
Show HN: Haystack – Visibility into How Software Teams Works - thellimist
https://usehaystack.io?bypass=hn&utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=show%20hn&utm_campaign=hn
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grok2
It would be useful if the web-site had a _real_ case-study where they show all
the features in action. Right now it looks like vaporware -- like one of those
sites people put up to see if there is interest in an idea.

And perhaps stuff like this should have on-site capability for enterprises
that don't use github, gitlab and such?

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thellimist
> It would be useful if the web-site had a real case-study where they show all
> the features in action. Right now it looks like vaporware -- like one of
> those sites people put up to see if there is interest in an idea.

True. We'll add better images and case-study to avoid the confusion.

> And perhaps stuff like this should have on-site capability for enterprises
> that don't use github, gitlab and such?

I'm assuming you are talking about GitHub Enterprise, Gitlab Self-Managed and
Bitbucket Server. We currently have support for Bitbucket Server and working
on the rest.

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detaro
There's lots more issue tracking and code hosting systems (often run as
independent parts, not all-in-ones) than those 3.

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akeck
To avoid trademark fun, you may want to rebrand at some point.

A tech selection from Googling 'haystack'

[https://www.haystack.tv/](https://www.haystack.tv/)

[https://project-haystack.org/](https://project-haystack.org/)

[https://thehaystackapp.com/](https://thehaystackapp.com/)

[http://haystackdata.com/](http://haystackdata.com/)

~~~
spiffyman
There is also
[https://expediadotcom.github.io/haystack/](https://expediadotcom.github.io/haystack/),
an Open Tracing-compliant distributed tracing system.

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jlukic
I find this website to be a fairly amusing example of how marketing co-opts
real, generally easily expressible ideas to be an amalgamation of highly
targeted jargon and pointed funnels for personal information collection.

Generally any well intentioned person who worked on an idea like this would be
delighted to share what their product does specifically and clearly -
unashamed screenshots of interesting visualizations (maybe half cooked),
telling descriptions of specific numbers being crunched and their utility as
predictive indicators of project success, verified with statistical certainty.

Sadly this kind of naive, honest approach is very regularly usurped by the
machiavellian machinery of the professional art of convincing others to buy
things, which is narrative focused and story driven with very little concrete
substance.

Not blaming the author here, I understand the motivations at work and
sympathize with them, but still sometimes find myself dumbfounded by the
results.

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capableweb
Seems this is actually vaporware. No screenshots, no actual demo/application
and signing up with emails leaves a "you'll receive an email soon" but no
email arrives. Ebook requires email to download, and ebook ends up saying same
stuff as on website already.

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thellimist
Sorry that you felt that way. We had a few issues with our sign up flow, but
that should be fixed now.

The ebook has additional content such as

\- Mitigate Bus Factor

\- Protecting Deep Work

\- Avoiding Engineer Burnout

and explains each problem in detail.

~~~
capableweb
Thanks for "fixing" the issue. Now instead of saying "you'll receive an email
soon", it now says "Due to increased demand, we've had to place you on a short
waitlist. We'll be reaching out shortly with a link to get started."

Please tell people upfront what happens when they "sign up", as right now
you're employing dark UX patterns just to collect emails.

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thellimist
Haystack aggregates activity in git to give engineering managers more
visibility into how their team's work. We came up with the idea when we
realized how difficult it is to answer a simple question: 'Is the team doing
better than we were 6 months ago?'. We realized how hard it is to not only
visualize trends on their team but get actionable insights into the biggest
areas to improve. Whether it's spending too much time in code review, taking
on too much concurrent work, or even getting bogged down with technical debt;
we wanted a tool that can not only help to spot issues but also alert us so we
can take action. Introducing Haystack.

~~~
kqr
Very curious now: how do you know what is "too much" time in code review?

Could you provide an example of actionable insight you provide when you have
detected that a team is taking on too much concurrent work?

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thellimist
In the book you can check the sections _Avoid Burnout: Work Overload_ and
_Overload Risk: Too Much Concurrent Work_.

We get 6 months weekly average pull request throughput of each team. We call
this the "Baseline Throghput". If a team has more (or less in some cases) pull
requests open than the baseline, we consider that a "too many".

Too many Open Pull Requests can signal taking on too much work, scope creep,
change in priorities and unexpected issues/bugs coming into the sprint. It’s
good to keep an eye out of the number of Open Pull Requests since it’s a great
indicator of the team’s current workload.

~~~
kqr
Absolutely agreed. None of that is particularly actionable, though. "Don't do
the bad thing" is not actionable advice!

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HereBeBeasties
This isn't so much "show Hacker News" as "tease Hacker News".

Your web site shows me diddly squat. Do you actually _have_ a product? Where's
the video walkthrough, or at the very least, some screen shots?

If your product were genuinely useful / insightful (which is very hard to do
in this space) then we might buy it. For 400 seats. But it looks like
vapourware to me right now. Come back when you actually have something to show
the community.

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OutsmartDan
Would love if the homepage showed actual screenshots of this product. It
sounds interesting, but i'd like a sample of what is to come before signing
up.

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thellimist
Great feedback. We'll be adding screenshots from the product rather than the
book.

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scient
The pricing page is pretty confusing. Is the price per engineer per month?
Whats the difference in engineers vs accounts?

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abeld
I would assume the "engineers vs accounts" is due to the output not being
intended for the coders, but the managers. I.e. you only have accounts for the
managers, but you price based on how large a team they are monitoring.

(This is just a guess, I have no connection to haystack)

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thellimist
You are correct. Accounts are basically number of managers that can access to
the dashboard. Engineers tracked is the main business model.

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thirtythree
Does the development team get the stats from this? I could see it empowering
self organising teams.

If not it seems like a horrible product for engineers.

~~~
thellimist
The product focuses on giving visibility by visualizing trends, identifing
blockers and optimizing code reviews.

As long as the team has a visibility problem Haystack should be beneficial.

We have organizations prefering to use the stats more privately and only
mention the necessary stats to engineers. We also have organization using our
product in their daily standups. It depends on how the team choses to use it.
We have seen both styles work well.

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gok2
What's the minimum size team this tool would be useful for?

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thellimist
The problem starts to be big enough when the team has 8 software developers.
Usually, the bigger the team, the bigger the problem.

