What Happened to Waffle.io?
In 2011, Eric Dies published “The Lean Startup,” a book a scientific approach to product development that would inspire companies all over the world. In the summer of 2013, a group of five interns had just started their internship program at Rally Software, Boulder, Colorado.
Under the guidance of their mentors, Andrew Homeyer and Todd Hooper, the team received copies of “The Lean Startup” and set out to build a product that would tackle some of the more pressing GitHub’s issues. Other than learning how to operate as a lean startup within a large company, the team eventually developed a project management tool called Waffle.io.
Waffle.io launched in 2013 as part of Rally Software which was later acquired by CA Technologies in 2015. Broadcom then bought CA Technologies in mid 2018 and in March 2019, waffle.io announced that it would be shutting down two months later. It’s no longer accessible and we took some time to find out what happened to the project management tool following its 6-year run.
The History of Waffle.io
That summer internship had an unusual start and as soon they received their copies of “The Lean Startup,” the team of five interns were immediately challenged to utilize the processes described in the book to develop products. The group fondly named itself the “Innovation Island” since they seemed to cut a figure of an island of desks at Riley Software. They were handed a considerable amount of freedom, with only an initial direction to try and build a tool around GitHub issues.
Waffle.io sought to reinvent project management for the modern day developers, especially if they worked on the GitHub platform. GitHub had become the most preferred work platform for many developers all over the world. By hosting software code and enabling collaborators to review and work together, the platform empowered development teams of all sizes to create great products.
However, the most common complaint from project managers is that the team isn’t always excited about using the project management tools. On the other hand, the most common complaint from the project team is that you almost require a degree to navigate the tools, and that you have to update everything manually.
But what if project teams had tools that they didn’t have to use? This was essentially the backdrop of waffle.io as provided a project management tool that allowed development teams to plan, organize, keep track of their projects in real time on the GitHub platform.
Problems Solved By Waffle
The primary target market for waffle.io was the development and non-development teams that were already using GitHub or GitHub Enterprise. Using a freemium pricing model, waffle.io provided a free, plain plan for a visual tracking project tracking system.
The free plan included a board, a Wafflebot, multiple repos within a single view, unlimited public and private repositories of code, and unlimited collaborations. The paid plans included all the features in the free plan, and an addition of other features such as a milestone burndown graph and a throughput graph. But what specific solutions did waffle.io bring to project management and the GitHub platform?
Real-time Sync
The first solution that waffle.io brought to development projects was its ability to sync with the GitHub platform in real-time where GitHub Issues and Pull Requests could sync all the users’ repositories. Waffle.io provided a visual tracking tool that displayed a plain list of Issues on a user-friendly board. The long lists would be transformed into cards on a board to show a big picture of all the project’s tasks at any stage of the development process.
Auto-tracking and Powerful Metrics
Through its assigned internal bot called Wafflebot, Waffle.io could essentially ‘listen’ to all the actions within a project’s workflow and determine when work had begun, when it was ready for review, and when it was complete. This means that development teams could automatically track work or project tasks and at the same time, automatically update the status of their tasks. Powerful metrics such as throughput graph and milestone burndown graph provided a big picture view that let development teams know whether they were on track or not.
Other features that enhanced overall product development efficiency included the ability to filter task cards and view them by label, milestone, Issue text, and owner allowed users to customize their view to what they were most comfortable with. Users could also have multiple repositories within a single view, that is, on one board where they access all open Issues and pull as many requests as they wished.
Not Everyone’s Cup of Tea?
However, not all development teams had high praise for waffle.io. Some users commenting on development forums referred to it as “a GitHub-based Kanban board,” and one that was only useful for “a smallish startup.”
Some developers regarded waffle.io as a front-end for GitHub Issues and were more worried about the GitHub platform. Others indicated that at times, the syncing of Issues wasn’t instantaneous. Even thought they would eventually synchronize, they feared that something was broken whenever it took longer than usual.
What Then Happened to Waffle.io?
When waffle.io announced that it was effectively exiting the market in May 16, 2019, it seemed far from being done with its original mission of changing how development teams track and manage their projects. At the time, it had already pioneered useful features that allowed auto-work tracking, building and reviewing statuses, epics and dependencies, connecting pull requests to Issues, and deployment tracking.
However, waffle.io listed two key issues that partly explained the move. At the time, Rally Software, the parent company, had already been acquired by Computer Associates (CA) which was acquired by Broadcom soon after. The first issue had to do with the overall direction of the market which was “leaving less and less space for tools like Waffle.”
The second issue contrasted waffle’s primary setup as an accelerator project within Rally Software Development. Therefore, Broadcom, who then owned waffle.io after the takeover of Computer Associates, were compelled to discontinue the tool as a standalone product. Instead, it made more sense for the technology company’s overall strategy to try and bring the best of waffle.io to its Rally Product.
Other Project Management Tools Which Intergrade GitHub
With GitHub arguably the preferred development platform for many developers, there’s a wide range of other project management tools that integrate with the platform. These tools essentially provided competition to waffle.io and offered an Apples to Oranges comparison. They included:
ZenHub
Of all the project management collaboration tools, ZenHub is the only one built directly into GitHub. It essentially works from anywhere, within GitHub, via a web browser extension, or as a standalone, full-featured web app. It features a simple and lightweight design that cuts down developer tool overhead as well as context switching.
While some users found waffle.io suitable only for small projects, ZenHub can handle any project size with its list of features that include Multi-Repository Boards, Epics, and customizable workspaces.
Codetree
Like other competing project management tools, Codetree also allows user to stay fully synchronized to the GitHub platform. However, it adds some powerful features to its overall functionality such as Advanced Filtering and Sorting, support for multiple repos in one project, saved shortcuts, Dependency tracking, and Drag and Drop Prioritization. Codetree also includes powerful filters where users can enter refined queries such as “which Issues are awaiting my response?”
HuBoard
One of the distinct features of HuBoard the unique design that makes liberal use of animated gifs and simple but powerful drag and drop features. Project managers can assign Issues by dragging users’ avatars onto the respective cards. Users on the other hand can prioritize their work by simply dragging the most important Issues to the top and HuBoard will remind them the next thing that needs to be worked on.
HuBoard is built using GitHub’s public API and features the ability to drag between milestones. Therefore, users no longer have to spend too much time paging through and checking checkboxes across GitHub’s grid view.
Zube
Zube also features a Kanban-style board like many other tools that integrate with GitHub. However, it has arguably one of the most agile out-of-the-box workflow interfaces. Even though its Kanban/scrum board is chiefly designed for developers, it features a powerful Issue management tool for team leads. This means all team members can collaborate on the development tasks even if they were non-developers.
issue.sh
One of the distinct features on issue.sh is that fact that users get to protect their privacy right from the start. It has no access to the users’ code since it doesn’t require any user permissions from the GitHub platform. It’s the only project management tool that fine grained permissions.
Users’ data on issue.sh is encrypted with an industry standard transmission algorithm, both during storage and during transmission. Therefore, project managers get the full view of the project’s progress without ever having to worry about the security of their private code.