Why keep an initiatives database

The idea

Tal Raviv put it best: there is the big database of initiatives, and then there is your personal to-do list, and they are not the same thing. The database is the grand source of everything: where you plan the quarter, where you keep clues from users and the market, where half-formed ideas wait for planning season, and where finished work stays on the record so you can answer the question six months later.

The to-do list is only what you are doing today. A fellow PM of his said it in one line: “I don’t want my to-do list to be a backlog.” Keep the two apart and both get lighter.

What it’s worth

1. Peace of mind, because nothing can fall off.

   If it exists, it has a row. A clue from a support ticket, a stakeholder’s half-request, a rollout you still owe the help centre. You stop carrying it in your head because the database carries it for you.

2. You can be asked about anything.

   The strength of a database that holds everything is that when the CEO asks about the thing from March, you open it and read the Latest. The story is already written, in the words you wrote at the time.

3. Finish what you started.

   Scan it from most-baked to least every few days. Rolling out and monitoring first, discovery last. Whatever time is left over goes to starting something new, not the other way round.

4. Engineering keeps the tool that suits engineering.

   Jira changes with every team and every quarter, and it is easy to lose work to a wrong label. Your database is the one system you control, so the team can optimise theirs without taking you into account, and you can meet them where they are.

5. It gets better the more chaotically things arrive.

   Insights don’t turn up in roadmap order. A system you add to in any order, and scan in one order, benefits from the mess instead of being broken by it.

How Friyay does it

Everything, in one list

The Initiatives page is the database: every piece of work you own, active or done, with its Latest, its Next, its health and its owner. Finished work is completed, abandoned work is dropped with a reason, and both stay on the record.

Strategy on top

Where a Notion board gives you columns, Friyay gives you the tree: each initiative points at a key result and a goal, so filtering by objective or squad is built in and the quarter’s story rolls up by itself.

The to-do list, separate

My Week is the to-do list. Three priorities pulled from the database on Monday, one line a day, closed out on Friday. The database stays whole; the week stays small.

Scrapbook in the right place

Half-ideas and clues go in as initiatives with no key result. They get a quiet nudge to be linked or parked, so the scrapbook never silently becomes the plan.

Your AI keeps it current

The reason most personal databases die is upkeep. Your own AI drafts the Latest from what you actually did; you approve it. The database stays current for the cost of a glance.

Start small

Nobody builds this in a day. Start with the three things you would mention if your boss asked what’s on your plate, give each a one-line Latest, and add the rest as they come up. The structure above it, key results, objectives, squads, is offered only when you have enough work to need it.