I completed 5 years with Apps Magnet on August 11, 2014. The journey so far has been absolutely awesome – the years passed so quickly, it’s hard to believe it’s been 5 years already!

The other day I was remembering “old” days, and was excited recollecting these five years of togetherness.

Today, I am taking this opportunity to share my journey with you. There are lot of personal details here that I’ve never shared, and I am not a gifted writer. At times this may sound too much “I”, but bear with me as I pour my heart out!

My “mantra” has been “Better Everyday” – this is something I learned in school and carry to the day.. (By the way, I and Nirav went to the same school albeit a few years apart!)

Let me give you a little background. I am from Palanpur, a hot small northern town in the state of Gujarat, India. Palanpur is famous for its diamond merchants, rich heritage and now also Pranav Mistry (of SixthSense / Samsung Galaxy Gear fame). After my studies in Palanpur and later my engineering degree, I came to Mumbai in 2009 for a job. I was young and naive, and quite clueless about the “software industry”.

My first job lasted for two days. In my hometown I once dashed on my bicycle from one end of town to the other in under 15 minutes, and in Mumbai, it’d take me 1.5 hours to get to my workplace and equal (if not more) time to get back home.

I’d met Nirav before taking up the job.. He’s married to a not-so-distant cousin of mine! And I’d done my internship with his company when they had an office in Ahmedabad. When I met him in Mumbai, he showed me the kind of work he was doing on activeCollab. He showed me the Reports module for activeCollab, and I was impressed.

So when he checked back to see how my job was going and if I could join Apps Magnet, I immediately quit the “arduous travel job” and picked up moonlighting with him instead!

Early days…

Yes, those were the early days of Apps Magnet. Nirav took care of the existing web development services business during day, and we paired up at his home during nights to work on activeCollab products. During the days, I studied activeCollab, carried out my assignments, and it was the 3-4 hours in night we brainstormed, evaluated opportunities, and discuss what products we could create to solve real problems.

acGarage – my first main product!

acGarage – Automatic update of activeCollab – was the first product on which we worked and I still remember, we released it at 5 AM after working overnight ironing out bugs and making tweaks. It was a thrilling experience that started a series of new adventures!

We built many products after that – Tickets Plus, Time Reports Plus, Assignments Plus, Communications module, Confidential Items… Every product was an opportunity to learn, a chance to contribute to the community, and to get satisfaction of building something that helped people.

All in all, I worked on 45 activeCollab products, 4 WordPress plugins, 2 Magento extensions and 50+ customization projects.

I remember that I was scared of touching a client’s server; or even responding to a query. I was always “behind the scenes”: did research, fixed issues, wrote code.. And Nirav generally took care of client interaction. I overcome that fear and started taking small steps. I started replying to questions, then started working on client customizations or fixes and then handling most of day to day work now.

Over these five years, I must have interacted with nearly 130 customers personally. Probably 1000+ on support tickets. And honestly, I’ve been blessed to work with some great people.

People like Brad & Tracy from Geodelic, Grif from Blackstone Media, Nathan Sudds from activeLabs, Maxim Mathew, Federico Soto, Abdul Karmach and many others have been phenomenal.. Each client interaction has taught me something!

In Bangalore during a conference + leisure trip

Learnings went beyond technology though. I’ve learned a lot about product development, business… I’ve expanded in all areas of life.. (Ok, I’ve even put on weight, but let’s skip that bit for now!)

When I started, I was shy and timid. Today, I am free to share. I’d give a lot of credit for this to Landmark Education too though. This non-linear education really helped a lot. I did the complete curriculum – Forum, Advanced Course, Self Expression and Leadership Program, and even Being Extra Ordinary Seminar… It’s always given me a push forward.

Especially with teams. It was only me and Nirav in Apps Magnet initially. Then a small team of 4 people. But with Store Apps and Putler teams together, we were 15 people and all that I learned in books, seminars and observing others became extremely valuable. I took on all new things as opportunities – leading sprint meetings, taking tech sessions for the team, solving problems for others… And it’s been greatly fulfilling…

Diwali celebrations in office

Together, we’ve celebrated Diwali, Christmas, birthdays, outings, many special days, and not to forget the so many “Fun Fridays“. (A Fun Friday is an evening of fun and games – competitive at most times, extremely enjoyable, and at times we give a hard time to the coordinator, but always memorable!)

