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This kind of attitude is really unhelpful. Of course this sort of situation is undesirable, demonstrably, but it's not necessarily a case of idiocy - it's actu

This kind of attitude is really unhelpful. Of course this sort of situation is undesirable, demonstrably, but it's not necessarily a case of idiocy - it's actually very easy for non-technical founders to get into this situation: let's say the developers want to use JIRA, but the non-technical staff find JIRA impossible to use (totally reasonable), so they want to carry on using Trello; straight away you've got tasks spread across two disparate platforms. Then let's say that a manager has an embedded belief from a past (probably non-startup) life that time-tracking by the hour is incredibly important, and they have a preferred tool for this (because, while JIRA has this functionality, it's pretty horrible, and Trello doesn't do it at all), and boom, you've got two different tools for tracking work and a third tool for tracking time.

champagnepapi 9y ago
I am at a 13 person startup. We use Confluence, Bitbucket, Google Apps, and we also use Asana (instead of Jira). It is a nightmare... Information is spread out all over these platforms. We can't stick to only Atlassian tools because the CEO thinks they don't allow you to collaborate... We spend a lot of time looking for where information lives and debating where it should live, complete waste of time. In a smaller company this sort of behavior can be catastrophic.
- bshimmin 9y ago
  I totally agree, and I think a lot of people will have been in this situation too. There is, unfortunately, no simple solution other than the very obvious one, which is to use the right things for the right job, and as few of those things as you can. The really crushingly miserable situation is one where the documentation is in Confluence and Google Docs and some random files in Dropbox before they started using the first two and some files that someone shared on the Slack channel and a few things that are just in the CTO's inbox which he was sent by the CEO in PowerPoint and... it's utterly toxic. This proliferation of excellent tools we have today should be a good thing, but really we are all victims of our own best intentions sometimes (in that horrible chain of misery, even the CEO honestly thinks he's being helpful by emailing a PowerPoint rather than just telling someone over the phone).
- developer2 9y ago
  >> We use Confluence, Bitbucket... Asana (instead of Jira) This is the thing with the Atlassian ecosystem. Whether you are pro-Atlassian or anti-Atlassian, there are only two sane options: you either all-in with everything Atlassian, or you are better off with nothing Atlassian. Mixing and matching products when Atlassian is involved is the wrong choice, every time. The Atlassian suite as a whole is fantastic when the integrations are set up properly. If you dislike Atlassian's licensing or even one of their products, then you should not be using them at all. Don't take on 1-2 of their products, and then replace one of their other core products with an unintegrated competitor. Having a partial Atlassian setup is frustrating as hell to work with.
  - dasil003 9y ago
    I dunno, JIRA works reasonably well as a standalone and integrates with everything under the sun. However I definitely see your point in replacing JIRA w/ Asana as it's really gutting the core of the suite.
- seanjregan 9y ago
  Highlighting a table in Confluence, right clicking and turning each item into a JIRA ticket makes my life so much easier. Similar with Bitbucket. Auto issue transitions means the devs don't have to muck around in JIRA as much. As soon as they start working on a branch (with one click in JIRA) the issue automatically transitions to the in progress column on the board, etc etc. Reveal: I work for Atlassian and I work using Atlassian tools daily. Asana is a great tool but JIRA is built to help address the issues you are seeing. JIRA functions like a center of gravity to organize your work and many other tools (e.g. ~1000 integrations in the Marketplace connect into it.) We are working on some similar integrations for Trello and have shipped a few already.
raverbashing 9y ago
> This kind of attitude is really unhelpful. No, what's unhelpful is less than 10 people acting out in an noncohesive way This is weak management and a lack of focus
- pantulis 9y ago
  I wouldn't go and say this is due to stupidity but as a senior professional that would sure be my starting point. That company is in a less than desirable situation, how many other gaffes are there?
  - Jedi72 9y ago
    This is not the big deal you're all making it out to be.
andy_boot 9y ago
While crude, I do think raverbashing has a point here. If a 10 person startup already requires their devs to use 3 different reporting tools that startup has a problem. If you can't streamline at a small size like this you won't stay nimble and you won't make it.
dood 9y ago
Although it is understandable how someone could make this mistake, mandating redundant reporting is a very bad sign in a startup. It shows the manager does not comprehend the difference between a giant company where such large overheads are necessary, and a tiny startup where nimbleness and intimacy and the very thing that gives the company a chance to succeed.
