Tracker: management in real-time

Hello, our names Leto, we are an English company, founded by two Russian guys. We create startups for our clients. Sometimes they are ordinary people who decided to start their business and launch a startup (e.g., Sorted), and sometimes it is large and established companies (for example, 20th Century Fox) that are trying to launch a new product or service. We help them to improve the concept, develop the business model, we develop the product and create the design, launch, promote, analyze — in General, we try to do everything (or everything that is needed). If you are familiar with the term “lean startup,” then our business is “lean startup as a service”.

As with any development company, we needed a tool to manage projects (or simply “tracker”). As expected, we tried a lot of different services, but all somehow did not fit, and as a result we created our own another tracker simple and convenient tools, which is used within the company and gave his clients. Why, why, and what came of it — read under the cut.

act I: the Clouds gather

From the beginning the main idea was a high-speed development without sacrificing quality (and business). Therefore, we always tried to minimize the cost of management and to attract customers to participate directly in the project. When we started, we used JIRA and Basecamp. JIRA we didn't like, because technically illiterate customers it lost, and went back to the phone or email. Basecamp is much simpler but does not give the overall picture of the project and generally difficult to use command. PivotalTracker better, but many customers are scared of the jargon (“in the backlog? it is you're not going to do?!”). All that was based on the iteration does not coincide with our approach to development (we don't use iterations at the core of all development processes is continuous). Trello proved to be the most close to what you had, but gave too much freedom to customers, and were not “locked” under development.

After all the searching, we decided to spend the weekend to write your service (after all, we must work quickly!), and since then used it. Did for themselves and for themselves, and called Tracker (Tracker).

act II: the Storm

We decided to make a simple and understandable way for ordinary people service, without technical terms and with the minimum required functionality. As we have iterations and each ready feature automatically goes to the test server, we had to structure the tasks in a similar way. Finally, we are big fans of Kanban, because we can see the progress of the project and it is easy to see stagnation at any stage. So there Tracker.pm.

The result looks like this:


At the beginning of the project, all tasks which c we decided to start fall into the left column (New) and begin to move to the right. Everything is Resolved — as a rule, already on the test server. That is, the client can already check and if all is well — close the task, or reject (Reject) if there are problems or changes are required.

All changes to the Tracker occur in real time. If the client will transfer a task to another column, it will move on the developer's screen. Same with comments, and make any changes.

We tried to do everything so that even people far from development could easily use the Tracker and I think we succeeded. Most of our clients do not ask for instructions or assistance in working with the Tracker — it comes naturally.

act III: the Sun came out from behind the clouds

About six months we used the Tracker only within the company. At some point we began to notice that some of the agencies with whom we work and our customers often ask how they can use the Tracker for their needs. First, we created accounts and projects manually (because there is no plan to publish the Tracker was not). Later added the check, she finally opened the service for public access about two months ago. Now all these guys and many of their friends use the Tracker, so we've paid for the service. Before the new year we launched an iPhone app, and are currently preparing the Android version.

what's inside?

For those who are interested in the technical side of the service: often we use Django for our projects, but in this service we did without him. As the web server is Tornado database — MongoDB (via mongoengine). on the frontend Socket.io (via Tornadio2). We are generally big fans of web sockets and use them in a completely different order, including a data API for mobile applications. We are thinking about using client-side templates, but this is still in the design stage. The styles are made using Twitter Bootstrap (as you have probably noticed).

epilogue

We are dynamic and innovative company. Or so we want to think. In any case, our main business is services for the creation of startups (or new products in General). Someday we can deal exclusively with their products, for example Tracker. But all we have created within the company at this point, we have created for ourselves. Fortunately, it turned out to be useful and to other people. Would love to hear any feedback!

Helmet greetings from Albion all Hebraist!

Team Summer

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru