How to organize your files for work or for a project?

It is very important to organize your files for your work or for an specific project. There are two main reasons for this:

1. You need to be able to find information that you wanted to save in the future. If you can’t find it then you loose your information and you did not save your information successfully.
2. You need to find the information that you save easily and fast, with the purpose of improving your productivity and use your time better.

To have a good file organization you need to solve the following 3 problems

1. File structures
2. File naming
3. File versioning

File naming

To be able to find a file in the future and to do it efficiently, the name of the file needs to have the following characteristics:

1. Descriptive
2. Unique
3. Consistent

File naming heuristic for documents

The name of the file must follow these restrictions:

• Limit the file name to 32 characters
• When using sequential numbering, use leading zeros to allow for multi-digit versions. For a sequence of 1–10: 01–10. For a sequence of 1–100: 001–010–100
• Don’t use special characters & , * % # ; * ( ) ! @$ ^ ~ ‘ { } [ ] ? -
• Use only one period and use it before the file extension
• Avoid using generic data file names that may conflict when moved from one location to another. For example: MyData.csv, ProjID_date.csv

1. Use the following required and fundamental data:

When?

• When was it created? Date of creation of the file

What?

• What is the project? Name of the project
• What is this? Purpose. For example: plan, budget, terms and conditions, class diagram, activity diagram, etc.

2. If you need more information of the project to make the name more descriptive and unique select more data from the following list:

What?

• What is the version?
• What is the number? In case there is some kind of sequence. For example: image1, image2

Where?

• Where was it done? Country, city, etc.

Who?

• Who was the author?
• To whom is this information about? Patient, client, worker, brand, etc.

3. Make sure that the name does not have any conflict with the restrictions.

File structure

A good file structure that allows to find the information effienctly and easily has the following characteristics:

• Avoid overlapping categories.

• The folders do not have too many direct childs.
• The file structure is not too deep.

File structuring heuristic

1. Identify the different types of files.
2. Identify meaningful categories (what, where, when, who) related to the files.
3. Select the categories.
4. The categories must be organized in a meaninful way: (e.g.) primary/secondary/tertiary. The structure should have a pyramidal structure.
5. Miminize the depth and breath of the structure.
6. Balance well the structure: Good 3/4/5, Bad 1/1/1/5/2/1/1.

Resources

• MIT data management slides: https://libraries.mit.edu/data-management/files/2014/05/FileOrg_20160121.pdf