@Cassie I have moved your original post and the discussion from Brainstorm: Better Planning, Collaboration, & Reporting for Core Contributor Work - #24 to avoid having two different threads for the same topic - you might want to edit your two posts here to remove the duplicated text. It might also make sense to pick either the forum or the ticket to have the conversation, and avoid duplications there too.
And all of your suggestions of changes make sense to me - let me know if you end up blocked to implement any of it.