

ShowHN: Tracker.pm - Our In-house PM tool goes public - joeconway
http://www.tracker.pm

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jahewson
Suspiciously similar to <http://trello.com> UI design...

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gilini
First thing that crossed my mind when I clicked the link.

But I guess there's not much you can do to emulate Kanban's workflow.

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ricardobeat
That's the same as the iPad argument. There are a thousand ways to design a
kanban board, only one resembles Trello.

See Pivotal Tracker: <http://www.pivotaltracker.com/features>

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dclaysmith
Looks _a lot_ like my app: <http://www.thetaboard.com>

But with some more bells and whistles and a predefined PM workflow.

(In fairness, we both look like Pivotal and Trello to a lesser degree so it
doesn't bother me)

Given the noticeable similarities, I'd love to hear how you get on with
signups and revenue. ThetaBoard is currently free (It's hard to compete with
Trello's price!) but I would certainly love to make a living with it. I've
just found it very difficult to "market" something that is designed to appeal
to such a broad market.

Good luck with the launch.

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daemon13
Actually, to be fair and honest, Trello's main UI design looks suspiciously
similar to the Excel templates that I used for project management 10 years ago
[and freely shared with many people], which in turn were inspired by GDPM
(Goal Directed Project Management] book [1]. The UI design was listed in the
book's appendix.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Goal-Directed-Project-Management-
Techn...](http://www.amazon.com/Goal-Directed-Project-Management-
Techniques/dp/0749453346) This is the 4th edition of the book, the first was
published more than 10 years ago.

quote "Goal Directed Project Management (GDPM) is a unique methodology that
has been developed and refined by the authors over a period of more than 20
years. In this time, organizations all over the world have adopted it as a
standard approach."

Unless there is a pixel for pixel copy, why don't we stop implicating that
similar UI designs and ideas is an offense and wrongdoing?

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swah
a) Do you still use them? b) Can we see it? :)

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daemon13
a) Now not, but the UI is very handy to have 1 page overview of the project. I
used it for implementing Hyperion Essbase for business & financial planning in
1998 and in 2003-2005. So I managed a 6 mths / $200-300K project with just
three reports.

b) Too lazy to un-dig from my archive to prove the point :-)

But the basic usage is the following:

1\. Milestones

Milestone #1 Milestone #2 Milestone #3

Goal #1.1

Goal #1.2

Goal #1.3

Key - this shall fit one page, or you are doing this wrong.

Best used in conjunction with other GDPM templates (check the book and
website).

2\. Weekly Planning

Monday Tuesday

Task #1

Task #2

Task #3

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porker
It looks just like Trello - what makes it different? A page which told me what
was different would help me to decide _quickly_ if it's worth signing up. And
help your sales!

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joeconway
We at Leto love to build our own tools to make our work easier. We think that
one of them, Tracker, is ready to help other people who want an alternative PM
tool to the big players. We thought that Jira was too heavy, PivotalTracker
had too much jargon and Trello was on the right track but not quite right.

We've taken all the best ideas from the different tools available and made
them into something we really enjoying working with. We'd love to know what
the people on Hacker News think of it.

EDIT: we have an app too, with iPad and Android support around the corner!
appstore.com/trackerpm

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danpalmer
I've just signed up, and it looks good, although I'm wondering what about
Trello you found 'not quite right'? I'm a big fan of Trello and use it for a
few projects.

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joeconway
Thanks Dan! Basically we thought that Trello is great but we wanted:

-The ability to make time estimates for each task

-Nice email integration, with the ability to reply to notification emails to add comments to the tasks

-Number of task and hourly counts for the columns

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danpalmer
Fair enough, I guess Trello is more about project/issue management and less
about time tracking which is really the point of 1 and 3 above.

From having a quick look around the service, I think I'll stick with Trello
for my projects, but then time tracking isn't something I need. I can see that
this would be quite useful for many freelancers though, who need more time
tracking capabilities. And at any rate, it's nicer than Pivotal!

Email integration is a good idea, and something that Trello is really missing
out.

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a_macgregor
Reminds me a lot to pivotaltracker.com

