(2018-12-03) Dubakov Next Wave Of Work Management Software

Michael Dubakov: The Next Wave of Work Management Software (NoCode). Vendors: Airtable, Zenkit, Notion, Coda.

Drivers

Domain Generalization. There are no specific entities like Tasks and Projects anymore. Specialization is gone. Everything is very fluid and you can define your own semantic.

UI Generalization. There are various ways to see information: Tables, Lists, Timelines, Kanban Boards, etc.

Automation. Users are becoming more savvy and want to automate boring actions

Document-oriented approach. Most new vendors rely on documents or spreadsheet to handle work. Documents are becoming really rich with visual widgets, interactivity and subsections. Coda takes this approach to extreme claiming that “Document is an App”, Notion tries to do almost the same.

Work management software market entrance barrier is relatively high. To join the race, you need at least 2 years and 6–8 people team with tons of experience.

It is time to dive into new vendors. They sorted chronologically, and Airtable is riding the wave with its first release in 2014.

Airtable

Motto: Relational spreadsheets on steroids

You can start from scratch with a spreadsheet and quickly design your own app by adding columns and connecting several spreadsheets together.

The real thing is that you create not abstract rows in a spreadsheet, but entities with a custom entity type

While Grids and Calendars are great, Kanban Board is not so good and there are no Timelines. It all means UI Generalization is not the strongest part of Airtable. It is quite hard to use Airtable for projects management, especially for software development projects. It starts to feel cumbersome when you have several teams and dozens of user stories in progress.

The last serious limitation is lack of Documents. It is even not possible to have a rich edit field inside an entity.

Zenkit

Motto: Simplicity, Choice, Growth

everything becomes not so good on UI layer. In 2018 development stalled. There were few new features and nothing major released.

Notion

Motto: All-in-one workspace

*In its first release Notion was just a Wiki, it became a work management software with Notion 2.0 release in March 2018.

In all honesty, the 2.0 is the real 1.0 for us. We added tables, Kanban boards, and calendars. Along with the existing notes and wiki features, Notion can finally deliver on the “all-in-one workspace” promise. We think you’ll love it!*

Notion is Document-oriented from day one. It is a powerful Wiki with all bells and whistles you need. You can create complex nested documents really fast and share them easily

Notion is great for individual usage, but not so great for teams

Coda

Motto: Document is an App

Coda is strange. You want to love the product due to innovation, but just can’t.

Main entity in Coda is a Document. But make no mistake, this is not your familiar Document, it is an App. Below is an example of a single Document that allows you to run iterative software development project:

You can create as many Sections as you want inside a Document and visualize data using Kanban Boards, Tables, Charts, Calendars and Detail Views.

Coda has automated actions

Coda UI is too fluid. When you move the mouse, you see popups, highlights, new controls appearing everywhere. It just feels like it’s too easy to break something and you don’t feel in control.

Documents in Coda are not connected. Yes, you can have many Sections inside a single Document

Coda is complex. Everything demands high level of cognitive effort.

Coda is for creators. But. With Notion creation feels like a game, while with Code it feels like a war.