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This might be a little off-topic: The thing I miss in almost every Project Management Tool (SaaS or not) is the connection with the customer. Say we are a comp

This might be a little off-topic: The thing I miss in almost every Project Management Tool (SaaS or not) is the connection with the customer. Say we are a company building software for a customer of us, we want the customer to put in the request and we would like to tell an estimate time that would be needed. This would also represent the cost of it. If he's allright with the costs, he can accept it. In that way you can communicate clearly to the customer how much he needs to pay, and we get to know what he wants. AND you have a bases to stand your contract on. No more hassling about endprice. Just print the sum of features and prices and you're done.

mratzloff 13y ago
This vastly oversimplifies what goes into project and client management. It's a feature that no one really wants on the business side of things.
- noir_lord 13y ago
  > It's a feature that no one really wants on the business side of things. Not to be obsequious but clearly at least one person wants it.
  - slantyyz 13y ago
    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 a person like a project manager or account manager. There are a number of reasons for this, such as the customer not wanting to use a system to collaborate, the customer is already too busy with their day-to-day tasks, etc.
    - noir_lord 13y ago
      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 page and I capture a bunch of metrics about what they where doing when they pressed it) with a box basically saying "Please describe the problem as clearly as possible" rather than complex drop down driven forms asking for things like severity levels (which most end users don't care about, anything that stops them doing what they want to do gets marked highest anyway).
      - slantyyz 13y ago
        >> 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.

mratzloff 13y ago

This vastly oversimplifies what goes into project and client management. It's a feature that no one really wants on the business side of things.

noir_lord 13y ago
> It's a feature that no one really wants on the business side of things. Not to be obsequious but clearly at least one person wants it.
- slantyyz 13y ago
  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 a person like a project manager or account manager. There are a number of reasons for this, such as the customer not wanting to use a system to collaborate, the customer is already too busy with their day-to-day tasks, etc.
  - noir_lord 13y ago
    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 page and I capture a bunch of metrics about what they where doing when they pressed it) with a box basically saying "Please describe the problem as clearly as possible" rather than complex drop down driven forms asking for things like severity levels (which most end users don't care about, anything that stops them doing what they want to do gets marked highest anyway).
    - slantyyz 13y ago
      >> 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.