Boys with Bands – on friendship day

Team outing to Imagica amusement park

There were obviously “not-fun” times. The toughest times for me were when we were transitioning to activeCollab 3. We were porting all our activeCollab 2 products to activeCollab 3. That involved a lot of work since we have a large portfolio of products. New activeCollab versions were coming out frequently, and there were a ton of compatibility issues. Customers would complain if a new release broke their activeCollab. Our days went fixing problems, learning new tricks, supporting clients, and then also working on migration. It took almost a year for things to stabilize and gave us all a hard time!

If I look at the positives, there is always an opportunity to learn in tough times.

Our joint activeCollab 3 Bootcamp Webinar with Nathan Sudds, Guy Cortesi, Willem Nieuwboer was very well received. Customers also embraced our migrated products and thankfully activeCollab 4 was not a major shift from activeCollab 3! We even automated a lot of processes and worked on better planning our release cycles. We put up compatibility charts, stayed in communication with the community and kept working hard.

And I also started learning WordPress and development outside activeCollab world! The main reason for this was the hackathons we organized though. I took on creating “Hack Battles” in the organization and in little over a year, we’ve done 5 successful Hack Battles. We’ve worked on 25+ products during these hack battles, and over 10 from these have already made it to public. Our new ventures like Icegram, Klawoo, Putler connectors and new Store Apps products were all born in these hacking competitions!

Hacking hard during 1st Hack Battle a year ago

Winning a prize in Hack Battle

Another battle that I conquered is getting married! (Ok, not exactly a battle, and if I were to believe others, a marriage becomes a battle after few years, but it’s just been a year to my marriage!) I married Mittal last year and we’ve had a beautiful year!

Wedding pic, with Mittal

Just last month, I and Nirav ran a 10 kilometer race together. Completing 10k within the cut-off limit for a marathon was a major victory, because the only practice I had was 3 days of light running during previous week – where I did more walking then running. Completing 10k taught me the importance of perseverance. And I’m now pushing colleagues to run with me!

After a 10k run with Nirav

In retrospect, these five years gave me lots of opportunities, challenges and breakthroughs. We learnt together, we laughed together and we toiled together.

I am thankful to Nirav for his continuous support and leadership. To my family for their stand and love. To my colleagues who are always supportive and have created a great culture to produce breakthrough results. To my friends who contributed to my overall development and partied with me!

And I am thankful to all customers who put their faith in us, worked with my limitations and showered their compliments.

I continue walking towards “better everyday”.

With love & respect,
Malay Ladu

Better Everyday!

Now, question comes up:

“Why should we track our time?”

We feel that tracking time spent on tasks is almost as important as the ability to manage tasks in the first place. Knowing how long it takes to complete a task or a project aids in the overall planning of a project and ultimately, the success of that project.

Here are 5 reasons why should we track time.

1. Accurate Estimates

Good historical data on actual time spent will allow you to greatly improve your ability to estimate tasks and projects, and gain credibility on those estimates you provide to management and prospective customers.

2. Accurate Delivery Dates

With accurate estimates, your chances of delivering projects on time increase greatly.

3. Easy Re-estimation Of Open Tasks

As you track your time, effort remaining will automatically decrease, thus keeping your schedule accurate and up to date.  (That being said, we recommend that you review estimates and correct them  for accuracy if necessary.)

4. Projects Start Dates

Based on how your current project(s) are tracking, you not only have much better insight on when you can start something new, but also if you need to re-prioritize or reassign work.

5.Manage Costs

If you know where your employees are spending the most time, you will find it easier to make decisions about how to make savings or deliver the solution faster. For example, if support time  is consistently high on a project, it might be appropriate to look at what other options are available instead of having valuable, highly-paid people on the support instead of focusing on completing the requirements of their day job.

