I'm Shawn, one of the ididwork.com founders. We'd like to know what you think about the service. Please leave any feedback here or email us at feedback [at] ididwork (dot) com.
On the agile projects I have worked on, you had to micro-manage yourself by updating a burndown daily (a spreadsheet of granular tasks and hours). I could see you making developers happier (and selling to Agile shops) if you could somehow automatically update a burndown sheet for them (based on their tasks). Managers love agile because it delegates accountability; developers hate it for the same reasons.
The only concern I have is, I might not want to give details to somebody on the tasks Im working(since the projects whatever I do in my company are confidential). This could be a genunine problem for most company employees but for personal tracking its great.
EDIT: Same concern over rescuetime which sends all the corporate urls to thier server?
I'm the other cofounder. That's something we're working to alleviate concerns for - we've added hackersafe and verisign (and truste's on the roadmap) so the data is secure and the session is encrypted. It's definitely something we want our users to be comfortable with, and something we're working on.
You probably want to be careful about how you word "we've added HackerSafe" to corporate customers. I will say the following things:
* "Off-the-shelf" scanner-based certifications are not held in uniformly high esteem by companies with IT security groups.
* HackerSafe just won the Pwnie award at Black Hat for "Lamest Vendor Response".
* Talking about how you have a security SDLC, code reviews, and secure architecture will offer much bigger warm fuzzies to customers.
Also, avoid blanket statements like "so the data is secure". Marketing 101. If you're going to invite objections, make sure they're objections you want to deal with, not ones where you'll eventually have to concede.
People buy into Hackersafe for many reasons, including the fact that a Hackersafe badge and customer link will boost your Google pagerank (this was the case last year, but google is always improving).
Also the little green badge does slightly improve conversion rates for marginal and otherwise unknown ecommerce sites.
So Hackersafe can be some good marketing, even if it's rather a joke from the standpoint of what they check for (if you fail their scan, you really fail; passing tells you little).
My bad, forgot I was talking to the hacker news crowd. The point I was trying to make is that we understand that it's a trust issue, and we're taking the steps we need to get that trust.
Right. But my actual concern was not that a middleman is snooping, but the concern of giving the data to ididwork.com. Its not that data is not secure, but I think companies might be just simply paranoid(for no reason maybe). A hosted solution within thier control might be one of the solutions. Again, might be people are ok with that and its just my thought.
I think this is something that can be solved with trust and good customer service. Too many times people look to the technological solution because thats what they know. But people give sensitive information out all the time. If they trust you and know who you are and know you've got their back, they'll be more than willing to work with you.
Having the customer host a complex web application is likely going to be less secure then a hosted solution.
Consider the customer has to manage the code, applications that support the code (mysql, apache), manage the web server, and manage the physical security of the web server.
Absolutely, and corporations will never in a million years understand that, and they're willing to pay ten to twenty times as much for a "secure" internally-installed app (when you include the price of hardware, consultants, etc.)
This is the standard concern with any SaaS solution, from Salesforce.com to hosted Gmail to Mint.com to QuickBooks' online offering. We get the objection at RescueTime less often than you might think. When it comes down to it, data about what you did as an individual (whether it's Twitter-like or a passive recording of window/tab titles) isn't THAT valuable/scary.
It's probably likelier that you'd have a disgruntled tech/admin do something untoward with the data on a local version of the app.
Don't worry, there are sister sites to help you out. Once you get fired for breaking your contract and divulging project details on the Internet, you visit ineedalawyer.com and later on, ineedajob.com
1- No need to login to use. Add Twitter support << @IDW finishing presentation.>>. Add SMS support << 41411 IDW spent 2 hours playing basketball>>.
2- Although being focused is good, it can be open to anyone as anyone can find a "use model" for it. eg students who want to track their progress throughout the semester (while using twitter).
1. We're looking to use other methods of input (im, email, etc) - not sure about using twitter since it's out in the public (whereas companies probably don't want that)
2. Yep. We're first focusing on companies because that's the one we're most familiar with. That being said, there's no reason a student couldn't use it the way it stands now ...
Potentially something to think about -- while I can't ever really see myself using Twitter for such, that's the second entrepreneur that I've known to have that idea recently.
It should just be a matter of synching things to an RSS feed, no? I can imagine that having other applications.
great idea guys this is definitely something people want.
i have a similar system, but much more rudimentary in place, i've got an email sent daily automatically to all teammembers asking them 2 questions.
what did you do today? how long did each task take you?
i hoped to do some reports but haven't done it since i must get the info out of the emails, so i was thinking on getting a webpage up where team members would update their work done, and now you just did it.
so thank you and congratulations!
just one thing, so now that we can measure the amount of work done, what about the quality of the results and the time it took to do?
oh, and what about what i need to do, maybe something like nowdothis.com could help...
Yep, we've gotten a lot of suggestions regarding 1) todo lists and 2) # hours a task took. We're trying to figure out the best way to do this since we're trying to preserve the simplicity of this site, while still giving users power options. Thanks for the feedback.
I could see myself using a tool like this for my freelance work which is usually 'task based'. I would probably use tags like 'paid', and 'unpaid'. It would be helpful if it had time element for tracking hours too.
Comments
I'm Shawn, one of the ididwork.com founders. We'd like to know what you think about the service. Please leave any feedback here or email us at feedback [at] ididwork (dot) com.
