Harmonia

Harmonia is a tool for helping teams and groups manage the boring-but-necessary chores that they have to handle as part of their regular routes. That could mean things like keeping accounts up to date, or watering plants, or anything else where it doesn’t really matter who does the task – just that it gets done.

The magic sauce (or, rather, my own philsophical injection into the project) is that tasks are assigned fairly but randomly within the team. It’s my belief that this has a number of benefits:

• If anyone can be assigned, then changes to the team (people leaving, joining, or being absent) shouldn’t significantly impact the ability of the team to keep operating
• Tasks are driven towards being small and discrete, making them easier and faster to do

There’s a definite sympathy with the Free Range philosophy – everyone equal, everyone responsible, everyone engaged with how the team works.

It started as a simple script that we used internally in Free Range, but in 2012 we built it out as a service that anyone could use: harmonia.io