11 KiB
SPEC.md
1. Executive Summary
Product Name: OrgMyLife Stakeholder Role: Developer and primary user Product Type: New product
Goal (one sentence): Create a personal coordination system that aggregates life domains, proposes prioritized actions, and reduces mental load while increasing quality of life.
Business Context: The stakeholder manages multiple professional roles (DB, dHive), personal life, and commitments across fragmented tools (calendars, emails, notes, task systems), leading to coordination overhead and missed prioritization.
Primary Target Users:
- Initially: single primary user (self)
- Later: family members and dHive colleagues
Core Functional Scope Summary: The system consolidates calendars, emails, notes, and task sources, identifies actionable items, proposes prioritization, and interacts with the user through daily digests and weekly retrospectives. It supports user-confirmed execution of actions such as scheduling, task creation, and restructuring of information.
In Scope:
- Aggregation of multiple calendars, email systems, and note sources
- Central task identification and management
- Suggestion-driven prioritization
- Daily and weekly guided interactions
- User-confirmed execution of planning actions
- Visibility into key planning data (tasks, deadlines, conflicts, priorities)
Out of Scope:
- Fully autonomous decision-making without user confirmation
- Technical implementation details
- Final definition of tool-specific integration rules (to be defined later)
Main Open Questions:
- Role-specific differences for future users (family, colleagues)
- Exact definition of task lifecycle and statuses
- Level of automation for time tracking analysis
- Boundaries of knowledge graph usage and structure
- Handling of sensitive/private calendar data across contexts
Main Acceptance Indicators:
- Reduced perceived mental load
- Increased feeling of control
- Regular engagement with daily and weekly flows
- Fewer forgotten tasks and missed priorities
- Measurable increase in time for sport and personal life
2. Goal
One-sentence goal: Reduce coordination overhead by centralizing, structuring, and actively guiding personal and professional planning.
Detailed goal: OrgMyLife aims to unify fragmented information sources (calendars, emails, notes, task systems) into a single coordination layer that not only aggregates data but actively assists in prioritization and execution. The system should act as a proactive assistant that continuously surfaces relevant actions, identifies conflicts, and guides the user through structured planning and reflection routines.
Business value:
- Increased productivity through better prioritization
- Reduced manual coordination effort
- Improved work-life balance
- Better utilization of time and energy
Intended outcome: Users experience clarity, control, and reduced cognitive load while maintaining or increasing output quality and personal well-being.
3. Stakeholder Context
- Respondent role: Developer and primary user
- Perspective: Individual productivity and life management
- Context: Multiple jobs (DB, dHive), family life, sports, volunteering
- Scope: This specification reflects a single stakeholder interview
4. Target Users
Primary User
- Individual managing multiple life domains
- Needs centralized visibility and guidance
- Experiences fragmentation and overload
Future Users
- Family members
- dHive colleagues
Needs
- Clear prioritization
- Reliable overview of commitments
- Reduced manual coordination
- Guided planning routines
Pain Points
- Fragmented tools and data sources
- Missing synchronization
- Forgotten tasks
- Lack of centralized task management
- No structured prioritization process
- Insufficient planning for personal time (e.g., sports)
Differences
- Primary user: full control and configuration
- Future users: likely limited visibility and permissions (to be defined)
5. Current Situation / Current Process
Current Setup
- Multiple calendars: Outlook (DB), Google (private/family), Nextcloud (dHive)
- Multiple email systems: Outlook 365, Gmail, Nextcloud, GMX
- Notes across various systems (including Confluence, Jira, loose notes)
- Mattermost used without structured task management
- Separate time tracking application
Workarounds
- Manual tracking and coordination
- Ad-hoc prioritization
- Informal note-taking
Main Gaps
- Incomplete or broken synchronization
- Lack of central task list
- Missing buffer times
- No systematic prioritization
- No analysis of time tracking data
- High manual effort
Failure Points
- Tasks forgotten
- Deadlines missed or recognized too late
- Conflicting or invisible calendar entries
- Under-planning of personal priorities (e.g., sports)
6. Functional Scope
Core Capabilities
-
Aggregation Layer
- Combine multiple calendars, email systems, and note sources
- Provide unified visibility
-
Task Identification
- Extract tasks from emails and notes
- Consolidate into a central task system
-
Prioritization Support
-
Suggest prioritization based on:
- urgency
- importance hierarchy (family > DB/dHive critical > customer potential > personal interest)
- energy level
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-
