Startups Stack Exchange Archive

How to manage tasks in a small startup

We have started as a two men team and now we have 8 people working for the startup company. In the beginning we used to write down tasks in simple text file todo lists, later made excel sheets so we can have a status like done or pending.

But the more the company grows, we are strugling with the complexity. People are testing if the tasks are really done, we are setting priorities, we add deadlines. At one point we ended up with 5 different documents constructed from the same source, but in some there were extra columns, others had texts modified and took a long time to get this all back in one file.

Since we are in the 21st century, there must be some programs to make our life easier, but searching did result in a lot of different very expensive tools and webservices and we don’t really know what all that means or where to start.

Question in general: What factors of such software is relevant to consider? Which are relevant for a small startup? How can we adjust it when the startup grows more?

I am not sure my text is understandable, so in fact we need a program/webservice where we can manage tasks, maybe like this:

Example programs are very welcomes, but we really want to hear what is possible to be important so we can decide our selfes.

Answer 559

At 8 people, Trello can work pretty well. A Trello Board has a number of lists, each of which is made up of cards. You need to make sure everyone understands the meaning and purpose of each list, and the workflows.

It's a fluid system, and most importantly the card for a given feature just moves between lists (e.g. from Ideas, to Please Estimate, to In Progress, to Next Release Candidates, to Next Release Confirmed) adding information as it goes.

Using Trello also helps you later on, as you can refine the definitions and workflows very easily so that as, if and when you decide to move on to a more fixed structure ticketing system you already have a working specification.

Answer 574

Tasks? Team?

Asana baby!</em></p>

Check out the video ..

Ok so that wasn't detailed enough :P

This is what they say somewhere on their site: "With Asana, all of your work is in one place, so you can navigate, connect, and organize work information and conversations efficiently, without duplicating work or digging through email threads."

With Asana:

  1. Create, assign, and comment on tasks, so you always know what's getting done and who's doing it.
  2. Team's ideas, plans, files, and conversations are in one place, you’ll always know where to find the information you need.
  3. Flexibly group tasks, projects & teams. So Engineering, HR etc can all have their own conversations & projects going on.
  4. Assign each task to one owner, and add followers to keep other teammates involved, so that everyone knows who's responsible for something.
  5. See your teammates' tasks and priorities, see your individual tasks and priorities etc.
  6. Use hypertext to link to teammates, projects, tasks, and tags from any notes or comment field in Asana. Just use an @ and type the information you want to connect. You can add followers like that.
  7. Add tasks to multiple projects, e.g: Add tasks that require a handoff or work from two teams to both teams’ projects, so everyone can track progress, without duplicating information or conversations about the task.
  8. Create search views, e.g enter image description here

.. and so on. In upcoming versions I believe it will take your dog out for walks too.

More videos!

Get Started

Teamwork without email

Plan your day

Workflow with sections

Plan and run meetings

Capture ideas

Visualize goals

Team Transparency

GTD in Asana

Get your team on Asana

Asana for iOS

## Answer 560 - posted by: [JezC](https://stackexchange.com/users/87431/jezc) on 2014-08-30 - score: 0 I'd say that your problem is not the tool. It's how you're organised. My recommendation - go find an Agile Coach (e.g. a Scrum Master). They'll help you develop a culture of performance management, estimation and responsibility. The tool flows from the culture - not the other way. Adding a tool won't make things work better, IME. There's an old Techie adage about business processes: If it doesn't work with paper, it won't work any better just because you put it on a computer. ## Answer 561 - posted by: [blunders](https://stackexchange.com/users/216182/blunders) on 2014-08-30 - score: 0

Question appears to be more related to software than startups; meaning Programmers.SE would like be a better source for answers. If version control is the core issue and given the team appears to be okay using spreadsheet, you might try using Google Doc spreadsheets - and having a very well defined progress for making/requesting structural changes to the documents.

Reason I suggest this is that in my opinion, you should fix problems as they pop-up and not go searching for solutions you don't really need.

Atlassian JIRA is okay, though unless they've changed it's structure, everything as far as I recall feels like a bug report, which I never personally cared for.

Just keep things simple, and except that complexity is real and there are no silver bullets to make it magically go away.

## Answer 576 - posted by: [Tommy Otzen](https://stackexchange.com/users/4026382/tommy-otzen) on 2014-09-01 - score: 0

I would recommend Podio. It's an online web and mobile based project management system. I use it myself and it works very well for our small startup, we are five people. It comes with a lot of pre-packaged apps, all from software development, management, marketing, customer relations, you name it, they got. You can make it fit exactly what you need. You can also invite customers to see progress in software and give feedback or consultancies if you have a designer outside your office. It's free for 5 people or under, then you need to pay 9$ per month per user. The amount of time you can save, I would say it's worth it. It's the easiest and most customizable project management tool I've seen. Check out this video to learn more or go to www.podio.com. Hope that you find the right tool for your team!

Again, looking at your needs, it sounds like the right solution for you!

## Answer 1308 - posted by: [Esqarrouth](https://stackexchange.com/users/3055586/esqarrouth) on 2014-11-07 - score: 0 Our startup just went through this process and we made a list with pros and cons. We will soon make a blog post about it. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aUeGgK9Bx6siFzc0nIepJFb_QjOsUezDe31-KAbfvEM/edit?usp=sharing Sorry for the bad language and unorganized list. But basically, white good, orange maybe, red no. We used Redbooth for more than a year but we weren't using most of its features and we needed some place that was better for agile software development. We were thinking about Planbox but it was expensive and missed a couple of key features. It is a great tool but needs more development time. I believe it will pass all the other tools with time. We chose Trello, cause free, easy and good for small team agile development. Hope this helps someone ## Answer 6251 - posted by: [user3791372](https://stackexchange.com/users/4683214/user3791372) on 2015-09-03 - score: 0 There are loads of free software available which meet your needs perfectly: keywords to search for are: Bug tracker / issue tracker Issue management Project management Off the top of my head redmine which is free and fairly easy to set up will allow you to do this, and add modules to expand. Or, there is software being developed, then an issue tracker is fairly common to code management software. Gitlab is an amazing free code repository which allows for issues to be created and commented on, added to milestones etc. --- All content is licensed under [CC BY-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).