electric_muse

This is right on the money.

One emergent use case is that teams who can’t get all the fields they need added to Jira end up going around it to do their work. (The qa team, for example, may not have leverage to get a whole bunch of checkboxes added that reflect their process). Spreadsheets then become a place where their work happens, and Jira becomes the place they keep up to date to “communicate” with others.

Hey, that means a lot. Thanks.

It does seem there are a lot of methodologies being used with the product. And agilefall does seem to be making a comeback. But a fair number just use it as a faster way to plan the sprints and run standup. (Vs in Jira)

The thing about “spreadsheets” is that they seem to be flexible enough to fit all the idiosyncrasies of how different teams work, regardless of methodology. I hope the product can save you time, frustration, and copy/paste drama.

I've heard great things about some of those tools!

The challenge is that many people working as part of bigger teams can't pick their own tools or really make a change unilaterally. So they need a way to make things work for them as part of a bigger structure.

A very high percentage of Visor users add custom columns to add context. This is data they create in the product that doesn't sync to Jira. So the workflow seems to go beyond unidirectional reporting.

It seems that no reporting tool is ever flexible enough to do that -- add custom columns to annotate, filter, and contextualize the report. Raw data is rarely "clean" enough and explanatory enough to just be exported into something for external consumption -- either via an exec or even externally to a different company (partner, client, etc.)

It was a two-directional affair for them. Not just about reporting to a spreadsheet, but also about be able to shift things around during a meeting and then "sync" back at the end of the meeting. So a lot of stuff that's hard to automate, sadly.

Ugh. Yeah, this is more common than one would hope. I met someone with a Masters in CS who worked at a public database company whose primary role was to keep the spreadsheet up-to-date with Jira data. What a waste of talent!

Really glad to hear it resonates. I hope it saves your team some time and makes things run smoother. Feedback is very welcome! There's an in-product Feedback button that submits right to our CRM / slack channel.

From what we've seen, it's a control thing. IT or execs want control & reporting. So they force everyone on Jira.

But then the people actually working day-to-day need flexibility. So they end up creating extra spreadsheets off on the side where they work, but those get out-of-date.

During broad pre-build research (even beyond Jira), we found that spreadsheets consistently shadowed the real data in SaaS apps -- ranging from Jira to HR software and everything in between.

The import should respect hierarchies from advanced roadmaps (e.g. initiatives). That was a whole project. It was launched in this release: https://support.visor.us/release-notes/11822-release

Yeah, huh? It's funny how everything in software comes eventually full circle. I heard monorepos and megaliths are making a comeback, too.

Thanks! Hope it saves your team some headaches and time.

That's a great question. We've thought about making CloudStore available sort of like a Supabase. We've been following their progress, and it's inspiring!

We haven't really tried CloudStore + other frameworks. That would be a fun experiment to try next. :)

Thank you! Hope it helps you and your team.

Thank you! We're very excited to be at this point.

Awesome! Let me know what you think.

WASM seems so powerful but I can't think of any popular products built with it. The fact that this post exists seems to confirm that. For now: mostly startups. Who is doing something at scale that leverages WASM?

History tends to rhyme, and there’s a lot in common with what we’re feeling today and the period of ~150bc in Rome.

- Wealth inequality growing

- Land ownership consolidation

- Populism

Here’s more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fall-roman-republic-i...

I've also recently heard of larger VC firms quietly (secretly) buying tech publications lately. There's a lot of value in the eyeballs -- perhaps also the narrative.

I've spent some time with Digital Ocean team members, and they're dead-set on having the best technical content on the internet. It's been a core to their growth strategy so far:

- Target long-tail searches -- queries where there may not be a lot of volume but also not a lot of competition

- Stand out with very good content (not just SEO filler)

- Build trust with the dev community

This is a time-consuming and expensive strategy. So acquiring large tranches like this makes sense.

While we don't see updates in this announcement, we may start seeing more because they're getting so much antitrust pressure [0]. Handicapping PWA support by not supporting push notifications works strongly against any arguments they would want to make about there being viable alternatives to listing in the app store.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2021/08/27/apple-a...

A spreadsheet that syncs two-ways with other SaaS apps (like Jira). Been working on something in this space for about 6 years, and it's really just started taking off.

https://www.visor.us

I can only imagine how this came to be: some ultra important type took a meeting without muting notifications. And the builder decided to parody it.

Honestly love this.

I think OP means even slower than the slowest setting. To be actually useful it should be more believable.

“You’ll own nothing and be happy”

https://web.archive.org/web/20200919112906/https://twitter.c...

Really taken to a new level

Thanks for the compliment!

Yes! You can copy & paste values in bulk and then sync back to Jira. So you could copy the "Blocked" status from one cell and drag it down to the others.

In the interest of trust and transparency, those changes don't get synced out to Jira right away. There's a Sync button you can press to apply those changes all at once.

Cells with pending changes have a little indicator on them. And you can always go back and revert your local (uncommitted) changes.

Definitely agree: come from a position of empathy for why the PM chose excel.

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.

> When changing the world or providing a service, languages/tools take the back seat. The founders of any startup don’t care what language you use to complete the goal.

As a founder, I have found that the tech stack choice does matter beyond just getting the problems solved.

When hiring, engineers have judged joining my company based on our tech stack. Not just about familiarity, some have outright said that it’s because they only want to learn the most popular and transferable skills.

When discussing strategic acquisitions, it also matters. Interested buyers (ie for an acquisition) have asked about our tools and languages. We are more valuable if our languages and tools are compatible / common enough to fit into their organization.

The variants — and their uncertain effect on immunity (natural or vaccine-induced) mean that herd immunity is not that helpful of a concept to track.

What matters are the data on infection rate.

Busses and delivery trucks are the most noisy and polluting! That doesn’t seem like the panacea you suggest.

But I’m not sure this is a widely held preference. Seems to be a vocal minority trying to impose their will on others.