How moving to Okappy Increased Development Output by 20%

We have a confession.
As workforce management innovators, not all of our job management processes have always been up to par. Whether you call it a case of the “cobbler’s shoes” or “builder’s backyard”, we weren’t taking enough care of job management processes in our own development team to ensure we were reaching our potential.
Giving the best customer care and providing a professional service with minimum disruption are top on our list of priorities. But falling behind schedule on app improvements wasn’t exactly going to put us in the best position to do those things. So, we did some navel gazing.
Realising that if we truly believed in the power of Okappy we’d be using it ourselves, we took the plunge. We followed in the footsteps of our customers and embarked on our very own journey of using Okappy in-house to manage our development team’s activities. Richard Harris, CEO and Founder, and Robin Spinks, Lead Developer share their experiences of the journey so far.

Richard (Director): “We were using a Google Sheet and it was becoming unwieldy and difficult to track what was going on. We realised that we could be using our own product to help manage work streams within the development team. So, we tried it and found that it works really well for issues-tracking and book-tracking.”
Robin (Senior developer): “Google sheets was very slow and inefficient. I was getting frustrated by the amount of dates entered manually with mistakes, a lack of space and flexibility, and the inability to attach documents to issues, such as crash logs or images and videos showing issues in effect. It just seemed much more sensible for us to use our own product which was saving our customers so much time and money!”

Richard: “We do a kind of weekly sprint. We’ll work out what goes into the sprint on a Monday morning and then Robin, our lead developer, will work on those pieces throughout the week. Each morning we’ll revisit what needs to be done, assign the jobs to Robin and mark them by a high, medium, or low priority. Then, Thursday morning, it’ll go into testing with a view to releasing Thursday night. For every update, we can see the status in real-time with time stamps when each job is updated and by whom. It’s just a really easy way to keep track of everything!”

Richard: “The most common issues included:

• Difficulty tracking jobs
• Lack of control over what was changed and by who
• Complicated way of documenting job details
• Convoluted filtering process

We ended up having thousands of rows in any one sheet. We could filter things, but then if someone else made a change, it would mess up the view and appear in the wrong order. The cells contained too much text as we’d try to keep the history in each cell. It became overwhelming and hard to navigate.
The Google sheet contained over 3,000 requests and, so, version control also became an issue. It was difficult to see who had made a change. We’d manually put in the initials, date and time. Sometimes we’d forget or accidentally delete information in a cell.
Before we could actually start looking at each feature and issue, we were spending time trying to work out whether we were all accessing the correct data on Google Sheets. With Okappy, this all happens automatically so we don’t need to think about it and can get on with the work that much quicker. ”
Robin: “It was large, slow and felt heavy. I was constantly fiddling with the filters; trying to make it possible to quickly show what I wanted, but I had to check each one every time I used it, which negated any benefit!”

Richard:

Filters

“We have a filter called “Jobs for today” and so straight away we have a smaller list which we can all see. We can also filter on words a lot more easily. For example, if we’re talking about Android we just type in “Android” in the filter, and straight away we’ve got a list of all of the outstanding Android jobs.”

Job statuses

“Once the job is completed we can mark it as complete. Straight away, we can see all the issues that are going to be in the current release, so it’s easier to track. Then we can archive them once they have been released. This way, we’re keeping the spreadsheet or the amount of data a lot more focused. With Google Sheets, either we would delete it, in which case it’s lost, or change the status – which means an ever expanding spreadsheet. With Okappy, it only shows the work that’s live.”

Adding jobs on mobile

“I can add and see jobs on my phone when I’m out and about. Or if I’m not on my computer but have a thought about something. I can quickly open the app, view a job and it’s status, then update it and add videos and screenshots if I need to. With Google Sheets, we’d upload an image into Slack, copy the link to the image and then put that link into Google Sheets. Whereas, with Okappy, you just upload the document straight into the job.”

Richard:

1. “We see what the customers see

We can empathise better with what the customer is experiencing as we are experiencing it too. It lends weight to the feedback we get and it even gives us new ideas!

2. Keeping track of tasks

Adding tasks for developers is more streamlined – any book that gets highlighted or a feature request, we add it in as a job. We can quickly filter down to the key issues and features that Robin, our lead developer, needs to look at.

3. It’s easy to order and group tasks

This helps us out a tonne with our prioritisation of work. We’re no longer faced with an overwhelming spreadsheet of never ending work. We can group tasks into quick fixes or longer sprints – helping us stay organised overall. ”
Robin:

1. “The audit trail

Okappy jobs keep a changelog, so you can see exactly when an action was performed or an update made – and who by.

2. More flexibility

Okappy enables multiple job types, so you can list all your work in one place or filter by job type – quickly.

3. Better visibility with the calendar

It’s so easy to switch the view in Okappy so you can see what’s coming up, or what you just did, or what you have later today.”

Richard: “We raise our invoices in Okappy for our customers which show up in their invoices received. It means we save a lot of time not having to print and manually send invoices. We also use Xero so the integration with that saves duplication and effort.
Okappy also integrates with our CRM and customer facing case management systems which means we don’t also have to update them.

Richard: “We turn around features more quickly. The volume of work (betas and issues) completed has increased by 20%. Using Okappy to manage it all has also improved the quality of work because it’s so much easier to see what’s going on. It allows us to test more effectively and have a more comprehensive understanding of the information we input. We spend less time in meetings. In the past our daily standup would be an hour – now it can be 10 minutes!”
Robin: “Sometimes Richard has meetings in the morning, so he goes through the jobs marking those he feels should be looked at that day. I then pick and choose from that short list. Completed jobs regarding fixes or features that have been released can be archived, which means that, while I can still bring them up if I need to, they’re out of the way, so the only jobs I see are current. The most notable change for me is that I have a less stressful job!”
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Well, we don’t know about you, but we certainly feel better getting all that off our chest! Ok, confession time is over. Using Okappy in-house has dramatically improved efficiency for our team and meant we were able to better empathise with our own customers. What more could we ask for? Nothing… except perhaps, for you to join us in the journey.
Okappy Portal+ is here to help bridge communications, not only between people within the company but, between your company and it’s subcontractors and external parties. Interested in finding out more about how Okappy could work for you and your team?