Once in a while someone will ask us why we decided to create OnePlace, especially when you consider the number of other online tools that are available today for helping manage your projects and tasks and for collaborating with others. We have a pretty standard response to that question that I thought would be fun to share in this blog.

When we started Riverock Technologies in early 2007, we didn't go into business thinking we would create OnePlace, or anything like it. As is common with startups, we actually had a completely different idea in mind, for a problem that we had bumped into in our past and for which we saw no compelling web-ware (SaaS) offering on the market. I'll keep the idea under wraps just in case we ever circle back around to it :-)

So, we began making the requisite plans to get that idea off the ground. As we dug in, we quickly realized we needed some help keeping track of all the little things that we needed to do to keep pushing the ball the forward. We needed a tool for managing all the projects and tasks we were creating for ourselves.

Being the web-ware aficionados that we are, we quickly looked to the Internet for a solution. We were already familiar with 37signals due to an appreciation for their philosophies on building user-friendly software, so we decided to try their project management application, Basecamp. I'll start out by saying that Basecamp is a nice tool which provides a good solution for teams whose work style and needs align with the type of business that 37signals originally designed that application for. This article is not intended to be a slam on that solution, but merely to present justification for why we built OnePlace.

As we tried using Basecamp to manage the complexity that was quickly developing in our work plan, we discovered some things that left us wanting. Probably the biggest thing that was missing for us was the ability to create hierarchical projects. Being software engineers, we live and breathe details, and have an innate need to break work down into small chunks that we can estimate with some degree of accuracy. Basecamp doesn't support hierarchical projects, and as a result our nested project plan turned out flatter than bread without yeast.

Once we put a fair amount of our project plan into Basecamp, we soon ran into another problem. What should we work on next? We had this big wonderful pile of tasks, yet there was no facility built into Basecamp for allowing me to easily know what tasks I should work on today, tomorrow, this week, etc. As I completed a task, I found myself always going back to the pile and sifting through it looking for the next thing to work on. Other members of my team didn't have good visibility into what I was working, so we still found ourselves holding too many status meetings to get everyone on the same page.

After a few weeks of living in Basecamp, we realized it wasn't the right solution for us, so we went on the hunt for another project management solution. We looked at several others, but the ones we found at that time didn't seem to fit the requirements we realized we needed for one reason or another.

As mentioned earlier, we are software-engineers, and what do software-engineers do when they can't find software they need? That's right, they build it. So, we decided to shelf the other idea in order to build "me-ware" (i.e. software that lets us manage projects exactly the way we wanted to manage them).

Each of us at Riverock has over twenty years of enterprise software experience, and has used lots of tools for managing projects and tasks. One shortcoming all these tools shared, was that they were only ever used in the office. As we thought back, we realized we always used a different tool/system to keep track of personal projects and todos. The two systems were never connected. This meant we were flipping between systems in order to keep on top of ALL our commitments (not just the ones at work). Our requirement with OnePlace from the very beginning was that it had to work for all facets of life. We wanted one place to keep all our commitments, all our notes, all our files, all our conversations...the list goes on. No tool that we found on the market gave us this.

Another thing that was a biggie for us, was having a way to know what we should work on, not what we could work on. We wanted to put the control for managing one's work schedule into the hands of the people doing the actual work, since they are the ones who know best when they can get something done. The shortcoming of all the PM tools we used over the years, is that they were designed for the people building the project plan, not the people doing the actual work. As a result, the "doers" fought and gamed the system, leaving the "planners" with a project plan that never seemed to be up-to-date or accurate. Planners dictated when work needed to be done (project and task deadlines), but there wasn't an easy way for the doers to manage their task assignments according to when they were available to do the work. We felt it was very important that OnePlace allow the doers to schedule when they could to do work, while still being cognizant of when the work needed to be done.

Something else near the top of our wish list, was the need to have access to our information no matter where we were. Because everyone on our team has outside commitments, and work hours are not strictly 9-5 in the office, we needed a way to get at our information using the little computers we carry around all day long (cell phones). Right out of the gate we built a mobile user interface for OnePlace that was tuned for the kinds of activities we needed while on-the-go and away from our laptops.

Some other needs that led us to create OnePlace include:

• Having a rich user interface that feels more like a desktop application than a traditional web application.
• Incorporating elements of the Getting Things Done (GTD) philosophy.
• Providing teams with a more effective way to collaborate than just email and file attachments.
• Helping the individual team member stay informed of changes that happen on a daily basis.
• Combining together what we feel are three critical areas of functionality for helping teams and individuals maximize their results - group collaboration, project and task management, and personal productivity.

Here we are nearly two years later, and our understanding of the market and our vision for OnePlace has grown. One thing that has remained constant over this time is our passion for solving this problem. We're hard at work right now planning (in OnePlace :-) for ways to make OnePlace work even better for the diverse range of teams that are using it today. The motivation continues on...