I’ve come to realize that my career has been primarily about scratching an itch I have about strategy, process and problem-solving. I get a real charge out of designing a system to solve a problem.
This interest has been reinforced several times over the last few years. I read the E-Myth Revisited and The Pumpkin Plan, watched The Founder, and consumed business advice about scale from a variety of other sources.
I have become fascinated with building a business that can be scaled and replicated.
A New Role
Recently, I took over as Chief Operating Officer (COO) at my agency. I moved into this role precisely because of my obsessive preoccupation with process. Shortly after my agency True Voice Media merged with From The Future, I noticed my day to day activities changing. I began to spend more time thinking about and working ON the business.
One of my first actions during this shift toward moving out of client work and onto work building the business was the setup and deployment of a new project management software. We had been using a series of interconnected spreadsheets. While those systems had worked for us in the past, it was not scaling particularly well into our future.
Project Management software is among one of the more important tools that our agency uses. We settled on Asana as a solution and for more than a year now, it has served us well. It was an obvious upgrade from spreadsheets, which can be too linear but, we’ve reached a crossroads where it’s not enough to get us to the next level.
True project management software cannot exist in isolation without considering time-tracking and resource utilization. Further, what good is resource utilization if you can’t tie it together with your invoicing, or your estimates.
So, I set out to find our next tool. I wanted something that could do all of the things we needed, all while being easy-to-use in order to minimize transition time.
The Problem
There are many things that are important when designing a piece of software but the critical factor the ties everything together is simplicity.
In looking for a new PM tool, I found that there are a lack options that are both well-designed and feature-rich. It is apparently very difficult to do both.
Some of the tools are exceptionally well designed from a data management and features perspective but generally they look like Microsoft Word, circa 1997 with all the toolbars turned on. Alternatively, I can find tools with a gorgeous and intuitive UI…but it can only handle simplified versions of the management and reporting tools that we require.
So, what gives?
…
The balance between customization and control. The decision to add features or design the interface.
Customization needed to manage complex projects.