Some New Tools
Well, there have definitely been some cool new Web-based apps and tools released. But, would a day really be a true day right now if a new Web-based app wasn’t released?
It’s true - they are everywhere.
And while some of them don’t in fact serve any purpose whatsoever, a large part of them do. I don’t know what that is attributed to, but there are some very interesting concepts out there and some very interesting solutions to different types of problems we are encountering day-to-day.
I wanted to post and draw some attention to Twitter and Pownce.
Now, I use both. I find I use Twitter more for boring, throughout the day style posts. Where I’m at, what I’m doing, that type of thing. Think old-school blogs. Like those very first blogs that started showing up on the ‘net back in the day when blogs first started gaining ground. Here’s an example:
“I burnt my toast this morning, so I ate Fruit Loops for breakfast.”
And that was a single entry of many throughout the day. Twitter is more a medium / application that lends itself to this style of posting, and everyone on there (even the cool kids) is doing it.
Since I’m the furthest thing from “a-list.,” I’m fine following that trend.
Pownce on the other hand I’m using entirely different. We are in the the thick of trying to get v1.0 of a new product out the door. It’s a hectic week, no matter how much work you put in up-front. Launch weeks are very stressful and exciting. Add the fact that you have never done a v1.0 launch together as a group, and it increases the complexity.
Now, I’m one of the lucky PM’s that have a solid Product Analyst to work with (you’re rockin’ Jenn!). She’s learning the ropes of product management, and doing a fantastic job.
She and I have been using Pownce to get through the last few weeks in terms of defect tracking. Yes, we have formal bug tracking software. But, on a v1.0 in a start-up, the name of the game is speed. I don’t want to be sitting around filling out CR entries, assigning them, forcing developers to read them, re-assign, etc, etc… It would kill our momentum.
So, each morning, we compile our list for the day for development to work through (in true “agile” like style) and that includes notes we have logged / passed back and forth to one another using Pownce. It’s been insanely helpful for speed and completeness.
This week, we have the added fun of leaving the office, going to a coffee shop at night to step through the days work and re-assess where we are at for tomorrow morning so we don’t hold-up dev.
Now, I realize this can’t go on for every release, and I hope to god I’m not so lazy it does. We are learning where our balance is between long, streched out waterfall-style docs and short, brief agile style docs. I want to keep things trim, but we are learning with our dev team what’s going to help for future releases; not only v1.0’s but other revs and upgrades as well.
So, I’d recommend trying it out. If you need invites, let me know. But, it’s helped me a great deal. Not only for bugs, but also if you can get your entire team on there, for updates throughout the day. Even though we’re a really small company, you can’t spend your entire day giving and collection status updates - then you’re wasting time.
But, spending 2 seconds to jump into Pownce, select your group of work friends and post a quick update like, “Steve is done with feature A - test it out and give feedback.” That rocks. It’s instant, immediate, folks know there’s progress and they can take part right away if they like. If not, the message is there for them later on to review at their leisure and give feedback on.
