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A critique of project management software

erock.io

51–60 of 79 posts

Re: A critique of project management software

#51

The most unique thing about the product is not being locked into a set hierarchy. Circles do not seem to contain child circles - they merely reference them This is great because you can replicate tags, folders or any other organization structure this way Other project management tools enforce a rigid containment hierarchy (projects contain tasks which contain subtasks) and allow flexible organization only through fil…

Exactly! Thanks for taking a look.

Re: A critique of project management software

#52

I've used Jira, Pivotal Tracker, Trello, Asana, Zenhub, and other project management software that was written internally. In my opinion, based on my needs on every project I've worked on, I've yet to use a project management software that did anything better than a simple Trello board or the like. At the end of the day, I want a list of tasks, a way to indicate the status on the task, a discussion section for the ta…

> In my opinion, based on my needs on every project I've worked on, I've yet to use a project management software that did anything better than a simple Trello board or the like.

Author here, I totally agree with you! I love using trello but every org I've worked at eventually outgrows it and moves onto something more akin to Trello. Why do you think that is?

> My issue with project management software that's more complicated than a set of to-do lists is that they seem to be designed to make you invest in that specific product.

Definitely. As a team lead there's this natural inclination to make your sprint "perfect." I've gone down the rabbit hole of creating a strict workflow where cards have to move from status to status in a specific order. People end up overriding it and doing what they want. And at least for startups, most of the tickets we thought were important, in a few months, are totally irrelevant, thus negating all the work that was done to get those cards properly written.

I'm hoping that I can keep what makes Trello great but add just a touch more team collaboration and project managemenemt-like features to make it so teams don't eventually jump ship to something like JIRA.

Re: A critique of project management software

#53

I've used Jira, Pivotal Tracker, Trello, Asana, Zenhub, and other project management software that was written internally. In my opinion, based on my needs on every project I've worked on, I've yet to use a project management software that did anything better than a simple Trello board or the like. At the end of the day, I want a list of tasks, a way to indicate the status on the task, a discussion section for the ta…

Amen ravenstine. "A tool that stays out of your team’s way" is quite literally the tagline of the Trello-for-devs product I'm working on (Constructor, https://constructor.dev/ ). As to the article, I agree with a lot of the author's points. The author talks about lack of features for collaboration. and I agree. What's wrong with the comment systems in Trello or Jira? I think it's that they don't model how people actu…

> On the other, a tool that's too open-ended may overwhelm users with options when they should really be focusing on dev.

Author here. I agree. A big concern is I build this flexible system and a user jumps in to use it and sees a blank screen. No story section, no sprint section, no epic section. They get bewildered and end up not using it. Do you have any other thoughts on how to combat users being overwhelmed by a blank screen? I could have templates that people could "load" that would set a project up like a traditional project mgmt solution would?

Re: A critique of project management software

#54
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen ravenstine. "A tool that stays out of your team’s way" is quite literally the tagline of the Trello-for-devs product I'm working on (Constructor, https://constructor.dev/ ). As to the article, I agree with a lot of the author's points. The author talks about lack of features for collaboration. and I agree. What's wrong with the comment systems in Trello or Jira? I think it's that they don't model how people actu…

> On the other, a tool that's too open-ended may overwhelm users with options when they should really be focusing on dev. Author here. I agree. A big concern is I build this flexible system and a user jumps in to use it and sees a blank screen. No story section, no sprint section, no epic section. They get bewildered and end up not using it. Do you have any other thoughts on how to combat users being overwhelmed by a…

Yeah, templates for "traditional" structures sounds reasonable. Or along the same lines, it might be sufficient to have purely illustrative versions of those setups ("here's how some teams have used this"), to get the idea across, even if they can't be "loaded" as a template.

Re: A critique of project management software

#55

I just logged into HN to mention Todoist. I have a hobby of trying out different project management software and I even went back to a pen and paper notebook for a while. But I’ve become a huge fan and advocate of Todoist. So lightweight yet very flexible. *sorry if this sounds like a marketing message. I don’t work for the company or know anyone that does. I’m not invested in the company other than a happy customer.

