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Category : Fellowstream Development

Fellowstream’s Project System

Posted by at 10:41 pm

A few weeks ago, I showed you the first screenshot of Fellowstream ever, its ticketing system.  As Avalon Labs marches ever closer to a beta version of Fellowstream, we will continue to show screenshots of our beloved team management tool.  Today, I’m proud to give you a  sneak peek of Fellowstream’s project management system.

Of course, project management apps tend to have a lot of the same things, so some of the ideas you see under a project management view are no surprise: an all ticket view, milestone view, calendar view, closed ticket view, new ticket view, and updated ticket view.

What we do that’s different, though, is make this space for and about people.  The stream view (shown below) gives you an idea of who has been working on the project: the tickets they’ve closed, created, and modified.  This emphasizes in real-time what work has been done in a project.  (Click on the image to see it in full screen.)

Let’s say you want to know what everyone involved in the project is doing right now.  Just click on the “People” tab to the left, and see what we’re up to!

And one other thing you might notice above is that we’re including wikis built right into the project space.  A lot of project management tools out there separate task management from knowledge management systems.  We’ve found it’s much easier to store all of our knowledge – task lists AND ideas – in one space, and we’re betting you’ll like that too.

That’s it for the project space update.  As always, we welcome constructive criticism and feedback.  We’re hoping to run a closed beta of Fellowstream soon, and if you’re interested, send me a line: deborah AT fellowstream DOT com.

-Deborah Fike

Categories: Fellowstream Development

Fellowstream’s Ticketing System

Posted by at 2:41 pm

MetaLab Design finished skinning Fellowstream this week.  Although Jacob still has his work cut out ahead of him to finish Fellowstream functionality (say that three times fast!), I thought I’d give you guys a quick sneak peak at our first look ‘n’ feel of the tool.

For those of you new to our site, Fellowstream is both an individual task management system as well as a project management tool.  The idea is that day-to-day, you can manage your tasks, but on a higher-level, you can also see how project work is being completed.  This allows team members to not only manage themselves, but help work as a team to manage entire projects.  All users are required to show what they are working on, and all work must be assigned to a user, to ensure that all work to be completed is owned by an individual.

You can see from the top menu bar that Fellowstream is focused on a couple of key areas:

  • Fellowstream homepage, aka “The Stream”: This is where you see a daily stream of up-to-date information about what’s happening within your entire team.  It will be customizable so you can filter out all but the relevant information you want to see in real-time.
  • Workspace: This is your profile and list of things to do, whether it be finish up a project task, finish quick requests from other team members, or something you’re trying to remind yourself to look into later.
  • People: Everyone involved in your project, as well as their tasks and priorities (useful if you’re waiting on them for a dependency or just like to spy on people).
  • Projects: An overview of all the projects inside of your Fellowstream account.  It will have milestones, wikis, and all the other good stuff you’ve come to expect from top-of-the-line project management tools.

The basic unit of measure in Fellowstream is a “ticket.”  A ticket can show up in your workspace, in the profiles of your team members and also in related projects.  Below is the ticket preview for Fellowstream (click on the image to see it in full screen):

Note that the current structure has new comments listed toward the top of the screen.  I can also edit the ticket directly or see the comments that other team members have made.

Let us know what you think! I’ll keep posting screenshots of Fellowstream as Jacob continues to create the alpha version of Fellowstream.

-Deborah Fike

Categories: Fellowstream Development

That’s not Intuitive!

Posted by at 12:15 pm

When Jacob and I first brainstormed what Fellowstream should look like several months ago, we started the old fashioned way – by sitting down at a table, sketching on blank pieces of paper, and arguing until 1 in the morning.  The word “intuitive” came up several times, almost like a mantra.  “It’s gotta be intuitive…People need to intuitively move from their workspace to the project stream…What if putting that button in the right sidebar isn’t intuitive enough?

But what does “intuitive” mean?

Continue reading...

Categories: Fellowstream Development

Welcome to Fellowstream

Posted by at 10:42 pm

Welcome to Fellowstream, Avalon Lab’s online collaboration tool.

Like many projects we hope to help on the site, Fellowstream was born out of a real-world pain point. Up until last November, Jacob and I (founders of Avalon Labs) worked on a website aimed at selling the Torque game engine. The Torque team has a diverse set of personalities: a documentation engineer with a background in game design, a salesman who also works in the accounting department, and a hard-working 2D artist with a passion for GUI design. Some of us worked in Eugene, OR, while others were as far away as England and Australia. And all of us worked together as one cohesive team.

Multi-functional, multi-national teams can be a great asset. Diverse people hold diverse opinions so that the best idea can rise to the top. Best ideas lead to that killer web application, record-breaking charity drive, or most memorable client presentation. However, there are a host of costs to having a diverse team. You need to communicate across different time zones, maybe even oceans. (“Chinese team, prepare for a 3 am meeting again.) Everyone needs to understand each other to motivate and move the project forward. (“All we need are programmers, since they build the product. Why hire marketers”) And, of course, you need to coordinate everyone to a goal so absolutely clear, everyone is aiming at the same target. (“Sorry, I didn’t get that spreadsheet to you, Mr. Critical Resource. I guess that means the project’s delayed another two months.)

Fellowstream is our attempt to alleviate the above problems. We want to empower diverse teams to manage themselves to get work done. We want everyone to understand each other’s contribution to a project, as well as how to smartly manage their own. And we want to give people the tools to track knowledge so it can be easily shared across borders and boundaries.

Will we succeed? Start-ups are risky, but we believe in Fellowstream. If we thought the market had one comprehensive (but not overwhelming) tool to tackle these issues, we would have kept our Torque jobs. We see a need, and so we’re building this thing. What we aren’t doing, though, is building it in a bubble. In the course of alpha and beta work, we hope to hear from you about your experiences working with diverse teams. We hope to use anecdotes you give us to create something you might want us to. We can’t solve problems we don’t know exist. So the hotline is open if you can spare a moment: deborah [AT] fellowstream [DOT] com.

So thanks for coming to the site. We’ll post all sorts of Fellowstream development news here in the blog, as well as tidbits on project management, team building, and entrepreneurship. If you learn a little, great. If we can help you solve a team problem, even better. With conversation and a little elbow grease, we hope to be solving quirky process problems quickly so that you can go back to just “getting stuff done.

And because all work and no play makes for a pretty boring blog, consider this: every good endeavor deserves a theme song. Here’s ours, classic, but also classy and (pun intended) classical:

-Deborah Fike

Categories: Fellowstream Development