January 2007
Peter Coppinger & Dan Mackey founded their company Digital Crew almost 8 years earlier and have made a living building websites, intranets and custom web-based solutions for clients in Cork, Ireland. At this point their company has a good reputation internationally and they
sell website components online.
However they found themselves up to their eyeballs in client projects.
Peter Coppinger says, "
Every Monday we held a meeting and discussed the current projects - reassigned tasks and set milestones. We maintained a large whiteboard separated into 5 segments - Active Projects. Upcoming Projects, Sales, Meetings and Billing.
The whiteboard was neatly organised and gave us a sense that we were organised.... but we weren't.
The meetings were taking longer and longer. We knew we needed a better system.".
March 2007
Peter and Dan spent some time reviewing and using project management software. Many are very expensive and all are overly complex. They wanted something intuitive that doesn't take time to learn and maintain. Something everybody in the company can use - not just the project manager.
Peter dreams of a software system that would basically manage a company. Call it a project management system, if you will - something extremely easy-to-use and generic enough that it could be used by all sorts of companies. He starts scribbling ideas on paper. In the morning he returns to work and the confused whiteboard overlord.
May 2007
Peter and Dan discuss the software they want to make almost daily now. And they have a name - Teamwork Project Manager (styled after TeamworkCMS - Digital Crew's bespoke website content management system).
A credos is set - "Project Management Made Easy!"
Peter and Dan are too busy with 'real work' to dedicate time to developing the product idea. But fate intercedes and a manager from a multinational client calls Peter to ask if he would have time to do a "simple" project management system. They want something extremely easy-to-use that would list upcoming and late milestones. This is the opportunity Peter has been waiting for. He eagerly tells the client about the software he has been thinking about making for a while and
the client agrees that it is exactly what they need.
Peter first reviews other popular project management systems to find out what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong. Although other Project Management solutions exist, they are all too slow, clunky and badly designed. None are what the client wants and Peter has in his head. He makes a list what he likes and dislikes and puts pen to paper designing the software.
While on holiday to visit his sister in Boston for 3 weeks, Peter shamelessly neglects holidaying to stay up night-and-day working on the 'Project Management System'. Dan, busy with other client work back in Cork, checks in every morning. Screenshots fly back and fourth but Peter is reluctant to show the software running "until it's ready". Dan, also passionate about the development of their first "real" product, provides a steady steam of encouragement and suggestions.
June 2007
The software is installed for the client. Peter nervously waits for their feedback. Will they love it or loath it? Peter checks back an hour later and the client manager has already set-up several projects, added staff, assigned tasks and milestones. Just then, the phone rings. The client manager tells Peter that
this is exactly what he was looking for. He was able to use it right off-the-bat with no instruction manual. Software, the way it should be.
August 2007
Dan works post-haste on TeamworkPM adding his fair share of sleepless-nights to the tally. The software is lovingly sculpted bit-by-bit with sometimes heated 'discussions' over items such as the color of a link.
Their mission is simple - to make the worlds most east-to-use, fastest and best Project Management System.
September 2007
Weeks of preparation. Servers are set-up. Database is optimized. Software continually improved. The promotional website is made. And finally the launched date is set.
October 2007
Everything is ready and has been tested a hundred times.
Teamwork Project Manager is launched on October 4th 2007.
Almost immediately, through their respective software development blogs, curious users start browsing the website and Teamwork Project Manager receives it first sign up within a hour of launch!
It's only been 3 weeks so far and the feedback has been great. We didn't expect the sales to start until at least the 30-day mark but we things are going better than expected. We believe we have a great product and we are now working hard on the marketing side of things.
Stay tuned to the blog. I look forward to updating this story.
Thanks for reading the story. So far we have had a great response and we are continually improving the software. We believe that our software lives up to our credos - "Project Management Made Easy". We want the software to be so easy-to-use, our own computer-shy mothers could use it (and indeed they do).
We are working extremely hard to deliver more features and continually improve TeamworkPM. Please
try Teamwork Project Manager for free.
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Comments [4]
Peter Coppinger aka Topper is a neurotic web monster who spends most of his chaotic life developing ColdFusion web applications when not drinking himself into a stupor and scheming his plans for world dominance.