Planning Assistance
- Suggest scheduling (e.g., sport, tasks, buffer times)
- Detect conflicts and gaps
-
Interactive Guidance
-
Daily digest:
- overview of the day
- new important items
-
Weekly retrospective:
- structured reflection
- prioritization review
-
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Action Execution (User-confirmed)
- Create/modify calendar events
- Create and manage tasks
- Block time slots
- Send invitations
- Organize notes and maintain knowledge graph
-
Availability Sharing
- Provide selected free time slots for external booking
-
Transparency Layer
-
Show:
- full calendar overview
- open tasks
- top 5 priorities
- deadlines
- conflicts
- origin of suggestions
-
7. Business Rules
- The system must not act autonomously without user confirmation
- All suggested actions require explicit approval
- Exceptions: explicitly commanded actions may be executed directly
- All rules must be visible and modifiable by the user
- The system should actively ask clarifying questions when ambiguity exists
- Prioritization follows defined hierarchy but allows subjective override
- The system must explain its suggestions (traceability of origin)
8. Business Objects / Functional Data Objects
-
Task
- Represents actionable work item
- Has priority, status, origin
-
Calendar Event
- Represents scheduled commitment
- May originate from different systems
-
Time Slot
- Represents available or blocked time
-
Suggestion
- System-generated proposal (e.g., reschedule, prioritize)
- Includes explanation/source
-
Reminder
- Unscheduled but relevant item
-
Note / Knowledge Object
- Structured or unstructured information
- Connected via knowledge graph
-
Priority Item (Top 5)
- High-level focus topics
9. In Scope
- Multi-source aggregation
- Central task management
- Suggestion-based prioritization
- Daily and weekly interaction formats
- User-controlled execution of actions
- Conflict detection and visibility
- Knowledge organization support
10. Out of Scope
- Fully autonomous system behavior
- Technical integration details
- Final definition of all external system rules
- Detailed UI design specifications
11. Requirements
- The system must aggregate multiple calendars into a unified view.
- The system must aggregate inputs from multiple email systems.
- The system must identify potential tasks from incoming information.
- The system must provide a central task list.
- The system must suggest prioritization of tasks based on defined criteria.
- The system must allow user override of all prioritization decisions.
- The system must provide a daily digest of relevant items.
- The system must conduct a weekly retrospective in an interactive format.
- The system must propose scheduling actions (e.g., tasks, sports, buffers).
- The system must detect and highlight conflicts across calendars.
- The system must display key information (tasks, deadlines, priorities, conflicts).
- The system must explain the origin of suggestions.
- The system must require user confirmation before executing actions.
- The system must allow execution of user-approved actions (e.g., scheduling, task creation).
- The system must support availability sharing for external booking.
- The system must organize notes and maintain a knowledge structure.
- The system must ask clarifying questions when data is ambiguous.
- The system must allow rules to be viewed and modified.
12. Open Questions / Items to Clarify
- How should task statuses and lifecycle be defined?
- What level of automation is expected for time tracking analysis?
- How should different user roles (family, colleagues) interact with the system?
- What data privacy boundaries exist between contexts (work vs private)?
- How detailed should the knowledge graph be?
- How should duplicate or conflicting tasks be resolved?
13. Risks and Ambiguities
- Ambiguity in prioritization logic (subjective vs rule-based)
- Undefined role model for future multi-user usage
- Potential overload from too many suggestions or questions
- Integration limitations affecting completeness of data
- Risk of user distrust if suggestions are not transparent or accurate
14. Acceptance Perspective
The product is successful if:
- The user feels in control of their commitments
- The system is used daily and weekly as intended
- Fewer tasks are forgotten or delayed
- Planning effort is significantly reduced
- The user gains measurable time for personal priorities (e.g., sports, family)
- The backlog no longer creates mental stress
15. Glossary
| Original Term | English Explanation | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Priorisierung | Prioritization | Based on subjective and rule-based factors |
| Bauchgefühl | Gut feeling | Subjective decision influence |
| Knowledge Graph | Structured knowledge network | Used for notes and relationships |
| Retro | Retrospective | Weekly reflection format |
| Mental Load | Cognitive burden | Key problem to reduce |
| Backlogjonglage | Managing backlog overload | Informal term for task overload |
| Zeiterfassungsapp | Time tracking application | Currently underutilized |
| Mattermost | Team communication tool | Used without structured task management |