Hey friends.

Welcome to the small tech
podcast from Éphémère Creative.

I'm your host Raph.

And today we will be talking
about project management tools.

So the first episode, the intro episode
was kinda I could say stiff, but it

was a bit more structured than what
we want to bring to you in the future.

I think it was just first episode
one to write a draft and have

it properly like organized.

But it is supposed to feel a bit more.

Loose.

A bit more explorative and
more like a discussion that

you can potentially join in on.

It would be great to hear people ask
questions or contribute if you want

to, if you want us to talk about.

Something then definitely let us know.

We would love to do that.

But yeah, this this time.

We are going to talk about project
management tools, because if

you're going to build a digital
product, if you're going to build

technology, you need to do that.

And.

There's so many tools out there to help
you manage your work and organize things

and keep your people talking to each other
and coordinated and understanding who's

doing what and what was done when and why.

Even if you're working alone, it's
really useful and important to be able

to keep track of your own tasks, but
also your information and why you're

doing the things that you're doing.

So.

Let's talk about project management tools.

We have tried a few over the years.

And I have tried some
myself , in different contexts.

Yeah, so I kind of broke them down
into four different categories.

Thinking of a digital product
development, technology development.

We have used Asana and
ClickUp at Éphémère Creative.

I have used JIRA in the past.

I've also explored two others
called Linear and Height.

That I guess I say two others, because
I kind of think of them as similar.

Uh, And two more.

Uh, Notion and Coda.

The big project management tool is
a JIRA and very software focused.

But you can certainly use it for other
things the way I think about JIRA.

Is that if you're going to use JIRA, you
need a person whose job it is to manage

JIRA, not to do project management,
but just to make sure JIRA is properly

configured for what you want it to do.

I remember the first time I I jumped into
a JIRA project or into a JIRA install.

Which was...

a while ago.

And it was just so overwhelming.

There's so many ways to organize
things and do things and they

have their own query language.

So you can query your tasks
if they even call them tasks.

And.

It's it was it's wildly powerful software.

It is mind blowing to me.

It feels like its own sort of
machine that you can program against

and configure infinitely to do
essentially whatever you want.

But that is very overwhelming when
you're a tiny team who does not have

someone with the experience to do
that, or the bandwidth to do that.

Yeah, that was my impression of JIRA.

We used it for this
project many years ago.

But I never really fell in love with it.

We were using other
Atlassian tools at the time.

But.

Even though that
integration was really nice.

So you can integrate a JIRA with a
BitBucket and a Confluence and presumably

anything else that Atlassian has put out.

But it was just, it was a lot,
it was just a lot to deal with.

So yeah, I personally wouldn't
recommend it for small teams,

unless you have someone who's very
experienced with setting it up and

and you know how you want to use it.

Two next ones are Asana and ClickUp.

Which in many ways are
actually quite different.

But they feel like they're
targeting the same...

kinds of people in terms
of the functionality...

and the price range...

and I guess even just the
messaging around these products.

Though.

Maybe not completely.

So Asana is very focused on
it's very much task management.

And you group things by teams.

And by projects within teams.

And you can create templates for
projects and it's yeah it's pretty,

it comes out of the box with a lot
of the things that you would expect.

There are some reporting tools.

Though, I think the reporting
tools, if I remember correctly

on a higher priced tier.

So you might not have
that on the lower costs.

Not even just the free, like
they have a few different tiers.

If I remember correctly.

And I think it was free.

And I'm like pro and then
business, something like that.

We dropped Asana last year.

And basically our reason
for dropping them was that.

They aren't very friendly to tiny
teams from a pricing perspective.

Essentially.

We found the other tools
would price per user.

But Asana prices per like bucket of user.

So it's 5 users at a time or 10 users
at a time or 20 users or 30 users.

And so if you're in between 10 and 15,

Or whatever the tiers are, you're
paying for the higher chunk.

So if you've just got two people
you're paying for five people.

But that actually adds up.

It becomes fairly expensive
and there's ways to get around

it, but they're awkward.

They're not ideal.

Where it's you can invite someone
as a guest, so they're not

really on the team, but then.

It becomes weird to handle situations
where someone needs access, but it,

yeah, it's not great from a pricing
perspective, I didn't love it.

Though the tool itself is very nice.

It's very smooth.

But, like I said, it's very focused
on just like tasks and reporting.

You don't.

Put anything else really in ClickUp.

Sorry.

Asana it's just tasks and the
information around the tasks.

That brings us to ClickUp, which kind
of aims to be an everything tool.

It's all of the project management
information you might need.

ClickUp has its own documents system,
and it has its own white boarding

system and you can do tasks and you
can do reports and you can do all

kinds of different things in they're
all framed around project management.

So you're probably not going to do like...

their white boarding tool probably isn't
something that a designer is going to

use where they might want some additional
design tools, like stuff that you might

find in Canva's white boarding tool or.

Even Miro I think has more
sort of design options.

