Customer stories /
AR/VR /
Placenote
Placenote is leading the AR space with Tara
Running bi-weekly sprints across two time-zones while introducing the team to best agile practices.
Founded in
2015
Products
Spatial notes, Machine learning, Artificial Intelligence
Headquarters
Bay Area and Toronto
Website
About Placenote
Placenote is redesigning how people interact with the world by building and deploying spatial apps on mobile.
Placenote's product and engineering teams are currently remote across two different time zones - Toronto and San Francisco. Prasenjit Mukherjee, CTO as well as an engineer on the team, helps the two teams remotely operate as one. He creates processes, finds efficient ways to collaborate and helps the team create the product.
Currently, the team has consolidated all their tasks and actively manages their projects through Tara.
Uniting a divided team
Jira’s integration setup took up a significant amount of time from a single engineer which could have been used towards development tasks. The Kanban board on Notion worked well for planning and assigning tasks but they found it difficult to run sprints.
Trello worked well for the Product team for task management but lacked the level of detail the Engineering team needed. They also found it really “busy” and that it takes attention away from the actual tasks.
In the end, the Product team planned out their tasks in Trello while the Engineering team remained with JIRA for their sprints. This disconnect made remote collaboration even more challenging. With Tara, when you sign on - there’s a sense of workflow. All the features on Tara were nicely lining up with our needs.
"I’m in love with Tara. Others were either too simple or over-engineered for their purpose. Docs and tasks in the same view make progress tracking effortless. Blockers are easily seen and addressed to move things faster."
The power of one tool
Currently, Placenote runs bi-weekly sprints on Tara allowing both Product and Engineering teams to run sprints together, remotely. Prasenjit wanted to stop following up on task progress and being on Tara helped the team put the process of sprints, task management and tracking of projects on autopilot.
Multiple Workspaces For Remote Collaboration
The Engineering team focuses on hardcore computer vision deliverables such as AI and R&D while the Product Team focuses on user acquisition and business operations. Task management is made easier by having two separate workspaces and sprints.
Switching between workspaces gives everyone a bird’s eye view of the release cycle which makes shipping releases more efficient. Remote collaboration is enhanced with asynchronous stand ups using sprint insights.
GitHub Integration
Tara's deep integration with GitHub gives the team the ability to assign and link pull requests, branches, and commits to specific tasks.
The straightforward sync has required zero setup allowing engineers to easily access their code repository while simultaneously managing their tasks.
Building good habits
With all the information consolidated under one tool, collaborating and sharing knowledge on tasks and projects is seamless. The engineering team is able to focus on the velocity of their releases and the product team can support effectively since they have a full view of the release cycle. It’s also easier to keep track of the progress of certain requirements as tasks can be grouped by requirement.
"The dashboard shows the pull requests that you are responsible for right now. It summarizes what you need to do and reminds you of what people are waiting on from you in just a couple of clicks."
The team now defines their tasks better on the sprints which removes the need for a Product Manager to break it down for them. The smart estimation feature helps in predicting future sprint loads, making sprint planning effortless.
The challenge of remotely managing a team located in different parts of the continent is also resolved just by being on Tara.
Better habits are formed within Tara as blockers are easily found and addressed before the pull requests get stale. With Tara, there are quicker turnarounds, better project management and a real sense of solidarity between both teams.