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Show HN: I built my own PM tool after trying Trello, Asana, ClickUp, etc.

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Re: Show HN: I built my own PM tool after trying Trello, Asana, ClickUp, etc.

#331

Post by systemicdanna »

enra wrote: post #289
philippz wrote: post #71

Does it have offline support? This is the one thing I'm missing the most about Notion, Miro, Google Calendar, and all of this - offline support. In German trains, I'm offline, on flights, I'm often offline; while traveling, I'm often offline. Offline capabilities are often neglected.

We built Linear( https://linear.app ) to be offline first from the beginning. It’s kind of hard to do later. It’s architected in a way that client syncs the data, all the actions happen locally and then delta packets are synced back to the server. This also makes the app really fast because the client doesn’t have to wait for the network to complete the action.

Linear looks great! I love how focused it is on this specific problem area. I don’t find all-in-one apps like OPs very useful. Can’t replace all my tools like chat, docs, project management, etc at once.

Will give Linear a try!

Re: Show HN: I built my own PM tool after trying Trello, Asana, ClickUp, etc.

#332

Post by systemicdanna »

nisten wrote: post #107
philippz wrote: post #71

Does it have offline support? This is the one thing I'm missing the most about Notion, Miro, Google Calendar, and all of this - offline support. In German trains, I'm offline, on flights, I'm often offline; while traveling, I'm often offline. Offline capabilities are often neglected.

It's rare to see offline support in a web app for a few reasons: LocalStorage is easy to use but too limited at 50Mb. WebSQL got deprecated by FireFox because of secuirty issues years ago ( albeit is still somewhat supported in Chrome ). The FileSystem API looked promising, and then google killed it. IndexedDb is the only option, it's slow on writes, therefore requiring major hacks like absurd-sql to be performant. I…

I think we need to define better (or re-define) what offline support actually means. Even an ideal fantasy implementation of a PM app with offline support will have limitations unless you sync the entire company’s space with all clients (users, files, docs, comments, tasks, roadmaps, etc).

So IMO selling offline support as a feature has to come with a clear description of what it means.

Re: Show HN: I built my own PM tool after trying Trello, Asana, ClickUp, etc.

#333

Post by ChikkaChiChi »

drc500free wrote: post #329

Firstly, congratulations on your launch! My personal opinion as a Product Manager is that there is no all-in-one tool, there never will be an all-in-one tool, and anyone promising an all-in-one tool has some significant blinders on around the job functions they have been exposed to. Sales will use Salesforce. Engineering will use JIRA. And Product will use some generic roadmap-first tool like Asana, Trello, Miro, Mon…

This tracks closely to my experiences as well. Managers need to understand that managing upwards and laterally is equally as important as managing downwards. If your peers and bosses aren't fluent in your team's tool of choice, it is your responsibility to be the translation layer to a tool that works for them.

This is the only way to truly achieve the type of transparency we're all searching for.

Re: Show HN: I built my own PM tool after trying Trello, Asana, ClickUp, etc.

#334

Post by leokennis »

drc500free wrote: post #329

Firstly, congratulations on your launch! My personal opinion as a Product Manager is that there is no all-in-one tool, there never will be an all-in-one tool, and anyone promising an all-in-one tool has some significant blinders on around the job functions they have been exposed to. Sales will use Salesforce. Engineering will use JIRA. And Product will use some generic roadmap-first tool like Asana, Trello, Miro, Mon…

That is super interesting. To build “the one tool” you’d then need to actually build five tools (one with tickets and commits and pipelines for engineers, one for sales etc.) and find a way to “translate” from one to the other.

Like, how do you translate git commits and tests run to “project Y is now Z% done”?

Re: Show HN: I built my own PM tool after trying Trello, Asana, ClickUp, etc.

#335

Post by systemicdanna »

nisten wrote: post #130
lukevp wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just wrap the web app in Capacitor for mobile and Electron for desktop, and easily use a SQLite db for unlimited persistence. If someone is interested in offline support, I don’t think it is a dealbreaker to have to download an app. That’s pretty common (eg Netflix, Spotify, hbo, any of the streaming services. The offline support only works in the app, not the web player).

