Ask HN: What are you using to manage in your team the projects/features?
Hi HN,
What do you use to manage projects or features for your projects?
I am trying to discover some tools that maybe are a combination of Basecamp and Github/Gitlab issues.
I want to be able to have discussions there but to include also non-technical people, while also being able to plan for technical work.
I tried Asana, but it did not work in our team. It seemed very crowded UI.
We also tried various other projects, including Basecamp. It is the closest one to what I am looking for but the todolist management is a bit hard to use.
49 comments
[ 0.15 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] threadFrom your requirements “have discussions there but to include also non-technical people, while also being able to plan for technical work” almost every single task management system would work. Can you give more specifics?
For context: in almost all project (including side projects) where I am involved we are using ShapeUp.
We start with a general description of what we want to solve and what value will bring to the user. This is mostly shaped as a conversation between multiple people designers, developers, business managers.
Then we (technical) take that and create a kind of technical pitch in a format close to an RFC where we discuss and solve any architectural challenges or we define the API (it depends). Here I need to have something that has a better support for code highlighting as we sometimes use code samples. Basecamp has a very simple code highlighting support and it also does not support per line comments. Thus a discussion around the RFC can have only parent comments and we sometimes hit 20-30 comments (we mostly work async remote).
Then once RFC is agreed we need to do a high level planning of the changes needed to be done per each system.
And from there each team will create one or many PRs where the work is done. Thus from this point on the progress can only be seen in Github (or Gitlab).
So in a way from the moment the first line of code is written you can see the state of the project only in Git. Someone has to manually update Basecamp or we also tried this: create a Todo in Basecamp for each Github issue and linked them together.
Maybe what I want it does not exists!
Confluence allows you to create such an RFC document where everyone has edit access and there's history. You can embed technical drawings easily (e.g. draw.io diagrams directly edited - or externally) in Confluence and showing inline as well. Of course especially if you grew up with the great old editor, the new one sucks, as it's all WYSIWYG now and it has a few bugs and idiosyncrasies - nothing is perfect. Syntax highlighting in Atlassian products supports many languages and I find is totally 'good enough'. You can comment on any string (highlight whatever you want and add an inline comment on it). There's no threading in such comments but you can have a conversation i.e. one long thread on such comments. The comment section on the bottom of each page even has threading.
Of course everyone here hates Confluence and Atlassian.
Jira will help you if you do want to do task tracking after that. That's an if. You don't have to if you are happy w/ just having PRs in Github. But if you want to show progress automatically linked in a tool that is more accessible to business people it can be as simple as opening a mostly empty task in Jira and hooking up Github/Bitbucket to it. It will automatically link your PRs, commits and branches to the ticket, if you just include the ticket number in the branch name/commits/PR. You can even transition tickets through commit message comments if you really really hate Jira and don't mind having those in your commit messages. Of course you will have people that think it's way too much bureaucrazy to include a ticket number in commit messages and such but I find it's a very tiny 'price' to pay for visibility across an org that does not purely consist of technical people.
Of course everyone here hates Jira and Atlassian.
If you want to keep using Github, use that. I found Bitbucket's UI and UX much better with the caveat that this only applies to Bitbucket's Server product not the Cloud version.
So if you can see past the hate for corporate bureaucracy that can be implemented using Atlassian tools and use these tools for good within your organization, you have a pretty neat toolchain at your fingertips.
Some issues are oobvious like too many clicks; not putting common operations in the same part of the screen; general latency, especially when you need to use too many clicks.
But the ones I am talking about are more like how does this UI representation match the way I see these things in my head. Trello works because tasks to most people are post-it notes or index cards, as soon as you end up adding a lot of fluff to contain the extra options, it feels jarring even if it is conceptually the same thing. Lots of tools offer the "quick add" function and this can help but unless I feel that I can quickly achieve what I need with a tool, I won't use it even if I can't say exactly why.
