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

#51

Post by slantyyz » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 7:55 PM UTC

noir_lord wrote: post #49

slantyyz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

>> my point was actually about his assertion that no one wanted it rather than that it would work.

I wanted to address his assertion as well, but thought it would be better as a child to yours than as a sibling.

>> I've yet to see one that works really well for end users

Yeah, this bit is very tricky. I would make the argument that your current approach might actually be one of the better approaches (at least from your customers' perspective).

In a lot of the engagements I've been involved with, end users just want their responsibility to end at "this didn't work", and for the developers/consultants to figure out what the user did that caused an issue themselves.

Reporting issues is work, and end users tend to be already busy with their own jobs. So the more work the end users have to do to report issues (i.e., filling out forms, taking screen shots), the more likely they are only going to report what they consider showstoppers.

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

#52

Post by saluk » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 8:01 PM UTC

awjr wrote: post #8

This thing reads like some sort of marketing buzzword bingo and doesn't seem to say anything at the end. PM tools are useful. They are all about communication and the 'bigger' picture. The issue I find is not so much with PM tools but when the 'truth' they are saying (e.g. the project won't be ready for 3 weeks due to resource constraints and the client has been told it will be next week) is not what the management w…

I think the point of the article isn't that PM tools aren't useful, it's that they shouldn't be the focus especially of a new team starting out. When starting something new, it's easy to get bogged down in the how, rather than focusing on the why and the what. I think analyzing workflow and project management is more successful when you have already worked on a team for a while and realize where your strengths and weaknesses are, so you actually have data to use to determine what project flow might be more efficient.

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

#53

Post by mathattack » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 9:12 PM UTC

cml wrote: post #48

mathattack wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Sent!

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

#54

Post by tn13 » Mon, Apr 14, 2014, 10:37 PM UTC

The tools are not as important as people who use them. I have worked with teams who used nothing other than spreadsheet and whiteboard to track stuff and still delivered good results.

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

#55

Post by GFischer » Tue, Apr 15, 2014, 11:11 AM UTC

exelius wrote: post #35

awjr wrote: post #8

This thing reads like some sort of marketing buzzword bingo and doesn't seem to say anything at the end. PM tools are useful. They are all about communication and the 'bigger' picture. The issue I find is not so much with PM tools but when the 'truth' they are saying (e.g. the project won't be ready for 3 weeks due to resource constraints and the client has been told it will be next week) is not what the management w…

I've used Jira's project management tools in conjunction with post-it notes to great success. At a very large company with lots of interdependent projects. At the end of the day you don't need software if you have good managers (separate development managers and project managers if the product is big enough.) I've seen huge programs managed with nothing but Excel, Powerpoint and Post-It notes. You just have to retrai…

My current manager uses Excel and I don't have the slightest idea of what he's registering or communicating to anybody.

But, as you say, if he was a good manager, he would be communicating anyways.

If the management is not so good (or just not good at communicating?), I'd rather have a good management tool :)

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

#56

Post by GFischer » Tue, Apr 15, 2014, 12:20 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #42

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…

That's a really nice one, thanks for sharing :) and I really like your philosophy too.

I agree that a physical artifact is good:) and easily customizable (no code needed, cross-browser and everything :P ).

I wonder if some sort of screen could be a replacement (a screen showing a Trello board?).

I remember seeing some guys having a physical gauge showing server requests, and saying it was really satisfying and much better than having it on a screen (can't find the link).

Edit: I found a similar one, but the original was better an in the context of measuring a startup. http://makezine.com/2008/11/18/net-data-meter/

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

#57

Post by awjr » Tue, Apr 15, 2014, 1:02 PM UTC

GFischer wrote: post #55

exelius wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Jira's project management tools in conjunction with post-it notes to great success. At a very large company with lots of interdependent projects. At the end of the day you don't need software if you have good managers (separate development managers and project managers if the product is big enough.) I've seen huge programs managed with nothing but Excel, Powerpoint and Post-It notes. You just have to retrai…

My current manager uses Excel and I don't have the slightest idea of what he's registering or communicating to anybody. But, as you say, if he was a good manager, he would be communicating anyways. If the management is not so good (or just not good at communicating?), I'd rather have a good management tool :)

Took me ages to persuade my current manager to use Trello (based on this article https://community.uservoice.com/blog/trello-google-docs-prod...). Finally his response was "OK you win" sigh

Of note just because they use a pm tool, if they like keeping things close to their chest you can end up with a drip feed affect, with them only adding things to the tool when they think you are ready for new work.

