Tracker: real-time management

Hello everyone, we are called Leto , we are an English company, founded by two Russian-speaking guys. We create startups for our clients. Sometimes they are ordinary people who decide to start a business and start a startup (for example, Sorted ), and sometimes they are large and successful companies (for example, 20th Century Fox ) who are trying to launch a new product or service. We help them improve the concept, work out the business model, we develop the product itself and create a design, launch, promote, analyze - in general, we try to do everything (or all of what is required). If you are familiar with the term “lean startup”, then our business is “lean startup as a service”.

Like any development company, we needed a project management tool (or simply a “tracker”). As it should be, we tried many different services, but somehow it didn’t fit, and as a result we created our next tracker a simple and convenient service that we used inside the company and gave to our customers. Why, why and what came of it - read under the cut.
')

Action One: Clouds gather

From the very beginning, the main idea of ​​the company was the high speed of development without sacrificing quality (and business). Therefore, we have always tried to minimize the costs of management and to attract customers to participate directly in the project. When we started, we simultaneously used JIRA and Basecamp. We didn’t like JIRA, because technically illiterate customers were lost in it, and switched back to a phone or email. Basecamp is much simpler but does not provide an overall picture of the project and is generally difficult to use in a team. PivotalTracker is better, but many customers were frightened by jargon (“in the backlog? Won't you do it anymore ?!”). Everything that was based on iterations did not coincide with our approach to development (we do not use iterations - continuous development is the basis of all processes). Trello turned out to be closest to what was needed, but gave too much freedom to customers, and was not “honed” for development.

After all the searches, we decided to spend the weekend to write our service (after all, we have to work fast!), And have since used it. They did it for themselves and for themselves, and simply called Tracker.

Act Two: Thunderstorm

We decided to make the service simple and understandable to ordinary people, without technical terms and with the minimum necessary functionality. Since we do not have iterations and each finished feature automatically gets to the test server, we needed to structure the tasks in a similar way. Finally, we are big fans of Kanban, because the progress of the whole project is so visible and it is easy to see “stagnation” in any stage. This is how Tracker.pm appeared.

The result looks like this:


At the beginning of the project, all the tasks from which we decided to start fall into the left column (New) and start moving to the right. Everything in Resolved is usually already on the test server. That is, the client can already check and if everything is good, close the task, or reject (Reject) if there are problems or corrections are required.

All changes in the tracker occur in real time. If the client transfers the task to another column, it will move on the developer's screen. The same with comments, and any changes.

We tried to do everything so that even people far from the development could easily use the Tracker and it seems that we succeeded. Most of our clients do not ask for “instructions” or assistance in working with the Tracker - everything turns out by itself.

Action Three: The sun came out from behind the clouds

For about six months, we used the Tracker only within the company. At some point we began to notice that some agencies with which we work and our clients often ask how they can use the Tracker for their needs. First, we created accounts and projects manually (after all, there was no plan to publish Tracker). Later added registration, until, finally, did not open the service for public access about two months ago. Now all these guys and many of their friends use the Tracker, so we entered payment for the service. Before the new year, we launched the iPhone application, and now we are preparing an Android version.

What's inside?

For those who are interested in the technical side of the service: most often we use Django for our projects, but we did without it in this service. Tornado is used as a web server, MongoDB is used as a database (via mongoengine). on the Socket.io front end (via Tornadio2). We are generally big fans of web sockets and use them for completely different purposes, including the data API for mobile applications. We think about using client-side templates, but this is still at the design stage. Styles are made via Twitter Bootstrap (as you probably already noticed).

Epilogue

We are a dynamic and innovative company. Or so we want to think. In any case, our main business is start-up services (or new products in general). Someday we can deal exclusively with our products, such as the tracker. But all that we have created inside the company at this moment, we have created for ourselves. Fortunately, it turned out to be useful to other people. We will be glad to hear any feedback!

We send hello from foggy Albion to all the community!

Team Summer