agilemetrics.io
Automatically syncs your Trello board data to Google Sheets
As always, things took a bit longer than expected but I finally completed the MVP for https://agilemetrics.io.
The main reason for the delay was the decision to spend some quality time over the Summer with my young children (1 & 3), and I am very glad I did. Being around to see them grow has been amazing, and wouldn't have been possible working a 9-5 job
So, although I aimed to work on agilemetrics.io exclusively after taking redundancy, it has actually remained more of a side project in terms of hours spent. I aim to start increasing my efforts now, so should be able to get more done.
Anyway, the MVP is now live! The first hint of it's existence to the outside world was updating my LinkedIn status to reflect my new role as "Founder" :-) A few of my network checked it out and signed up for the free plan, but the real marketing work is yet to begin.
As mentioned in my previous update, the problem space we seek to address is quite broad but the MVP focuses on a small part (as an MVP should!)
The initial service provides automatic, continuous synchronisation of Trello to Google Sheets. In my experience, this is a common use case and one that currently has no good solution.
From here we want have several directions we could take, but will wait for input from customers before finalising a plan.
For now, I am sharing it here with my fellow hackers, and am keen for any feedback...
I have been involved with software development for 20 years, as a programmer, architect and product manager.
Over that time I have observed the number and quality of tools available to help teams and organisations manage the work of delivering great software increase massively, and the explosion of SaaS has had a big part to play.
Somewhat paradoxically, the range of good quality tools can actually become a problem for medium to large organisations.
In such organisations, development teams are often fairly free to define their own methodologies or processes, along with the software they use to aid project management, bug tracking, version control, documentation, etc.
As time passes, best practices change, teams form & disband and new tools gain popularity, resulting in a fragmented and complex ecosystem of tools across the company.
Attempts to standardise on a common set of tools often fails as the requirements and preferences genuinely differ between teams. It proves hard to enforce conformity for very long as teams always seek to optimise their processes, and this results in drift from the perceived ideal.
All of this can present a significant problem for project/programme managers who need to track a number of teams, each with their own quirks and tools.
Inevitably, spreadsheets are created to aggregate data and metrics from each team, often painstakingly and time consumingly entered by hand.
Large amounts of time end up being spent massaging data into spreadsheets, and not focusing on helping the teams deliver effectively.
This is the problem we want to solve.
agilemetrics.io seeks to eliminate the laborious aspects of aggregating data from the range of development tools in popular use, and provide a clean, aggregated data set that provides actionable insights into the state of an organisations delivery teams.
The MVP will focus on a narrow slice of this problem space, but a common one in my experience. From there we will establish relationships with the users, and prioritise where to go next.
Let's get started!
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Very interesting idea! Definitely see a need for this. Good luck. :)
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Thanks @swaathi :-)
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This comment was deleted 4 years ago
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Hi @Primer, I don't disagree - in the general case this is often true.
My bet is that there is a big enough market in the non-general case to support this kind of product.
There is another offering in pretty much this exact space, who seem to be doing ok and have some pretty sizeable companies signed up.
Maybe it is a fluke of the companies I happen to have worked in, but I have seen this problem come up again and again. Occasional attempts to impose a set of parameters, eventually unwinding, and pragmatic project managers just doing whatever they need to do to gather their metrics (regardless of what people should be doing).
Even in orgs with an effective directive to use tools x, y and z, it only takes one rogue team or a third party dev partner to do something different and centralised tracking/reporting suddenly becomes a very manual affair.
And even when the use 'x, y, z' directive is fully enforced, I believe there is still some untapped value to be had merging data from x, y and z.
I hope so anyway, could well be wrong :-)
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Now I realise most hackers develop their ideas as a side project while working a full-time gig before quitting to dedicate their time to it, but it was different for me.
I had opted for voluntary redundancy from my last job and came away with a decent financial buffer to support me (and my family) for a year or so if I wished.
Having had a dream of going solo and starting my own business for a while, I decided this wasn't an opportunity to pass up, and started work on developing agilemetrics.io.
More on the site and it's goals in my next update...
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