This can then cause issues where the work they released needs further requirements capture....

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

#58

Post by wpietri » Tue, Apr 15, 2014, 3:32 PM UTC

GFischer wrote: post #56

wpietri wrote: post #42

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…

That's a really nice one, thanks for sharing :) and I really like your philosophy too. I agree that a physical artifact is good:) and easily customizable (no code needed, cross-browser and everything :P ). I wonder if some sort of screen could be a replacement (a screen showing a Trello board?). I remember seeing some guys having a physical gauge showing server requests, and saying it was really satisfying and much b…

Well said.

I encourage everybody to start with a physical board for a while. There are a lot of subtle benefits to it.

For example, everybody learned how to work this by about second grade. So when you say, "Good idea, add that to the backlog" or "If you're going to start working on that, move it to 'working'", people know how to work an index card. They also understand how to modify it. People will spontaneously start using card colors, post-it flags, and marks on the cards to express things that are important to them. And if somebody thinks a new column is needed, they can just add it.

Another big advantage is that everyone can see what's happening. If everybody's near the same physical board, you know when people are even thinking about the plan, because they naturally go and stand by it. A lot of good conversation happens naturally that way.

Once people have gotten the magic of a physical board, I'm fine if they decide that something digital really meets their needs better. But we as technology people are inclined to go for a technological solution right away.

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

#59

Post by exelius » Tue, Apr 15, 2014, 4:25 PM UTC

GFischer wrote: post #55

exelius wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Jira's project management tools in conjunction with post-it notes to great success. At a very large company with lots of interdependent projects. At the end of the day you don't need software if you have good managers (separate development managers and project managers if the product is big enough.) I've seen huge programs managed with nothing but Excel, Powerpoint and Post-It notes. You just have to retrai…

My current manager uses Excel and I don't have the slightest idea of what he's registering or communicating to anybody. But, as you say, if he was a good manager, he would be communicating anyways. If the management is not so good (or just not good at communicating?), I'd rather have a good management tool :)

Right; project management is really more about facilitating communication than anything else. Most projects have lots of domain experts who each have an idea of how things should be done. A good PM's job is to facilitate the conversations that need to happen to get everyone to agree on a plan, then communicate out the plan of record to everyone. This has the bonus factor of being able to peer-shame anyone who decides to deviate from the agreed-upon plan; which is helpful because in most organizations PMs have no real power to do anything.

And a management tool won't make a bad manager better, they'll manage just as badly through the tool. It can actually make things worse if you're the manager of a bunch of managers who all use the tool differently: your reports from the tool will be meaningless at best. That's why my preferred approach is to add project management to a workflow tool; not the other way around (e.g. we don't make development leads enter their tasks into MS Project, we put the project tracking info in Jira and manage it through there.) That way you can drive data consistency through process consistency and not piss off your developers by wasting time with multiple systems.

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

#60

Post by jkaljundi » Sun, Apr 20, 2014, 6:16 AM UTC

Fully agree. We've built a simple team communication tool Weekdone (http://weekdone.com/) and we're receiving daily feedback from users to make it much more complicated and add features that you describe. Our best practice suggestion that many startups use is to share just 5-7 key goals and achievements per week with your team mates. Something that takes just 5 minutes to share and read. Those who follow that are happy.

Still many try to use us as a project or task management tool. The most requested feature? Due dates and item due times - something we've said we'll never implement. Same for projects and many other complexity features.

There's beauty but also usability in simplicity.