What I'm talking about is a simple Kanban board, where the cards are the Jira issues. If you use a simple workflow (such as the default "Open, In Progress, Done", which you can transition in any way you want) you are set very quickly. Simply create a Kanban board and you're basically at Trello.
Now I get it, because of Jira's legacy and what it can do, it can be overwhelming how to configure it. I am biased there because I've been using it for such a long time, including as someone w/ admin privileges) that I know what to do to achieve what our team wants/needs almost instantly and if I have admin privileges I can either do it myself really quickly or I can tell someone w/ privileges what to do so that we get what we want - if the hierarchy is flat enough :), so I have no huge friction to achieve these things with the tool.
I have the opposite problem usually with other tools. Things I take for granted I can do with the Atlassian toolchain are impossible or have been requested from other tools for years and not been implemented. An easy example is Github. They had no "File Explorer" view in PRs. All just a big page you scroll through. It's impossible to do a proper PR that way if you ask me. We've had this since Crucible days in the Atlassian toolchain. And yes, finally Github does have it too now and I can easily navigate back and forth between files while cross referencing things. Github Actions vs. Bamboo. Just so rudimentary in comparison. It has some really nice features out of the box that Atlassian only added later on but is lacking in many other areas. Awesome to have the ability to specify actions directly in your repo (in `.github/`) but I can't easily see old failed builds through my PR (this is important, yes builds fail and I need to cross reference them and I don't want to go to a filter UI somewhere outside my PR). This seems to basic. While I can define workflows through code, I can't properly introduce one on a branch. I have to cheat to get it onto `master` first.
Honestly, about the only thing GitHub is missing right now is time tracking, not sure why they haven't implemented it yet.
If you want an example, here's a projects board that I use across multiple repositories (one is public, the rest get hidden) to build Homechart: https://github.com/orgs/candiddev/projects/6/views/1
An important part is that Graphistry's devops is largely run via GitHub actions triggered by PR labels as well (ex: pr label -> you have a new copy of production running), so lifecycle visibility comes as part of working vs extra documentation effort.
- Fogbugz
- Unfuddle
- Pivotal Tracker
- Bugzilla
- Redmine
- JIRA
- Linear
- Basecamp
- Spreadsheet
- GitHub Issues
- Codetree (I ran this)
- Zenhub
- Shortcut
Probably missing a few. I've settled on Shortcut for now (formerly Clubhouse). It's a good balance between the "bag of bolts" JIRA approach and the "one way to do things" take that Pivotal Tracker has. Shortcut gives you sane defaults but with enough customization to suit reasonable workflows.
One trend that I don't really get is dev teams using general purpose tools like Trello or Asana to run their software projects. Sure, it's possible to do. But I find it much more sensible to use a purpose-built tool that understands the kinds of first-class objects (Issues, PRs, Comments, Workflows, Workflow Stages, Tasks). Makes life a lot easier.
Having workflow enforced in the dev tool is important when it comes to a team of devs imho... especially if you're managing the team.
The R4J plugin for JIRA saves a ton of headache around that... but Shortcut looks nice so thought worth checking.
Would love to hear from anybody who has found a way to make Microsoft dev ops sing at a project management level!
My experience is really related to people's willingness to try things out. Most objections I have had to using these tools relate to technophobes or simply people who don't like it and won't use it!
That said, we also maintain high-level roadmaps in ProductPlan, which we've found to be more suitable for non-tech stakeholders, since it lets you quite easily see where projects sit on a timeline and the dependencies involved.
What do you prefer?
One thing we've done internally, for all tasks that aren't tied to a repo (because GitHub issues must belong to a repo), we created an "internal" repo that's a catchall for tasks not necessarily tied to a codebase.
The Projects view then let's us plan work across multiple codebases and this "non-codebase" repo
I'd say the biggest thing I'm missing in it is a chrono. We track our time worked per tasks and I've been told Jira provides a chrono to do that for you.
I'm using clocking in org-mode anyway, so it's easy to report. But it would be nice if it was provided by the tool itself.