stult 9y ago
>time-tracking by the hour is incredibly important As someone who does the R&D tax credit for a lot of tech companies, let me tell you that it really, really is. It's worth somewhere around 10% of all your developers' salaries if the company is profitable. As in, if they work 10 hour days, entering data into a time tracking system is a net benefit even if it takes up to an hour a day.
- cpfohl 9y ago
  Thanks for that insight. I didn't realize that existed.
- berdario 9y ago
  I'm wondering how widespread claiming "R&D tax credits" actually is. To think that most companies could/would seems preposterous (how many are truly doing something worth of the monicker R&D?) I'm seeing an ecommerce business applying for R&D credit, and that seems absurd, since > Your company can only claim for R&D tax relief if an R&D project seeks to achieve an advance in overall knowledge or capability in a field of science or technology through the resolution of scientific or technological uncertainty - and not simply an advance in its own state of knowledge or capability. From the gov.uk article: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/corporation-tax-research-and-development-rd-relief https://www.gov.uk/guidance/corporation-tax-research-and-dev...
  - stult 9y ago
    Well I'm in the US, so I can't speak to the UK's regs with much expertise, except insofar as I know most of the world's R&D credits are based on ours. But in the US, most web dev qualifies, including fairly run of the mill ecommerce site. Just judging from what you quote here thought, the US rule is less rigorous. Taxpayers must resolve technological uncertainty just as in the UK, but it's a taxpayer centric test. Meaning, that uncertainty can be "simply an advance in its own state of knowledge or capability." Honestly, I shouldn't say this because it's very much against my own interests, but the US regs are way too loose and permit credits for work that just does not seem to me to be worth subsidizing. But for a normal development company, it's worth tracking hours to gain that subsidy because the IRS primarily challenges us on the validity of the underlying data at this point rather than the qualification of the activities themselves, because a large amount of litigation has settled most of the questions in that area in favor of taxpayers.
kabdib 9y ago
Sorry, an hour a day doing busywork (like entering hours) in a startup is utterly indefensible. I've done a bunch of startups and not only did this never happen, it would not have been tolerated. Even at <<<several large software companies>> I never spent more than about ten minutes a day doing tracking; during heavy bug crunches, maybe an hour doing detailed writeups within bugs for other groups, for communication purposes. In a small team in a company with a short fuse, you can't afford this. Either you have people who can do the work and coordinate, or all the tracking in the world is not going to help. (Time tracking by the hour . . . I can't even . . . it's time to get a new manager by firing the current one or finding a better job elsewhere. Totally serious).
- ryandrake 9y ago
  The indignation seems misplaced. Time tracking seems pretty common in the industry, whether it be mandatory or voluntary. Several places I worked had detailed time tracking, and it was pretty informative/helpful as a tool to manage your own task prioritization. It can be pretty eye-opening to sit down at the end of the week and actually take stock of how much time you spent coding, thinking, in meetings, getting coffee, screwing around, etc.
- dalore 9y ago
  > Time tracking by the hour... How is that a difficult idea to get around? As a contractor I'm expected to keep track of my hours and what I'm working on. Lucky it's just a chrome extension that I click to start and click to stop. Boom, tracking by hour of what I work on.
  - kabdib 9y ago
    It's not a difficult idea. Mindfulness of how you are spending your time is quite useful. What results from it is, however, difficult. Nearly without fail I have seen these tracking systems degenerate into blaming, micro-management and tools for destruction ("Figby is working two hours a day more than you are, what's up?") So no, not difficult at all. Easy to do. Much, much harder unless you want a culture of fear and overwork in your company, and screw that, I've been there.
mcv 9y ago
If the non-technical staff wants to use Trello, that has nothing to do with the technical staff (though it might be painful for the people caught between the two). In my opinion, detailed time tracking is pointless. I've worked for companies that required it (only small ones required this), and it was just a painful distraction that never had any perceivable benefit. In larger companies, most people just write 8 hours a day for their project, and that's it. No need to make it any more complex than that. And Jira is not a reporting tool. It helps you keep track of the work you need to do, and roughly estimate how much work that is, but it's not suitable for detailed reporting. And for a small startup, you don't need detailed reporting. If the boss wants to know what people are doing, he just needs to drop by at the standup meeting.
beachbum8029 9y ago
>but it's not necessarily a case of idiocy proceeds to describe idiocy

