (the company I work for) and a couple of closely related client projects (single client).

If I start a totally new project with this company I’d use something ‘around’ the L43, to keep them mentally adjacent.

When I start a new contract with a totally new company, I’ll pick a totally new combo.

This sounds a bit like me (IT contractor) vs. a freelancer who might have more projects, but each of those projects would be smaller.

This is an area I’m really interested in – I don’t think it’s solved yet – so if you could provide more information, examples, even if they’re obfuscated/invented, that’d be terrific.

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