So many IT companies has big issues with managing their team effectively while keeping everyone productive, happy and involved. In the overwhelming world of never-ending apps, where we have an app for everything, and everyone has their own preferences it’s becoming more and more challenging to scale that approach to a company level.
One of the most common issues in technology companies is the case of product and development teams. We need them to work quickly and collaboratively, without unnecessary blockers, without complicated processes. The work needs to be agile, smooth, to drive projects forward as fast as possible.
But… how to make it work, when each team has their own preferred tool of choice?
In my example, the Product team (Product Owner, Marketing manager, Growthhacker, Discovery manager and others) are working in Trello – which is simple and effective enough to manage their work.
In the same company, Developers chose Atlassian Jira. They keep asking “Why can’t product just work in Jira?”, for them it was obviously a better choice. Unfortunately, the Product team did’t want to learn a new tool. They were convinced that it doesn’t make sense to use the tool that is overcomplicated, offers plenty of complicated features, and is paid. While Trello is free and is doing exactly what they need.
While both teams were arguing, the tool disparity slowed the teams down. The teams needed to switch the tools, both teams had to learn new tools, new workflows, both teams needed to constantly change context. Apart from “simply” checking the other tool for updates, they needed to propagate those changes in the second tool – as we can easily imagine, humans errors weren’t a rare issue – many times informations were lost, creating even more unnecessary tension and delays.
A nightmare for any management. By definition, management needs to create as frictionless environment as possible, and if we require people to choose more than one tool, we are introducing complexity, we are inviting errors.
So… Who was right?
In short – both teams were.
Fortunately, one of the senior managers, Paul, was living using their own value “Be the change you seek”. From the very beginning, he knew that something wasn’t right and that in the end, there has to be a solution where everyone will be using one tool, without the need to force anyone to switch.
After doing some research, comparing different tools, he decided to try getint.io, since it is the only platform that offers 60 days trial. For Paul it looks promising – one platform that will integrate both Jira and Trello, that will sync the tasks between product and development team.
So gave it a try, he connected Jira and Trello with getint.io, he build the workflow that fitted the company needs and… waited for the results to come.
How it works? While the product owner created a card on his Trello board, and added a label, instantly a new issue was created in developers Jira. You may think, that there is unnecessary step – Why adding a label, why not sync all tasks? Paul wanted his Product Owners to use their daily boards, which has cards that are designed to be for their eyes only, they can’t be synced with other team. Fortunately, you can set up the workflow like you want – it’s easy, sync all of just selected cards/issues. When developer added a comment, it was propagated to Trello card, so product team could instantly get the update they needed.
Results?
The team found solution they desperately needed. Now, everyone is working effectively and can focus on simply doing their job.
The quality of the work has increased. The number of misunderstandings and delays have decreased.
Paul decided to delegate control over getint.io platform to company’s DevOps manager. For him, apart from simply doing the job, critical things were safety and reports – he liked the fact, that he will get notification when something stopped working.
Now, the company is using getint.io not only to sync Jira Trello – they decided to sync other tools with eachother too.
Wanna give it a try yourself?
Go to getint.io and enjoy 60 days trial, and the best value for money you can find.