14Dayz Commentary Continued…
[Yesterday](http://www.premagination.com/2006/04/16/14dayz-commentary/ “Previous post”) I sent an email to Marko of 14Dayz with some feedback, and he’s already written me back. Here is his reply, followed by mine…
> Hi Drew,
> Thanks for your kind and honest remarks. You’ve made me curious, can
you tell me what line of work you are in and which role time tracking
you would want to play in that?
> > On 4/17/06, druish
> Hey Marko, thanks for getting back to me. After using 14Dayz a little bit I
> have a few comments…
>
> > You appear to have a different target audience than me, therefore I’m not
> sure you should pay me any heed, but what I’ve been looking for (and have
> yet to find) is a fast, lightweight, web-based time tracking solution that
> focuses around tags.
> Yeah, I’ve been wondering about a tag oriented tracker. But except for
the actual cloud, can you not do the same thing in 14Dayz by entering
tags in the description field? Or is this something you’ve tried? I
know the reporting is flexible enough to handle that.
> > That way I can create a fairly rapid and accurate
> description of what I spent my time doing while being able to perform some
> very interesting reporting at the end of the month. (Compare “development”
> to “research” to “planning” for example) I attempted to use categories to do
> some of this but of course my account is limited to five whereas I’d need
> hundreds. Now, 14Dayz has a rather different (traditional) and seemingly
> effective interface so I don’t know that you should pay any attention to me.
> I would still look to you, because there may be value in your ideas.
You’re right, we took a rather traditional approach Lawyers/Web
designers. Those fields we know best. But we can learn, we can adapt.
If you are willing to share, I’m willing to listen.
> > However, I CAN say 14Dayz isn’t quite what I was looking for in a time
> tracking solution, it was too rigid/organized/predifined.
> Errh, yes, I figured. Thanks for being up front about it.
> > Thanks for taking the time to read my commentary, best of luck to you and
> your company.
> Same to you, same to you! Thanks for your input.
> Cheers, Marko
> Met vriendelijke groet,
Again Marko, thanks for taking the time to read this. To answer your first question about my line of work, I am currently a Web Application Developer and Data Analyst, as well as an undergraduate student working towards a Computer Software Engineering Technology degree. I also do some occasional consulting on the side. I am currently looking at implementing a time tracking solution for work, and if it works particularly well then for some of my personal projects as well. I typically have several large projects that I am working on at a time, and I would like to track the time spent on each individual project as well as the type of work I was doing. In theory this should help me make better time estimates, (I’m horrifically bad about making accurate predictions) be able to provide more detailed information to the customer when the bill comes due, and satisfy my own curiosity. While I’ve always like the idea of time tracking software, I haven’t actually used one much, and so I’m not sure what the ideal implementation would be. However, based on some of the other systems I’ve implemented (GTD, PocketPC, and others) flexibility is key which is why I came up with the idea of tagging. I have found tagging to be a quick and easy way to capture a lot of information, and with powerful enough tools to provide a lot of value at a later time. As for time tracking, web development, and tagging, I foresee using tags to capture variouis bits of information, possibly including the basic type, (research, planning, implementation, deployment, etc) the technology, (asp.net, sql, css, etc) the technology specifics, (SqlDataSource, DataGrid, etc) and I’m not sure what else. Then, with a robust enough reporting engine (I do a lot of development work with Crystal Reports, Sql Reporting Services, etc so I’m pretty spoiled when it comes to reports) I can pull out all kinds of information, such as basic type for the customer, technology for making training/education decisions, technology specifics for time estimates, and more. Basically, I’m not really sure what I want, so I’d like the ability to just enter a bunch of stuff and make use of what parts I want down the road. Heheh, how’s THAT for a developers nightmare! (”I’m not really sure what I want”) I think there’s a Dilbert cartoon in there somewhere!
As for your other comments, I did try reporting on description and it’s not as powerful as I’d like. (Like I said, I’m spoiled.)
I noticed while playing with 14Dayz tonight that you’ve disabled PDF printing for the free version, unfortunately there are so many free PDF printers available that this is less an encouragement to upgrade and more of an annoyance. (I’m not advocating giving it all away for free, just maybe that part) The second thought I had tonight while entering test data for the report is that it would be really nice to have a default project and category specified so that a new entry would only require adding a description. Perhaps the default becomes the last used values? My last thought involves the pricing, which seems a little high. Time tracking doesn’t have the hosting requirements that something like Newsgator does, which I think should eventually be reflected in the price. (After the development has slowed down perhaps) Also, the current plans don’t appear to allow for retaining history, while I might only have two or three active projects I would like to keep record of all projects. (Billing issues can come up months later) As the pricing for the plans focuses around the number of projects, the number of categories seems to have been artificially limited to prevent using categories as pseudo projects which is certainly an issue but the bigger issue is feeling limited by the categories. I would much rather have three times too many categories than be constantly worrying about running out.
Anyway, thanks a bunch for addressing my feedback, 14Dayz already works great and I can’t wait to see how you grow it in the future. Cheers!
This entry was posted on Monday, April 17th, 2006 at 9:38 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I’ve discovered that developing software, like web applications is a learning process, a journey of mutual discovery between client and supplier.
Marko April 25th, 2006 at 4:01 am
Hey Drew, we’ve just addressed pricing as well. Go check it out.