Logically it's not a deal breaker (as Electron is quite mature) but practically there are a few problems: Users are downloading apps less and less and relying more on web links from apps they already have. So they mostly tend to end up on their browser anyway, and then workflow is disrupted while commuting and going in and out of signal. Other less important reasons to consider would be in my opinion: Electron is a b…

My experience is different regarding Electron apps. Many of the Electron apps I use (Spotify, Slack, Notion) have a web UI option. I never use it and now just a handful of people who sometimes open Notion or Slack on web.

Re: Show HN: I built my own PM tool after trying Trello, Asana, ClickUp, etc.

#336

Post by systemicdanna »

ar_lan wrote: post #211
caseysoftware wrote: post #207

I ran an open source project management system for years and I'll say: Good luck. In short, everyone has their own dreams, preferences, (perceived)needs, and workflows and they are usually unwilling to tweak their own approach and would rather have a tool that fits them. They may be right that their "needs" are truly needs instead of just preferences but either way, you end up with a swarm of nasty little variations…

So far paper and pen is still effectively the most malleable productivity environment that conforms to all my needs.

Only for personal use though. Any team of 2+ people will struggle to keep track of paper notes.

Re: Show HN: I built my own PM tool after trying Trello, Asana, ClickUp, etc.

#337

Post by systemicdanna »

tonypham wrote: post #68
thenerdhead wrote: post #65

Pretty impressive to have built this in two years! I'm a high-level PM and I'm not so sure why the tool is trying to do everything. I use a messaging app to talk to people. I use a todo app to track my personal and business commitments, and I use physical paper and timers to track my personal productivity (weekly plans, journals, timers, etc). The beauty of PM work is that you can mix and match the tools that make yo…

Yeah, the tool is specifically designed for solos and small teams with basic needs and simple workflows. Big teams will find it not powerful or flexible enough. Thanks for your feedback. I appreciate it.

This positioning is confusing as most of the features are an overkill for a solo engineer/entrepreneur/etc.

The free tier is not a perfect fit a solo person for the same reason.

Wonder if it could be worth trying offering tiers based on your vision for different size teams. Eg a solo person gets a single user (no user management features), no chat, no any multi-user features.

Re: Show HN: I built my own PM tool after trying Trello, Asana, ClickUp, etc.

#338

Post by avip »

drc500free wrote: post #329

Firstly, congratulations on your launch! My personal opinion as a Product Manager is that there is no all-in-one tool, there never will be an all-in-one tool, and anyone promising an all-in-one tool has some significant blinders on around the job functions they have been exposed to. Sales will use Salesforce. Engineering will use JIRA. And Product will use some generic roadmap-first tool like Asana, Trello, Miro, Mon…

#facts. Great comment.

How many times have we seen PMs trying to brute-force JIRA (et. al) into a project management tool using weird plugins that don't co-exist peacefully. This always fails, and PMs either retreat to their own trusted platforms (if you're lucky), or in severe cases start asking everybody for "excel summary" or some "one pager" to reveal that holy "project status".

Re: Show HN: I built my own PM tool after trying Trello, Asana, ClickUp, etc.

#339

Post by belfalas »

tonypham wrote: post #26
rrgok wrote: post #13

Would be great to have a self-hosted version for the lifetime plan

Sorry, we don't have a self-hosted version now.

Self-hosted and On-Premise are both great ways to get uptake (and money, eventually) so it's great to plan/architect ahead for it if you can. But be super careful about offering support for any On-Premise offering, it is effectively a new org you are adding to the company. This will be especially true if you land enterprise customers (e.g., "I didn't know you could do that with NTP!").

Re: Show HN: I built my own PM tool after trying Trello, Asana, ClickUp, etc.

#340

Post by systemicdanna »

bigtones wrote: post #303
trentnix wrote: post #297

As someone whose team just got bitten - again - by Jira descriptions being overwritten by an unwitting user with unsaved changes, I feel you. I just can’t imagine why it isn’t easy to recover a previous description and its formatting. Jira solves the larger collaboration problems, but blows it on the small stuff. I spent the next hour fuming and imagining how it would work if it was done right (i.e. the way I thought…

It is very easy to recover a previous version of the description field in Jira. Jira keeps a full change log / audit log of every change to the description field and other fields. You can definitely roll back to an old version of the description field or see what changes were made and when by whom. https://www.tutorialspoint.com/jira/jira_view_change_history...

This is one of those cases when Jira is suffering from its UI/IA mess. It has lots of good feature but the discoverability is horrendous, which leads to so much user (my) confusion.
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