But if it's just about organizing
a project and brainstorming some

ideas around how you're going
to perform tasks, X, Y, and Zed,

Then it's great for that.

And having that whiteboard in your
project management context is great.

You also get access to Gantt
charts and other sort of ways

of displaying your information.

Which Assana limited per tier.

I'm sure there are some limitations
in ClickUp as well, but I felt like

you got a lot more out of the box
and most importantly, for us you

paid per user, you didn't pay per
block of users or bucket of users.

So that's why we switched to a, to
ClickUp and it feels like they're

constantly adding more features.

That seems to be their philosophy
where it's just like more features.

But perhaps not as beautifully
delivered as Asana or as fast as Asana.

Asana is real time stuff is wild.

Everything you see someone dragging.

If someone's dragging a
task around in a list.

Like you see them dragging
the task in real time.

It's very fast and very smooth.

Whereas ClickUp.

There's more lag it's real
time, but it's things...

take a little, take a
few seconds to update.

Maybe not when you're typing, but
if you're moving things around

and in a task list, then it does.

All right.

The other two that I find really
interesting and I explored a little bit.

But I didn't.

Actually try in much depth
are Linear and Height.

These are two very beautiful
very focused tools.

These seem to me...

they're very focused on
software development.

And so if the context of what you're
doing is software development, then

they're probably great choices.

In our case, there were a
couple of limitations that meant

that they didn't make sense.

Mainly I think both of them at the time we
were trying to use both GitHub and GitLab.

And I think it was that we were
using multiple GitHub organizations

or multiple GitLab organizations
or something like that.

And it was that wasn't supported.

I think it was, you had to
connect to a single organization.

Which just didn't work for
what we needed at the time.

So that's why I I went with a ClickUp
side note on that ClickUp does

integrate with both GitHub and GitLab.

So if you need to tie your stuff
into your code, your project

management, into your code.

You can create merge requests
and see commits tied to a given

task and that sort of thing.

So that's neat.

Linear and height both
seem to do that quite well.

Integrate with with the git repos.

So you can make sure that your
code is nicely tied to your tasks.

But they had that limitation.

They both seem to have additional tooling,
so you can tie into visual studio code.

So if you're a developer, that's
probably quite nice where you

can see the things that you're
working on directly in your editor.

They both seem to have very simple clean
user interfaces that I quite liked.

And I heard very good things from a friend
of mine about Height's support team.

Apparently they're very
responsive, very friendly.

So yeah, that's another nice thing.

Sorry, just to say one thing about
Linear, it seems to be the most

developer focused tool out there.

So if you're technical and you
want your stuff to work well with a

development workflow specifically,
that's probably the one year one

you're going to want to consider.

Finally, there's these two other tools
that I used to not think of as project

management tools, but really they are.

I used to think of them as
more like knowledge management.

But there's this like weird gray
area between project management

and knowledge management.

That is I feel like ClickUp goes into that
as well, where, they have their documents.

And.

Documents are the core of
everything these two tools do.

So it's Notion and Coda, and
both of them basically structured

the entire workflow around.

Documents.

If you want to build, for example a
backlog of tasks to work on for a project.

You would put that in a document called
backlog, but then in that document

you would create a table of some sort.

I forget exactly how Notion and Coda
make this work, but you can create

like a system of rows of things to
do with statuses that you can assign

to people like those are things you
can inject into documents and you

can reference them from other places.

And that's a thing that is really neat.

Coda, I think does this especially
well, from my brief test.

About six months ago.

Yeah, it was very cool.

What you could do with that.

All kinds of like automations.

It's kinda neat because you can
write around these things or you

can have multiple tables and one
in one document and build workflows

that, that feel more visual somehow.

So yeah, very cool.

For me.

I like thinking of project management
as sort of there are atomic units

of work that needed to be done and
need to be composed and organized.

And I might want to
reference them in a document.

But starting with a document as the sort
of top level thing that I interact with.

Just feels off for my brain.

But I know a lot of people
who absolutely love it.

So yeah, those are some some
of the tools that we have come

across that we have tried.

ClickUp is currently what we are
using and we're really happy with it.

It's a very flexible tool with
a lot of features that are not

quite as polished and clean as
some of the other tools out there.

But they're adding a lot and they are
polishing them as they come along.

Yeah, that's that was our choice.

If we were doing a more
focused, like a single product.

With a single.

Yeah, single git repo or organization on
GitHub or GitLab or something like that.

I really wanted to try Linear.

It seemed really lovely.

Very felt like a very
smooth way of working.

Yeah, I would give that a shot.

They're all interesting.

And they're all worth trying out.

Yeah.

Give em a shot.

Let us know what you liked.

We'd love to hear from you.

And yeah, we'll see you
in the next episode.

Don't forget to subscribe.

If you want to keep up with this
stuff, I've been your host Raph.

And remember, we all want to
do some good in the world.

So go build something
good out there, friends