champagnepapi 9y ago

I am at a 13 person startup. We use Confluence, Bitbucket, Google Apps, and we also use Asana (instead of Jira). It is a nightmare... Information is spread out all over these platforms. We can't stick to only Atlassian tools because the CEO thinks they don't allow you to collaborate... We spend a lot of time looking for where information lives and debating where it should live, complete waste of time. In a smaller company this sort of behavior can be catastrophic.

bshimmin 9y ago
I totally agree, and I think a lot of people will have been in this situation too. There is, unfortunately, no simple solution other than the very obvious one, which is to use the right things for the right job, and as few of those things as you can. The really crushingly miserable situation is one where the documentation is in Confluence and Google Docs and some random files in Dropbox before they started using the first two and some files that someone shared on the Slack channel and a few things that are just in the CTO's inbox which he was sent by the CEO in PowerPoint and... it's utterly toxic. This proliferation of excellent tools we have today should be a good thing, but really we are all victims of our own best intentions sometimes (in that horrible chain of misery, even the CEO honestly thinks he's being helpful by emailing a PowerPoint rather than just telling someone over the phone).
developer2 9y ago
>> We use Confluence, Bitbucket... Asana (instead of Jira) This is the thing with the Atlassian ecosystem. Whether you are pro-Atlassian or anti-Atlassian, there are only two sane options: you either all-in with everything Atlassian, or you are better off with nothing Atlassian. Mixing and matching products when Atlassian is involved is the wrong choice, every time. The Atlassian suite as a whole is fantastic when the integrations are set up properly. If you dislike Atlassian's licensing or even one of their products, then you should not be using them at all. Don't take on 1-2 of their products, and then replace one of their other core products with an unintegrated competitor. Having a partial Atlassian setup is frustrating as hell to work with.
- dasil003 9y ago
  I dunno, JIRA works reasonably well as a standalone and integrates with everything under the sun. However I definitely see your point in replacing JIRA w/ Asana as it's really gutting the core of the suite.
seanjregan 9y ago
Highlighting a table in Confluence, right clicking and turning each item into a JIRA ticket makes my life so much easier. Similar with Bitbucket. Auto issue transitions means the devs don't have to muck around in JIRA as much. As soon as they start working on a branch (with one click in JIRA) the issue automatically transitions to the in progress column on the board, etc etc. Reveal: I work for Atlassian and I work using Atlassian tools daily. Asana is a great tool but JIRA is built to help address the issues you are seeing. JIRA functions like a center of gravity to organize your work and many other tools (e.g. ~1000 integrations in the Marketplace connect into it.) We are working on some similar integrations for Trello and have shipped a few already.

raverbashing 9y ago

> This kind of attitude is really unhelpful. No, what's unhelpful is less than 10 people acting out in an noncohesive way This is weak management and a lack of focus

pantulis 9y ago
I wouldn't go and say this is due to stupidity but as a senior professional that would sure be my starting point. That company is in a less than desirable situation, how many other gaffes are there?
- Jedi72 9y ago
  This is not the big deal you're all making it out to be.

andy_boot 9y ago

While crude, I do think raverbashing has a point here. If a 10 person startup already requires their devs to use 3 different reporting tools that startup has a problem. If you can't streamline at a small size like this you won't stay nimble and you won't make it.

dood 9y ago

Although it is understandable how someone could make this mistake, mandating redundant reporting is a very bad sign in a startup. It shows the manager does not comprehend the difference between a giant company where such large overheads are necessary, and a tiny startup where nimbleness and intimacy and the very thing that gives the company a chance to succeed.

