How Project Management tools kill more companies than any other SaaS out there • Hacker News Board

Re: How Project Management tools kill more companies than any other SaaS out there

#41

Post by mathattack » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 5:00 PM UTC

cml wrote: post #40

mathattack wrote: post #23

This is also very true of old school tools like Microsoft Project. The overhead for entire teams to learn to use the charting and other features is too much. My experience has been that a spreadsheet containing all the tasks, issues and risks, with owners and dependencies identified is usually enough. Then it's all about the actual discipline of discussing them, saying "No" to lots of things, telling people when you'…

>a spreadsheet containing all the tasks, issues and risks, with owners and dependencies identified is usually enough. >telling people when you're waiting on things from them I'm working on something a lot like this right now that does all the coordination by e-mail. I would be grateful if you dropped me a line so I can get your feedback when it's up and running. E-mail is in my profile!

I'm happy to look at what you're doing, since I've spent a lot of time recreating this wheel. Unfortunately I don't see the email address in your profile.

Re: How Project Management tools kill more companies than any other SaaS out there

#42

Post by wpietri » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 5:01 PM UTC

Having built entire products with a wall of index cards, I firmly believe that fancy project management tools are generally an expensive distraction, especially for startups.

Here's an uber-board that my cofounder and I built:

https://www.quora.com/Startups/Which-is-the-best-To-Do-List-...

In retrospect, it may have been a little excessive; I don't think the backlog needed to be that large. But there wasn't a lot of harm having it, and it made everybody feel better to know that their nice ideas were all in the backlog somewhere.

Re: How Project Management tools kill more companies than any other SaaS out there

#43

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 5:05 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #23

This is also very true of old school tools like Microsoft Project. The overhead for entire teams to learn to use the charting and other features is too much. My experience has been that a spreadsheet containing all the tasks, issues and risks, with owners and dependencies identified is usually enough. Then it's all about the actual discipline of discussing them, saying "No" to lots of things, telling people when you'…

> My experience has been that a spreadsheet containing all the tasks, issues and risks, with owners and dependencies identified is usually enough.

My experience is that it usually seems at first to be enough, and then at some point you have too much information that needs to go in one cell, and then cell-size limits bite you...

It may be that there are lots of bad project management tools out there and a simple Excel spreadsheet is better than many of those, but its still not a good tool for the use.

OTOH, I would agree that that the real meat of project management is "the actual discipline of discussing them, saying 'No' to lots of things, telling people when you're waiting on things for them, and focusing on the tasks at hand" and that often too much focus is on tools.

Re: How Project Management tools kill more companies than any other SaaS out there

#44

Post by rwhitman » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 5:14 PM UTC

I've worked with a lot of companies as a consultant (or founder or product manager), and generally have to dip various PM tools and workflows regularly. Every company is different and even using the same tools, can have completely different workflows. Some are mildly efficient, some are a total clusterfuck and some are just baffling that anything gets done. I have never seen a company operate with a flawless workflow. Ever. The bigger the organization, the more product managers you add, people stay equally confused. There's no magic spell to be organized, you just have to accept that there will always be a certain level of chaos in any given system and learn to mitigate it as best you can with regular communication.

Basically the lesson I've learned is find a tool that's simple - as simple as the size of your team or organization can stomach - and only level up when you grow in scale. Heck, a spreadsheet full of tasks can be a surprisingly effective task management system for most small groups. Something like Jira is only necessary when you're operating at a certain size, so lay off it until you're at the point you can't live without it.

Re: How Project Management tools kill more companies than any other SaaS out there

#45

Post by mathattack » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 5:19 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #43

mathattack wrote: post #23

This is also very true of old school tools like Microsoft Project. The overhead for entire teams to learn to use the charting and other features is too much. My experience has been that a spreadsheet containing all the tasks, issues and risks, with owners and dependencies identified is usually enough. Then it's all about the actual discipline of discussing them, saying "No" to lots of things, telling people when you'…

> My experience has been that a spreadsheet containing all the tasks, issues and risks, with owners and dependencies identified is usually enough. My experience is that it usually seems at first to be enough, and then at some point you have too much information that needs to go in one cell, and then cell-size limits bite you... It may be that there are lots of bad project management tools out there and a simple Excel…

Yes - that's my point. An imperfect tool used by a team that's universally following a "good enough" process is much better than striving for perfection in either the tool or the process.