Some operations can take times, such as computing a burndown report, but I don't have comparison with another tool to say if it's slow or not.
- project focused
- GitHub style discussion threads
- slightly more powerful tasks than Basecamp
- simple/minimal design
Currently in closed beta (macroapp.io) however you can drop me an email james@macroapp.io and I can give you access.
Tools don't solve everything with any team, but bad tools can encumber a team and hamstrung potential.
We always welcome feedback so if you do want access, let me know at richard.harris@okappy.com https://www.okappy.com
So it could start with someone writing down how a feature should work, then some designers creating some mock ups based on the discussion. Finally programmers can look at the description and the Figma designs and start implementing, with all the context still available. And since the document is created from the start, the entire team can start commenting throughout the whole process rather than at the very end when the jira ticket is created. It helps avoid stuff like this[1].
I obviously like it, but I am biased :).
[0] https://kitemaker.co
[1] https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-1052-what-didnt-end-up-...
We keep him away from actual product code ;), but we let him go mad with the landing page. I'll try to take a look on Monday to see what's up.
I don't have any affiliation with the founders; I just really like the product.
Their UI is clean, and I love their commitment to making complexity 'opt-in'. Their integrations are helpful, and it comes across as a task-tracking applications that does a good job of getting out of the way and keeping the focus on the work and the communication.
For anyone who doesn't know us, we have an unhealthy obsession with simplicity and set out to build something as conceptually simple as Trello but with much better usability, and specifically for software teams.
Linear is pretty slick piece of software that feels fast, well designed and more opinionated compared to Jira or other alternatives. It has great support for keyboard shortcuts.
Saga is a documents / notes app and each feature or ticket is a separate page. The tool has automatic hyperlinking, so every time you mention a specific task or a ticket, a link to it will be created on the fly. It also combines tickets/tasks with other notes and documents in one place.
[0] https://linear.app
[1] https://saga.so
On top of that it is super fast and a joy to use.
I've found two keys to success:
* Separate tools for high-level product/business planning (ProductBoard) and the project-to-project and day-to-day tasks (Shortcut).
* Keep things as simple as possible.
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For us, I (an EM) coordinate product priorities with our PM in ProductBoard. We manage things at the week to month level here. The PM's goal is to ensure there's always enough work available. Mine is to figure who and how much. We work together on the "when".
When we move to the delivery phase, we have engineers track it in a task management tool (Shortcut). Large stories get broken down into smaller tasks.
TL;DR We arrived at Google Projects Beta and to our collective surprise just about everyone likes it a lot. Took a bit of experimentation with custom fields to setup — what makes our boards sing is the timeseries custom field type. Makes it easy to map our long term goals over the individual data points.
One minor quibble we solved with some name spacing conventions for issue titles to make it easier to scan a gird of issue titles and see what are "parent" issues and what are "task" issues.
Summary of our decision making process:
Jira
Because of complexity, at the mercy of the individuals putting the most time in Jira doing the setting up, organizing, creating tasks, managing workflows, etc. This encourages top-down flow, not team collaboration.
Has a lot of structure and opinions about data buckets and workflows. This is optimized for project managers types managing engineering types. Encourages treating engineers as a fungible commodity (imo).
To state an opinion bluntly, terrible tool for non-engineering tasks. Which engineering tasks should be synergizing with.
Trello
Easy, everyone can use and understand. Without creating a whole bunch of additional structure, happy path is a hodgepodge of cards organized loosely. This scales very badly.
Creating structure in Trello mirrors the mind of the person who does the structuring...per board. A single team might have a nice snowflake to be proud of but diffs between teams/boards can be jarring. At the organization scope you still have hodgepodge.
Shortcut
Easy, anyone can use, people like to use, different disciplines can use, comes with Just Enough™ structure, organized view from any scope (org level down to specific teams over to specific sprints down to specific individuals), easy to zoom in/out....