Industry: Software Development

JetBrains products used: Space, Kotlin, TeamCity

Organization Size: 10

Country: Czech Republic

Brightify

Brightify develops native mobile applications using Kotlin Multiplatform in various fields, from ticketing to automotive. They’ve started using Space to host their code and documentation and do code reviews.

“Our Code Reviews improved significantly and we’ve been able to leverage Space’s webhooks with TeamCity to build each reviewed branch and deploy it to our QA so the branch can be tested before being merged. It’s now also easier to track who’s out of the office.”

— Tadeas Kriz, CTO and CoFounder, Brightify

Personal information

I'm Tadeas Kriz, CTO and CoFounder of Brightify. I've been developing professionally for more than 10 years, using JetBrains tools throughout all that time. Currently I'm leading a team of developers working on Kotlin Multiplatform mobile apps. One of my responsibilities is to make sure the team has all the dev tools they need to succeed. I'm also trying out new technologies and processes to improve our workflow.

Company information

We develop native mobile applications using Kotlin Multiplatform in various fields, from ticketing to automotive. We enjoy helping startups from chiselling out the idea to deploying a product to users.


Challenges before adopting Space

What made you look for Space or alternative solutions?

We've been looking for a one-system solution for our software development process for a long time. We've been using Atlassian products for a long time, starting with Jira and eventually expanding to Confluence, Bitbucket Server, Crowd, and Bamboo. However, Atlassian's approach to new features (taking years to respond) made us look for alternatives. When Space was released in preview, we quickly jumped at the opportunity and started using it to host our code and do code reviews.

Did you consider any other solutions as an alternative to Space?

We were interested in trying Basecamp, but ultimately Space by JetBrains was the best because the integration with our development process is a great fit.

How was your collaboration process organized before? What areas or steps in your process were missing, challenging, or problematic?

So far Space has replaced:

  1. Bitbucket Server for code hosting.
  2. Upsource for code review.
  3. Sonatype Nexus Repository OSS for Maven package hosting.
  4. Excel/Calendar for absence tracking.
  5. Confluence for project-specific text documentation (see below for other resources).
  6. Single channel in Slack for All-Hands Meeting notes (we use blog posts in Space now).

What we hope Space will eventually replace:

  1. Confluence/Wiki for company-wide documentation and meeting notes
    • Needs improvements in the Rich Text editor like WYSIWYG for tables and images.
    • More detailed permissions settings for documents and folders would be great.
  2. Jira/YouTrack for issue tracking
    • We need more robustness and plugin support.
  3. Slack/Quill for chat.
  4. Google Calendar for personal and shared calendars
    • Needs support for adding external calendars, and Google Meet/Zoom integration for calls.
  5. Google Drive for project resources
    • Designs, sounds, fonts, invoices, time report exports, and other resources we want to keep track of for each project.
  6. Toggl/Harvest for time tracking.
  7. Discourse/YouTrack for Knowledge Base / async discussions.
  8. TestRail for test management.
  9. Jira Planning Poker for story point estimation.
  10. Excel for project planning (gantt charts, resource management).

I don't expect all of that will be part of Space, but hopefully through plugins it may come as integration with other tools.

Why Space?

Why did your team decide to use Space?

We love trying new things and then see if they improve our workflow. Space did, so we kept using it.

What key benefits do you get from using it?

It's already replacing other systems we’ve been using with a single solution. Once the On-premises version is available, the benefit is in hosting and maintaining fewer services and spending less time on ICT.

Have you solved the issues you have identified in your process with Space? What has changed?

Our Code Reviews improved significantly, and we’ve been able to leverage Space's webhooks with TeamCity to build each reviewed branch and deploy it to our QA so the branch can be tested before being merged. It's now also easier to track who’s out of the office.


Feedback

Describe your experience during the adoption period. Was Space hard to get used to?

Some parts of Space were easier to get used to, like the Code Review functionality, which is amazing. The UI/UX can be cumbersome at times, but overall we got used to it without major difficulties.

Is there anything you would like to be improved in Space (any important features that are missing, usability problems, etc.)?

The issues are too simple for us to use and we'd love tighter integration between Space and YouTrack.

However, the chat has been a pain point of our Space usage. It's nice to have everything in one place, but the chat just doesn't feel right for my team.

Would you like to learn more about the features that Space is equipped with? If so, how would you like to do that (blog posts, Twitter tips, educational videos or webinars, etc.)?

JetBrains' blog posts are always a great source of information and I read them regularly. I prefer the blog posts over the videos and webinars, because I can read them at my own pace. Twitter tips are cool, but I try to use Twitter during my downtime so I'm not focused enough when reading them.

Contacts

tadeas@brightify.org, @TadeasKriz on X, or brightify.github.io website

Similar Customer Stories

AmberCore Software Ltd

Anna Vinogradova, Chief Marketing Officer, AmberCore Software Ltd

Communication has become faster since we started using Space. I think the deciding factors in choosing to go with Space were its ease of use and versatility.

Makery

Andras Kindler, Co-Founder, Makery

Rather than using a multitude of individual tools, we’ve always preferred integrated environments. We started looking for a new digital home, and when we heard about Space at KotlinConf, we really liked the concept. So we decided to sign up.

Instil

Garth Gilmour, Head of Learning, Instil

When the social distancing restrictions were introduced in March 2020, we needed a tool that would let us collaborate online with students as part of virtual deliveries, and Space was the obvious choice.

More customer stories