I've spent time in organizations that strive for perfection in either the project management tool ("Well, let's just tweak the Access database some more.") or the process ("We need to report on 50 metrics daily.") and wind up much worse for wear.

I haven't found the cell limit size to be a problem. Perhaps because I don't use Excel as a substitute for requirements document. I just it to keep track of things, and a couple lines is usually enough.

Re: How Project Management tools kill more companies than any other SaaS out there

#46

Post by marcosdumay » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 5:52 PM UTC

thecolorblue wrote: post #15

"I believe that focusing your time around Project Management tools is a premature optimization and probably #1 killer of many startups." You lost me when you said probably. I have been at companies where project management has not been a priority and it was a nightmare. I understand focusing on the tools is a bad idea, but it is dangerous to suggest that project management is not important. There is even a chance foc…

Well, I doubt it's one of the biggest 3 killers.

How does it compare to doing something nobody cares about, not releasing, and not getting the word out?

I also can not understand how formal project management can do anything but harm a startup. I can only imagine people saying things equivalent to "We are going into uncharted territory, but this is exactly the path we are taking"

Re: How Project Management tools kill more companies than any other SaaS out there

#47

Post by AznHisoka » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 6:43 PM UTC

tbatterii wrote: post #27

"stake holder" is not mentioned once in this article. PM tools, help with the communication that leads to trust between the doers, and those putting the cash up for it. it's either use PM tools, or suffer micro management hell and lack of focus until the $$ runs out. I can sort of empathize, with having too much focus on the planning/pm process, I've been there, done that, it's a potential problem. But not a reason t…

I'd love to see an actual stakeholder actually put up REAL cash for a project. That's a real stakeholder, not an imaginary one.

Re: How Project Management tools kill more companies than any other SaaS out there

#48

Post by cml » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 7:12 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #41

cml wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a spreadsheet containing all the tasks, issues and risks, with owners and dependencies identified is usually enough. >telling people when you're waiting on things from them I'm working on something a lot like this right now that does all the coordination by e-mail. I would be grateful if you dropped me a line so I can get your feedback when it's up and running. E-mail is in my profile!

I'm happy to look at what you're doing, since I've spent a lot of time recreating this wheel. Unfortunately I don't see the email address in your profile.

Oops: cmlaidlaw@gmail.com

Thanks!

Re: How Project Management tools kill more companies than any other SaaS out there

#49

Post by noir_lord » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 7:17 PM UTC

slantyyz wrote: post #32

noir_lord wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a feature that no one really wants on the business side of things. Not to be obsequious but clearly at least one person wants it.

Actually a lot of people want it, especially the people who have to deal with the customer. The problem, as with most enterprise software, is that the desire for a feature often doesn't match reality. In my experience in services over the past decade and a half, most customers don't use these systems when they're available. They log in a couple of times at the beginning, and then they continue to rely on dealing with…

I agree with you my point was actually about his assertion that no one wanted it rather than that it would work.

I/We now use email for client reporting/change requests which I then file into the bug system myself as many of our customers simply have no idea/want to use a bug tracker.

I've yet to see one that works really well for end users (the best solution I've come up to is to have the file a bug button on each page and I capture a bunch of metrics about what they where doing when they pressed it) with a box basically saying "Please describe the problem as clearly as possible" rather than complex drop down driven forms asking for things like severity levels (which most end users don't care about, anything that stops them doing what they want to do gets marked highest anyway).

Re: How Project Management tools kill more companies than any other SaaS out there

#50

Post by markbnj » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 7:32 PM UTC

I admit that my first instinct on reading a piece like this is to shout out in agreement. But at the same time I know that instinct comes from having worked on small teams, in small companies, for my entire career. I like small teams, and I like small companies. I have a hard time fitting into big corporate environments, and so I no longer try. I don't really know what works well for people who have to manage really large efforts. I do know that for the small projects I deal with trying to keep the tools in sync with the evolving direction becomes a tail-chasing exercise. Of course, all this might mean that I'm just lazy.