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NCT: Sample Project Template
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NCT: Sample Project

Narratives, Committments, Tasks
Bill French
This project management resource utilizes the
NCT approach
⁠
(narratives, commitments, and tasks), a slightly more straightforward form of OKRs.

Imagine the phrase “Why, What, and How”. This is the essence of NCT.

Narratives - why we are doing this project.
Commitments - what we are actually doing for the project.
Tasks - how we will achieve the commitments we made to complete the project.
I recommend you explore the
NCT Tutorial
⁠
I provided. It will help you internalize the vocabulary of this project management approach.
This Coda app was designed to easily navigate the relationships between narratives, commitments, and tasks. From the
Narratives data frame
⁠
, you can select a narrative and drill into any associated commitments. This template supports multiple narratives, each with multiple commitments and each containing multiple tasks.

Dive Deeper

⁠
If you need consulting or guidance, don’t hesitate to reach out. ​
bill.french@gmail.com
⁠
⁠
For paid subscribers to my
Impertinent Substack
⁠
, I will provide free huddles from time to time in the
Coda Makers Slack Community
⁠
. Or, feel free to buy my a coffee so I can stay up late and write more code to buy more coffee.
⁠
Donate
⁠
⁠
From the commitments, you can drill into any of the tasks for that commitment and you can create observations, notes, and static sub-tasks in the task items. Coda does this well - assimilating vastly unstructured data in a structured and deeply relational experience.
If you encounter or experience issues with the template itself, you might want to add them as tasks to the
NCT Adoption narrative
⁠
. Think of this as a bug tracker of sorts. A place where you can make observations of ways to improve your NCT framework. Nothing about this template is cast in stone, but it’s certainly a framework for incremental improvement as much as it is ideal for agile project management.
Many will ask - what about task due dates? Yeah, knock yourselves out. You know what to do. I decided to avoid this element of project management to simplify the adoption of NCTs. Embellishing it with due dates, timelines, and task dependencies - that’s on you. Coda makes it possible for you to be the hero. Lean into it.

NCT Tutorial

Narratives
1
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NCT Adoption
This NCT Adoption narrative is intended to nudge our team into using a more refined approach to project tasks and eliminate the often debilitating lack of software development management processes rigidly controlled by top-down planning. We have a chance to move the productivity needle by introducing NCTs as a viable yet straightforward way to rally around a vision, commit to that vision, and execute tasks to make the vision a reality.
Test
This is a quick test narrative for playing around.
NCT Adoption
Created By
Bill French
Last Modified
11/29/2023, 7:50 AM
Modified By
Bill French
Spreadsheet View
Spreadsheet View
Narrative
This NCT Adoption narrative is intended to nudge our team into using a more refined approach to project tasks and eliminate the often debilitating lack of software development management processes rigidly controlled by top-down planning. We have a chance to move the productivity needle by introducing NCTs as a viable yet straightforward way to rally around a vision, commit to that vision, and execute tasks to make the vision a reality.
Commitments
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In-Progress
1
CleanShot 2023-11-24 at 09.40.40@2x.png
Improve the NCT Template
Commitment
Open
New Commitment
Commitment
Show hidden columns
⁠




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