On the agile projects I have worked on, you had to micro-manage yourself by updating a burndown daily (a spreadsheet of granular tasks and hours). I could see you making developers happier (and selling to Agile shops) if you could somehow automatically update a burndown sheet for them (based on their tasks). Managers love agile because it delegates accountability; developers hate it for the same reasons.
The only concern I have is, I might not want to give details to somebody on the tasks Im working(since the projects whatever I do in my company are confidential). This could be a genunine problem for most company employees but for personal tracking its great.
EDIT: Same concern over rescuetime which sends all the corporate urls to thier server?
I'm the other cofounder. That's something we're working to alleviate concerns for - we've added hackersafe and verisign (and truste's on the roadmap) so the data is secure and the session is encrypted. It's definitely something we want our users to be comfortable with, and something we're working on.
You probably want to be careful about how you word "we've added HackerSafe" to corporate customers. I will say the following things:
* "Off-the-shelf" scanner-based certifications are not held in uniformly high esteem by companies with IT security groups.
* HackerSafe just won the Pwnie award at Black Hat for "Lamest Vendor Response".
* Talking about how you have a security SDLC, code reviews, and secure architecture will offer much bigger warm fuzzies to customers.
Also, avoid blanket statements like "so the data is secure". Marketing 101. If you're going to invite objections, make sure they're objections you want to deal with, not ones where you'll eventually have to concede.
People buy into Hackersafe for many reasons, including the fact that a Hackersafe badge and customer link will boost your Google pagerank (this was the case last year, but google is always improving).
Also the little green badge does slightly improve conversion rates for marginal and otherwise unknown ecommerce sites.
So Hackersafe can be some good marketing, even if it's rather a joke from the standpoint of what they check for (if you fail their scan, you really fail; passing tells you little).
My bad, forgot I was talking to the hacker news crowd. The point I was trying to make is that we understand that it's a trust issue, and we're taking the steps we need to get that trust.
Right. But my actual concern was not that a middleman is snooping, but the concern of giving the data to ididwork.com. Its not that data is not secure, but I think companies might be just simply paranoid(for no reason maybe). A hosted solution within thier control might be one of the solutions. Again, might be people are ok with that and its just my thought.
I think this is something that can be solved with trust and good customer service. Too many times people look to the technological solution because thats what they know. But people give sensitive information out all the time. If they trust you and know who you are and know you've got their back, they'll be more than willing to work with you.
"A hosted solution within thier control"
Having the customer host a complex web application is likely going to be less secure then a hosted solution.
Consider the customer has to manage the code, applications that support the code (mysql, apache), manage the web server, and manage the physical security of the web server.
Your data is safer hosted.
Absolutely, and corporations will never in a million years understand that, and they're willing to pay ten to twenty times as much for a "secure" internally-installed app (when you include the price of hardware, consultants, etc.)
All you really need is a way for companies to pay you and get a contractual obligation for privacy.
This is the standard concern with any SaaS solution, from Salesforce.com to hosted Gmail to Mint.com to QuickBooks' online offering. We get the objection at RescueTime less often than you might think. When it comes down to it, data about what you did as an individual (whether it's Twitter-like or a passive recording of window/tab titles) isn't THAT valuable/scary.
It's probably likelier that you'd have a disgruntled tech/admin do something untoward with the data on a local version of the app.
Don't worry, there are sister sites to help you out. Once you get fired for breaking your contract and divulging project details on the Internet, you visit ineedalawyer.com and later on, ineedajob.com
1- No need to login to use. Add Twitter support << @IDW finishing presentation.>>. Add SMS support << 41411 IDW spent 2 hours playing basketball>>.
2- Although being focused is good, it can be open to anyone as anyone can find a "use model" for it. eg students who want to track their progress throughout the semester (while using twitter).
1. We're looking to use other methods of input (im, email, etc) - not sure about using twitter since it's out in the public (whereas companies probably don't want that)
2. Yep. We're first focusing on companies because that's the one we're most familiar with. That being said, there's no reason a student couldn't use it the way it stands now ...
Potentially something to think about -- while I can't ever really see myself using Twitter for such, that's the second entrepreneur that I've known to have that idea recently.
It should just be a matter of synching things to an RSS feed, no? I can imagine that having other applications.
FYI, with Twitter you can direct message ("dm idw completed rought draft") so your tweet won't appear on the public timeline.
great idea guys this is definitely something people want.
i have a similar system, but much more rudimentary in place, i've got an email sent daily automatically to all teammembers asking them 2 questions.
what did you do today? how long did each task take you?
i hoped to do some reports but haven't done it since i must get the info out of the emails, so i was thinking on getting a webpage up where team members would update their work done, and now you just did it.
so thank you and congratulations!
just one thing, so now that we can measure the amount of work done, what about the quality of the results and the time it took to do? oh, and what about what i need to do, maybe something like nowdothis.com could help...
Yep, we've gotten a lot of suggestions regarding 1) todo lists and 2) # hours a task took. We're trying to figure out the best way to do this since we're trying to preserve the simplicity of this site, while still giving users power options. Thanks for the feedback.
I could see myself using a tool like this for my freelance work which is usually 'task based'. I would probably use tags like 'paid', and 'unpaid'. It would be helpful if it had time element for tracking hours too.
are you using it urself everyday now?