Many software teams use services such as Github for collaborative coding. These services are a great help when it comes to sharing code repositories, collaborating on them together, and syncing developers’ efforts. However, project managers of teams using Github often don’t have special tools for keeping projects on track and reporting the progress.
LiveNinja solved this problem with a single ninja throwing star: they combined Github’s social coding environment with Wrike’s strong project management features. With the help of Wrike’s API, they now automatically transfer every task they create in Github to Wrike, allowing them to organize their work in a more productive way.
Let’s take a look at their smart solution!
Two Tools, One Up-to-Date Picture
LiveNinja builds and maintains a platform that allows users to find experts in any field - everything from cooking to law to graphic design.
Despite daily stand-up meetings, maintaining transparency with a growing team soon became a real pain. Team members couldn’t quickly review up-to-date plans and couldn’t always keep track of current priorities in ever-growing Github task lists. Besides, there was no smooth way to sort overdue tasks or tasks completed during a certain time period.
“At some point we realized that instead of a clear project picture, we just had a daunting list of never-ending issues,” says Emilio Cueto, Chief Technology Officer at LiveNinja.
To get their work more organized, the team started using Wrike as it had all the features they needed. And in order to avoid the redundancy of logging tasks in both tools, they used the Wrike API to unite both tools. Now whenever someone creates a new task, adds a comment or completes the task at Github, the changes are automatically reflected in Wrike.
How LiveNinja Benefits from the Integration
Here’s how LiveNinja’s project management changed for the better after integrating Wrike and Github:
1. Easy prioritization of bugs and urgent issues
Prior to integration, every new bug that was added to the already sizable list of bugs (each one needing to be fixed right away!) got labeled “Urgent,” “Priority,” or “Critical.” The list of all these urgent bugs had grown too big to handle in a standard list format within Github.
After integration, LiveNinja now tags all issues according to their importance in Wrike (e.g. with standard labels P0, P1, and P2), and then prioritizes each list. This way, they have a clear understanding of which bug to tackle next.
2. Instant access to an up-to-date roadmap
Wrike’s interactive timeline is irreplaceable for planning new features and important milestones. While the team’s manager creates dependencies between related tasks and quickly adjusts current plans, Wrike ensures the team is automatically notified about all changes.
3. Comprehensive insight into the team’s progress
Custom reports are a great time saver for Emilio Cueto. They enable him to sort any data he needs for evaluating the team’s progress in mere seconds using filters such as: completion date, particular team member, or tag (e.g. browser version, particular feature, etc.).
Suddenly, LiveNinja could look at their task list and Gantt charts and quickly find answers to questions such as: “Will this next release be on-time?” or “When is it feasible to start planning that new feature we have been talking about?”
In a nutshell, the integration allowed developers and project managers to enjoy the best of both worlds: the code collaboration platform of Github and the project management tools of Wrike.
Get the Code
If the integration code sounds interesting to you, you can get the files here. LiveNinja is open to any improvements to the code suggested by other Wrike users. And if you decide to use it, don’t forget to send a thank-you tweet or a Facebook message mentioning #LiveNinjaDotCom.
Thanks, LiveNinja, for sharing your code with the Wrike community and helping to make life better for other Github and Wrike users!
