Industry: Software Development, Mobile Development
JetBrains products used: Space
Organization Size: 50
Country: International
“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.”
— Anna Vinogradova, Chief Marketing Officer, AmberCore Software Ltd
Greetings!
My name is Anna Vinogradova, I`m the Chief Marketing Officer at AmberCore Software Ltd. My department is responsible for nurturing trusting relationships with partners and customers. Our business function is to spread the word about our company, to facilitate and form partnerships with companies that match our target profile, and to advocate our customers` interests during and after joint projects.
AmberCore Software Ltd. is a software company with Russian origins. We help other companies develop IT products. We especially enjoy working with startups because we get to apply all our skills as we go from developing and researching their initial ideas all the way to bringing their companies to the market. We always use a project-based approach and work as a single team. We`re convinced that this is the only approach that will allow the IT market to continue its rapid growth, and we want to be among the leaders of that growth.
We make use of a lot of data when developing product ideas. We like to immerse ourselves into projects and find elegant solutions to complicated technical challenges.
This approach requires a lot of organization to ensure that team members are always kept in the loop and information is systematized, but this has to be done without suffocating creativity and inspiration. JetBrains Space helps us bring different parts of the team together in a shared environment where we can discuss tasks in chat, and this helps us come up with new ideas.
Our programmers also use IntelliJ IDEA, PhpStorm, WebStorm, PyCharm, and Rider.
Have you ever noticed that software developers are very often just code writers, and that they don`t play a deeper role in projects? We wanted to change that – we wanted to really listen to the people who keep their fingers on the pulses of the most advanced technologies, and are always up to speed with the latest information. So we set out to look for a tool that would be powerful yet easy to use, that would funnel all project information into a single pool, and that would make it easy for developers to discuss their tasks with one another instead of sitting isolated in their repository. We tried different solutions. We spent a long time trying out Atlassian products. We even switched from self-hosted GitLab to BitBucket, because GitLab doesn`t have two-way synchronization with Jira. But it turned out that BitBucket and Jira weren`t what we needed.
Now we`ve settled on Space. A key feature in making the decision was its version control system that connects to the issue tracker. This really makes things easier for our team. We have loads of examples where this type of communication can benefit a project, like when a designer and a developer are discussing user journeys, and in the process they quite randomly come up with an ideal solution together.
Like I said before, we spent a long time working with tools from the Atlassian suite – Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket. We opted for the smoother, less cumbersome user experience of Space.
The way we work with customers didn`t change much. But there was one thing that we noticed – development team leads often used to have disagreements with project managers about matters like what tasks to work on, and this led to delays in decision-making which slowed down work on projects. Senior management would have to step in to help make decisions, and since the company was growing rapidly, this problem was consuming more and more of their time. To get around the problem, we gave team leads and project managers equal authority and autonomy to define areas of responsibility in projects. There were some difficult discussions and tense retrospectives at first, but now the problem is solved and there`s a definite spirit of partnership and cooperation between development teams. We now have separate, autonomous teams for each project.
We tried a variety of tools that all had their own advantages and disadvantages. None of them was able to bring everyone together on a single platform. Marketing went off into their CRM, and developers weren`t happy with synchronization between version control and the issue tracker. Then we gave one of our teams Space to try out... and you know the rest.
Within a few weeks we noticed that communication had become faster since we started using Space. Team members reported that they were actually enjoying entering tasks in Space, whereas in other systems it was an unwelcome chore. Everyone was finally communicating on a single platform. We moved the whole company over to Space and our expectations were justified. I think that ease of use and versatility were key factors in deciding to go with Space.
I`ll give you an example. This is a story about how we updated our logo. One fine evening the UX designer and I started thinking about a new logo. We came up with a few ideas but none of them were quite right... So we got our CTO over to have a look and give us some feedback, and it turned out that someone on his team had not just an idea for a new logo, but a concept for the whole website. They just didn`t know where to go with it. Next we got the CEO involved, and then everything got serious and had to be made perfect. Then things really took off. Everyone started contributing ideas to the issue, and we came up with sleeve patches and t-shirts, and some gamification ideas to boost our internal metrics. Now we`re putting it all into action. Our task tracker unexpectedly turned into a communication hub.
We got used to it very quickly. Creating and tracking tasks is really easy and intuitive.
We really need a Kanban board for marketing, and then I think it could replace our CRM. We`re really looking forward to it :) We`d also like to migrate our internal documentation from Notion to Space, to keep our knowledge base together with everything else.
I think we`ve got it all figured out. If you are going to publish anything, I`d like to read it on Facebook or on industry websites.
Our website: amberproduct.com
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.
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.
Joshua Bigoss, Director of Data Services, Ensign Services
My team could not have responded to the needs of our organization during the pandemic without the agility and precision that Space made possible. In 2020 my team and I had a lot of 12 hour days and 7 day work weeks. There were months of being woken up at 3 am by anxiety, stress, or fear for our residents and caregivers and the ever-changing needs of our organization. But I never once had to think about effective communication, collaboration, or availability and was grateful to have this tool.