Time tracking might be an awkward subject to bring up with the team, but in next blog we will share how you can make time tracking easy in activeCollab using Timesheet feature of a Chronograph module…

Stay tuned!

(Update: Tracking time by filling weekly timesheet is now available in Chronograph module)

For example, we think we’re selling a project management product. But some people really use our tool and pay us every month to manage their clients. The projects were always fine—it’s the clients that are a challenge!

As product developers / business owners, we are stuck with our own view point on why people buy our products / services. Interviewing your customers on their reasons for making the purchase can reveal insights that can turn customers into fans and sky rocket your sales!

Consider this milkshake case study:

A fast-food restaurant chain wanted to improve its milkshake sales. The company started by segmenting its market both by product (milkshakes) and by demographics. Next, the marketing department asked people who fit the demographic to list the characteristics of an ideal milkshake (thick, thin, chunky, smooth, fruity, chocolaty, etc.). The would-be customers answered as honestly as they could, and the company responded to the feedback. But alas, milkshake sales did not improve.

The company then enlisted the help of one of Christensen’s fellow researchers, who approached the situation by trying to deduce the “job” that customers were “hiring” a milkshake to do. First, he spent a full day in one of the chain’s restaurants, carefully documenting who was buying milkshakes, when they bought them, and whether they drank them on the premises. He discovered that 40 percent of the milkshakes were purchased first thing in the morning, by commuters who ordered them to go.

The next morning, he returned to the restaurant and interviewed customers who left with milkshake in hand, asking them what job they had hired the milkshake to do.

“Most of them, it turned out, bought [the milkshake] to do a similar job,” he writes. “They faced a long, boring commute and needed something to keep that extra hand busy and to make the commute more interesting. They weren’t yet hungry, but knew that they’d be hungry by 10 a.m.; they wanted to consume something now that would stave off hunger until noon. And they faced constraints: They were in a hurry, they were wearing work clothes, and they had (at most) one free hand.”

The milkshake was hired in lieu of a bagel or doughnut because it was relatively tidy and appetite-quenching, and because trying to suck a thick liquid through a thin straw gave customers something to do with their boring commute. Understanding the job to be done, the company could then respond by creating a morning milkshake that was even thicker (to last through a long commute) and more interesting (with chunks of fruit) than its predecessor.

The chain could also respond to a separate job that customers needed milkshakes to do: serve as a special treat for young children—without making the parents wait a half hour as the children tried to work the milkshake through a straw. In that case, a different, thinner milkshake was in order.

Next Action

Take a moment and re-think why people buy what you sell. Go ahead and talk to two customers.

Next Hops

• Clay Christensen’s Milkshake Marketing article on HBS
• Resource on Jobs to be done framework

When you really boil it down, the most effective thing you can do is simply over-deliver. That’s right, no fancy 7-step program, cheesy business fable or pedantic sports analogy.

BTW, Josh is a Detroit based entrepreneur turned VC and NY Times best selling author of Disciplined Dreaming – A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity. His blog posts are worth gold!

1. Who are we?
2. What are we doing here?
3. Why do we do it better than anyone else?
4. What makes us special?
5. What do we value?

Make sure that all current employees know the answers and that there is a mechanism in place to educate new employees. Whether it is a meeting with a member of the executive team or a discussion with the local team members, be sure to discuss your culture openly and with the seriousness that it deserves.

from Under Pressure And On Time, a classic on developing great teams and world-class software

It takes four skills to be successful in business. Every successful entrepreneur has them, and I have personally applied them in my own businesses with great success. Nobody taught them to me when I started out 12 years ago. But I am going to show them to you. Today, I am going to reveal these four essential skills for business success. And I am even going to share practical actions you can take to master these skills.

This video was pending in the Second Anniversary series, and I am glad I finally completed it! Do let me know how you like it!

Click on the video still below to watch the video, download the transcript and participate in the conversation!

4 Essential Skills For Entrepreneurial Success - Video

Here’s a quick video that will teach you core concepts of SCRUM in just 8 minutes! It’s a must watch!

Video courtesy Axosoft.

Do you use SCRUM? Are you a Reports module customer? How do you use it?