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Launch HN: Fable (YC W21) – Collaborate on product specs, sync to issue trackers

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Re: Launch HN: Fable (YC W21) – Collaborate on product specs, sync to issue trackers

#11

Post by addorai »

dchuk wrote: post #6

(Not trying to discourage you) For those companies that have sufficiently consumed the Atlassian Kool-Aid, what differentiates this product from just using Confluence? Confluence has pretty robust widgets/embedding options, plus there's the plugin ecosystem to unlock embedding external things like designs/etc. And obviously it easily connects to jira for tickets.

Interestingly, Confluence doesn't have a 2 way sync with Jira. You can embed Jira tickets but you can't push content from Confluence to Jira and automatically create tickets.

Aside from that, we've designed Fable to be customized for the product team workflow - with features like the decision feed, zippy content editing, etc.

We also work with Linear, which has a fast growing user base

Re: Launch HN: Fable (YC W21) – Collaborate on product specs, sync to issue trackers

#12

Post by addorai »

rememberlenny wrote: post #10

This feels like the missing tool in our remote team workflow. I love that you recognize there is a need for proper syncable docs that help manage project luck-off/monitoring processes. Can you share a bit about your upcoming prioritized integrations?

Thanks! We're exploring additional integrations with tools like Asana, ClickUp, and also Github to track features thru code complete.

Re: Launch HN: Fable (YC W21) – Collaborate on product specs, sync to issue trackers

#14

Post by bberenberg »

addorai wrote: post #11
dchuk wrote: post #6

(Not trying to discourage you) For those companies that have sufficiently consumed the Atlassian Kool-Aid, what differentiates this product from just using Confluence? Confluence has pretty robust widgets/embedding options, plus there's the plugin ecosystem to unlock embedding external things like designs/etc. And obviously it easily connects to jira for tickets.

Interestingly, Confluence doesn't have a 2 way sync with Jira. You can embed Jira tickets but you can't push content from Confluence to Jira and automatically create tickets. Aside from that, we've designed Fable to be customized for the product team workflow - with features like the decision feed, zippy content editing, etc. We also work with Linear, which has a fast growing user base

You can push content from Confluence into Jira, it's been around for years [1] but this functionality does need to improve. At the same time, Atlassian has also has created Jira Product Discovery which is currently in closed beta [2]

1 https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/use-jira-applications-a...

2 https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/product-discovery/wa...

Re: Launch HN: Fable (YC W21) – Collaborate on product specs, sync to issue trackers

#15

Post by addorai »

bberenberg wrote: post #14
addorai wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, Confluence doesn't have a 2 way sync with Jira. You can embed Jira tickets but you can't push content from Confluence to Jira and automatically create tickets. Aside from that, we've designed Fable to be customized for the product team workflow - with features like the decision feed, zippy content editing, etc. We also work with Linear, which has a fast growing user base

You can push content from Confluence into Jira, it's been around for years [1] but this functionality does need to improve. At the same time, Atlassian has also has created Jira Product Discovery which is currently in closed beta [2] 1 https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/use-jira-applications-a... 2 https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/product-discovery/wa...

Sorry, I should have been more clear. In Confluence you can highlight content and create a ticket - it just prefills the title of the ticket to be the highlighted content. You still have to fill in the description. Then after pushing it to Jira there's no ongoing sync.

Fable has a true push + sync, where the live content in the editor is continuously sync'ed with Jira. This means you can keep editing product requirements in the place that your whole team lives (marketing, design, sales, of course eng) and not worry about tickets going stale

Re: Launch HN: Fable (YC W21) – Collaborate on product specs, sync to issue trackers

#16

Post by product1087 »

> Product teams painstakingly craft their product specs to ensure they're building the right thing. Unfortunately, the pace of modern product development is so fast that the minute a product spec is written, it’s no longer relevant.

I think the missing insight is that while the final outcome is no longer relevant, the process of reaching the outcome is critical! When I am trying to understand a feature, I find myself spending most my time in the version history of Google Docs (something that team has treated as a secondary feature) – learning how the feature team's collective understanding has evolved. I think Decisions in Fable is a step closer, but not far enough.

One thing I would love to see is product spec editing / collaboration focused around version history. The real "work" of building product specs is building shared context between PM, Eng, UX through evolution of the requirements. However unlike devs who can see the diff of a code file, PM rarely "show their work" – and it makes it hard for everyone to see how the final requirements were reached. I still haven't seen any PM tool with this paradigm in mind.

Re: Launch HN: Fable (YC W21) – Collaborate on product specs, sync to issue trackers

#17

Post by addorai »

product1087 wrote: post #16

> Product teams painstakingly craft their product specs to ensure they're building the right thing. Unfortunately, the pace of modern product development is so fast that the minute a product spec is written, it’s no longer relevant. I think the missing insight is that while the final outcome is no longer relevant, the process of reaching the outcome is critical! When I am trying to understand a feature, I find myself…

This is a great point. It's particularly useful to have that context into how the thinking evolved when you're looking back at a feature built months or years ago, to help you avoid doing something that was skipped in good reason OR make the same mistakes again.

We agree our decision feed is just step one to get there, we're also exploring other ways to show the evolution of work.

Re: Launch HN: Fable (YC W21) – Collaborate on product specs, sync to issue trackers

#18

Post by tekacs »

The decisions feature here feels a lot like Threads (https://threads.com/) and the document feature like Notion (though I see the use of ProseMirror).

I can’t necessarily say that I understand the value of two way syncing the content in Fable doc into the ticket body (rather than simply linking to a Notion doc in the page of a Linear/Jira ticket, which I’ve seen commonly done). That way the entire team can see a spec, collaboratively edit it and engineers just click the link to go across.

I could also very much see Linear adding a Notion integration or support, which would further simplify that process. Notion also added the reverse direction for Jira recently too, so it’s super easy to embed live ticket information on Notion now!

Would love to understand that use case a little better!

Re: Launch HN: Fable (YC W21) – Collaborate on product specs, sync to issue trackers

#19

Post by addorai »

tekacs wrote: post #18

The decisions feature here feels a lot like Threads ( https://threads.com/ ) and the document feature like Notion (though I see the use of ProseMirror). I can’t necessarily say that I understand the value of two way syncing the content in Fable doc into the ticket body (rather than simply linking to a Notion doc in the page of a Linear/Jira ticket, which I’ve seen commonly done). That way the entire team can see a sp…

The workflow that many teams use (myself included) is to iterate on detailed requirements in a doc, often in a table. They do this so that they can iterate on them in a more collaborative place vs Jira/Linear. It's also more accessible to the broader team (sales, design, marketing, etc).

Then after aligning they copy + paste those requirements into the issue tracker. They often also include a link back to the doc. But then you have two places that show the same requirements, one for eng and one for others and they almost always get out of sync. Plus it's a bit annoying for eng to have to parse thru the spec to map requirements for a specific ticket.

This is the workflow we're solving for!

As for Linear + Notion or Jira integration, it's entirely possible they add it but our approach is to focus on a few product team focused integrations and go deep on them

Re: Launch HN: Fable (YC W21) – Collaborate on product specs, sync to issue trackers

#20

Post by bilalq »

This looks pretty cool. What makes me reluctant to try this is tool fatigue. We're already using Linear, Notion, Loom, Figma, Slack, Github, Graphite, etc... Something that integrates with our existing tools rather than replacing them is what I'd most like to see. Linear integration is great, but it feels incomplete for our existing flow without integration with Notion.

On a tangential note: the use of the term "maker" confused me a bit. I would usually not consider PMs to fall under that label.

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