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by kenha
1755 days ago
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Interesting one. I might approach it by trying to understand it from the PM’s point of view, and see if there is an even better solution than Excel. These are some of the Qs I’ll ask: 1. How do you use Excel to track bugs? (Trying to understand his/her workflow.) 2. How does Excel solve your problems? (Understand what s/he likes about Excel.) 3. What are some of the things you wish Excel can do better? (Understand pain point) Part of this is also building trust, so the PM can see your workflow & use cases as well, and hopefully come to a conclusion that while Excel may work, it’s really not the best tool for the job due to manual data synchronization work, and maybe GH issue or JIRA would work better. I’ve also seen PMs enjoying using Coda as a complement to GH/JIRA to get a better picture to project overview. |
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Spreadsheets offer a lot to PMs that tools like GitHub, JIRA simply can't:
- Bulk editing quickly
- Very high information density for getting a "bird's eye view"
- Excellent keyboard command support for fast navigation
- Formatting capabilities to add metadata (using colors, bolds, etc.)
- Flexibility to easily add columns for ad-hoc analysis
- Control over what information to show (via hidden columns & row filters)
- It's a 'least common denominator' product that can be shared with others across departments without fuss
- Ability to make things "look pretty" to enhance the perception of your work
- Editorial control -- to shift dates & language based on the intended audience
In short, the data governance you get from systems like GitHub and Jira are fantastic for keeping things from getting disorderly. But with all due respect to them (GitHub CEO Nat Friedman is an investor of ours), people working with data in these apps need speed & flexibility that only a spreadsheet can offer.
It was for this reason that my company pivoted. We discovered that users preferred working in spreadsheets, but they tried (and failed) to integrate data from Jira, Salesforce, HubSpot, and others.
We set out to build the world's first spreadsheet that was designed from the ground-up for working with integrated data. We wanted to cut out the third-party integrations & field mapping headaches.
If you'll pardon a little self promotion, check out our product: https://visor.us
Or (newly) here on the Atlassian marketplace: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1226209/visor-flexibl...
Your data could ultimately live in Jira, but the PM could get the spreadsheet capabilities they need. Feedback and ideas welcome.