Didn't Microsoft buy it and kill it into Teams Tasks or something?

Re: A critique of project management software

#56

My biggest problem with using these tools is mandates forced by someone in the company that no one on my team has ever met. As another commenter pointed out, I just want a big checklist, with sub check lists, and a handful of properties, that i can create update and delete at will. Instead of being a tool to help us do our job more efficiently, it has become a source of busy work, that requires extra employees to use…

Yeah. Another of the issues is that it’s picked by people who (supposedly) chose the right tool for them, without considering wether or not it was optimised for those actually doing the tasks.

At least that’s how I ended up with boards that absolutely didn’t match my workflow and required me to copy / paste tasks from one board to the other to pass it off to the next step (QA), with QA feedback via Slack.

That’s not quite my ideal "single source of truth" regarding what I have to do.

Re: A critique of project management software

#57
post #23

My biggest problem with using these tools is mandates forced by someone in the company that no one on my team has ever met. As another commenter pointed out, I just want a big checklist, with sub check lists, and a handful of properties, that i can create update and delete at will. Instead of being a tool to help us do our job more efficiently, it has become a source of busy work, that requires extra employees to use…

There are two things I've decided are true, regarding project management. #1 - "Those who manage best, manage least." Spend the minimal amount of time on project management. Even project managers should spend a minimal amount of their time "project managing," which leads directly to #2... #2 - "Project manager is a task, not a job." No one in the company should be a "project manager," and nothing else. The rationale…

I've kicked around the idea that project manager should be a very low level job. Like first job out of college or maybe high school. The job would be: make sure the current state of the project is reflected in our software. No predicting the future (burndown, gantt), no changing the future (make sure it gets done on time) and no responsibility without authority trap. I think one person could support a very large project (or more smaller ones) this way.

And why do it? So proper data is in the project management tool. Then people with the actual correct responsibility/authority/expertise can make good decisions based on good data.

Also cuts down on interruptions. You go from quadratic communication (M stakeholders pinging N engineers) to linear (M stakeholders consuming 1 feed that's fed by N engineers). In theory, everyone just keeping their tickets up-to-date would get rid of that need. History has shown that doesn't work. Also a sufficiently smart tool would cover it, but it hasn't been made yet. Maybe a 20-year-old who sits in on meetings, gets a notification for every PR state change and nicely asks people how things are going would do a better job.

Re: A critique of project management software

#58
post #55

I just logged into HN to mention Todoist. I have a hobby of trying out different project management software and I even went back to a pen and paper notebook for a while. But I’ve become a huge fan and advocate of Todoist. So lightweight yet very flexible. *sorry if this sounds like a marketing message. I don’t work for the company or know anyone that does. I’m not invested in the company other than a happy customer.

Didn't Microsoft buy it and kill it into Teams Tasks or something?

That was Wunderlist. I used that first, until they killed it. Then I switched to Todoist, so I second the OP's recommendation!

Re: A critique of project management software

#59

My biggest problem with using these tools is mandates forced by someone in the company that no one on my team has ever met. As another commenter pointed out, I just want a big checklist, with sub check lists, and a handful of properties, that i can create update and delete at will. Instead of being a tool to help us do our job more efficiently, it has become a source of busy work, that requires extra employees to use…

A big checklist of planned changes can work fine for a small team with a single product. It breaks down when you have many teams working on a whole portfolio of products with interdependencies and external customer commitments. In that situation a tool like Jira or Rally is usually the least bad option (unless your organization is huge enough to justify building your own custom project management tool that precisely meets your needs).

Re: A critique of project management software

#60
post #55

I just logged into HN to mention Todoist. I have a hobby of trying out different project management software and I even went back to a pen and paper notebook for a while. But I’ve become a huge fan and advocate of Todoist. So lightweight yet very flexible. *sorry if this sounds like a marketing message. I don’t work for the company or know anyone that does. I’m not invested in the company other than a happy customer.

Didn't Microsoft buy it and kill it into Teams Tasks or something?

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