Frequently Asked Questions

Like many project scheduling tools, Devshop uses some familiar metaphors. Inside a project, you have tasks, task-groups and milestones. Tasks are units of work that can be assigned to team members. Devshop is designed to help you plan out your project with accuracy and confidence and manage it along the way.

This however, is where the similarity ends. Beyond the basics included in many other tools, Devshop builds-in various capabilities to help you actually deliver on-time. Beyond just letting you paint whatever schedule you can visualize, Devshop works behind the scenes to make sure your schedule is insulated from common software project risks like estimating time, getting distracted, letting the requirements run away with the schedule, and more. There is currently no other tool that takes quite this approach. We believe it's one of the secrets to being successful in software development.

(MS-Project is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.)

A lot of people confuse Devshop with Basecamp by assuming they are similar tools. They are fundamentally different tools within the general project management tool category. Devshop focuses on scheduling and delivering on-time (specifically for software projects). Basecamp is a collaboration tool you can use during any kind of project (not just software projects). While there is a small amount of overlap in the sense that they are both used for "projects", a well-outfitted development team could use both together.

(Basecamp is a service mark of 37signals.)

You can get started for free, with a single login account and single project. With this, you can still have a project with several team members and assign tasks to those people. However, in order for different people to login for themselves, those team members need to have login accounts of their own.

Once you've decided you would like your team members to be able to login with their own accounts, OR you would like to add a second project, you then need to convert to a paid subscription. In that case, each login account is $24 (USD) per month. The licenses are for individuals, so everyone with an account can login from any computer, or as many computers as they like.

Once you're using a paid subscription, you can run as many projects as you like. And, Devshop actually makes use of old projects to help you make sure your current projects are insulated from risks observed in past projects.

Not yet. We're currently evaluating the potential for a downloadable version.

While there are pros and cons to hosted vs. local software, Devshop believes that the advantages on the hosted side are growing, and the disadvantages are shrinking. Here are some of the benefits of hosted software to consider:

• It's always accessible from anywhere you are (provided you have a 'Net connection). Access it from anywhere in the office, at your home, or on the road.
• Avoid a "single point of failure" for your applications: Devshop is hosted by a tier 1 provider employing state-of-the-art high availability computing network facilities.
• It's easy. You can start a trial in literally under a minute, and convert to a paid subscription when it's time, in the same amount of time. No installation or configuration required.
• You're always up to date. You are using the latest version of the application at all times.
• Better support. Say good-bye to support conversations that include: "What does the screen say now? OK press enter. Now what does the screen say? Can you send us your file?" Not necessary in the hosted model.

You could, but the evolution of the product is definitely centered around software projects. Over time, Devshop will evolve to the point where it may not be appropriate for other kinds of projects. For now though, you be the judge.

Software teams of 3 to 20 people. That's the size of team where there's usually enough schedule complexity that you see real value from using a scheduling tool (versus doing it in your head or on a spreadsheet).

Even if you're in a big company, chances are you're broken up into small teams by project anyway, so we think Devshop can help most dev teams out there.

Devshop is a tool, not a methodology. As such, you can use it with your methodology of choice. Devshop will be applicable regardless of which camp you happen to prefer. We haven't adopted any methodology-specific language or workflow. That's up to you.

Devshop is out to help you with critical risks associated with software projects, like estimating time, managing distractions, keeping schedules tied to requirements, and knowing when you've done enough homework and obtained enough approvals to make a commitment. These are risks found in all software projects, regardless of your preferred methodology.

Devshop's infrastructure is hosted by a world-class provider (Rackspace.com). So far (since March 2006) the up-time has been consistently between 99% and 100%. We plan to publish up-time metrics in the future.

RackSpace hosts some of the largest and most sensitive sites on the Web. See for yourself by checking out their network and data centers.

We do our best to make sure the application is available to the broadest audience possible. The current list of browsers we explicitly test with are:

• Windows: IE7, Firefox 2 & 3, Safari 3
• Mac: Safari 2 & 3, Firefox 2 & 3
• Linux: Firefox 2 & 3

Other browsers on other platforms may still work with Devshop but are not explicitly tested or guaranteed. In addition to using one of the above browsers, the Devshop application will only function if the browser is set to allow session cookies and Javascript.