stult 9y ago

>time-tracking by the hour is incredibly important As someone who does the R&D tax credit for a lot of tech companies, let me tell you that it really, really is. It's worth somewhere around 10% of all your developers' salaries if the company is profitable. As in, if they work 10 hour days, entering data into a time tracking system is a net benefit even if it takes up to an hour a day.

cpfohl 9y ago
Thanks for that insight. I didn't realize that existed.
berdario 9y ago
I'm wondering how widespread claiming "R&D tax credits" actually is. To think that most companies could/would seems preposterous (how many are truly doing something worth of the monicker R&D?) I'm seeing an ecommerce business applying for R&D credit, and that seems absurd, since > Your company can only claim for R&D tax relief if an R&D project seeks to achieve an advance in overall knowledge or capability in a field of science or technology through the resolution of scientific or technological uncertainty - and not simply an advance in its own state of knowledge or capability. From the gov.uk article: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/corporation-tax-research-and-development-rd-relief https://www.gov.uk/guidance/corporation-tax-research-and-dev...
- stult 9y ago
  Well I'm in the US, so I can't speak to the UK's regs with much expertise, except insofar as I know most of the world's R&D credits are based on ours. But in the US, most web dev qualifies, including fairly run of the mill ecommerce site. Just judging from what you quote here thought, the US rule is less rigorous. Taxpayers must resolve technological uncertainty just as in the UK, but it's a taxpayer centric test. Meaning, that uncertainty can be "simply an advance in its own state of knowledge or capability." Honestly, I shouldn't say this because it's very much against my own interests, but the US regs are way too loose and permit credits for work that just does not seem to me to be worth subsidizing. But for a normal development company, it's worth tracking hours to gain that subsidy because the IRS primarily challenges us on the validity of the underlying data at this point rather than the qualification of the activities themselves, because a large amount of litigation has settled most of the questions in that area in favor of taxpayers.

kabdib 9y ago

Sorry, an hour a day doing busywork (like entering hours) in a startup is utterly indefensible. I've done a bunch of startups and not only did this never happen, it would not have been tolerated. Even at <<<several large software companies>> I never spent more than about ten minutes a day doing tracking; during heavy bug crunches, maybe an hour doing detailed writeups within bugs for other groups, for communication purposes. In a small team in a company with a short fuse, you can't afford this. Either you have people who can do the work and coordinate, or all the tracking in the world is not going to help. (Time tracking by the hour . . . I can't even . . . it's time to get a new manager by firing the current one or finding a better job elsewhere. Totally serious).

ryandrake 9y ago
The indignation seems misplaced. Time tracking seems pretty common in the industry, whether it be mandatory or voluntary. Several places I worked had detailed time tracking, and it was pretty informative/helpful as a tool to manage your own task prioritization. It can be pretty eye-opening to sit down at the end of the week and actually take stock of how much time you spent coding, thinking, in meetings, getting coffee, screwing around, etc.
dalore 9y ago
> Time tracking by the hour... How is that a difficult idea to get around? As a contractor I'm expected to keep track of my hours and what I'm working on. Lucky it's just a chrome extension that I click to start and click to stop. Boom, tracking by hour of what I work on.
- kabdib 9y ago
  It's not a difficult idea. Mindfulness of how you are spending your time is quite useful. What results from it is, however, difficult. Nearly without fail I have seen these tracking systems degenerate into blaming, micro-management and tools for destruction ("Figby is working two hours a day more than you are, what's up?") So no, not difficult at all. Easy to do. Much, much harder unless you want a culture of fear and overwork in your company, and screw that, I've been there.

mcv 9y ago

If the non-technical staff wants to use Trello, that has nothing to do with the technical staff (though it might be painful for the people caught between the two). In my opinion, detailed time tracking is pointless. I've worked for companies that required it (only small ones required this), and it was just a painful distraction that never had any perceivable benefit. In larger companies, most people just write 8 hours a day for their project, and that's it. No need to make it any more complex than that. And Jira is not a reporting tool. It helps you keep track of the work you need to do, and roughly estimate how much work that is, but it's not suitable for detailed reporting. And for a small startup, you don't need detailed reporting. If the boss wants to know what people are doing, he just needs to drop by at the standup meeting.

beachbum8029 9y ago

>but it's not necessarily a case of idiocy proceeds to describe idiocy