Project Management at the Speed of Thought
Over the years we have engaged in many “thought experiments”. These are experiments to test principles of project management, and their practical application. We came up with these experiments through talking with our customers, and drawing on our own experiences with running dozens of internal projects over the years.
You may not have heard of AgilePad, but it was one of our experiments that we launched last year. We launched it with little fanfare. AgilePad came from a single observation we had about our team: Despite so many good project management tools, everyone at Unfuddle still kept a bunch of text files on their desktops with random thoughts and todos for various projects. We asked ourselves, “What if we moved those text files to a collaborative environment, and spiced it up with a little syntactic sugar?”
The result was nothing short of amazing. After what is honestly a very steep learning curve, the fluidity with which we were able to manage our projects was impressive. In fact, going back to other tools, including Unfuddle STACK, almost feels impossible once we got spoiled with realtime, free-form, project collaboration at the speed of thought. The truth of the matter is that we actually use AgilePad every single day. Unfuddle TEN, even now, lives as an AgilePad project document. (If you want to experience AgilePad, go here)
But AgilePad can be a bit obtuse. Obviously, not everyone thinks in plain text. We know that. But the experiment is still tremendously valuable for us as designers. It has taught us how to better understand fluidity of action. Most specifically, it has taught us how to REMOVE interface to get to a better experience. Do we really need to have formal data models and customized interface elements for everything we THINK our customers want to achieve? Or is our responsibility to build the most general tool possible and get out of the way?
We think it’s the latter, and AgilePad is the experiment that has revealed the answer to that question.
The French writer and poet Antoine de Saint Exupéry, said it best, “…perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
It may be overly quoted, but it doesn’t make it less true. AgilePad taught us this for ourselves. And we are aggressively applying this principle in Unfuddle TEN. Not so that we can build less, but so that YOU can accomplish more.
We still want to hear from you. What do you want to do less of in your current project management tools? Tell us by commenting below, or tweeting us at @Unfuddle.
We are really committed to a high level of transparency as we move closer to the launch of Unfuddle TEN. Stay tuned for more on how Unfuddle TEN is going to get out of your way and help your team do its best stuff.
Question: What do you want to do less of in your current project management tools? Share your answer below or on Twitter or Facebook.