Back in the spring of 2005 it didn’t exist. The killer app for team task management, work tracking, project collaboration, (insert your favorite term here), just did not exist. There were hundreds of companies that laid claim to some part of the challenge in markets both broad and narrow, but none could claim to be the Google of work tracking.

A careful study of what people and teams actually use and why led us to some interesting conclusions that surprisingly, after 20 years, no other vendors had come to. With much research already expended on the challenge, we knew it was unlikely that we would nail the answer in our first pass, so we devised a means to test in plain sight. With 5 key assumptions and 40 core concepts, we launched Smartsheet in the Fall of 2006.

23 months, 30,000 teams, 25+ countries, and 245 varied concept tests later, we had separated the wheat from the chaff in our theories. A few things stood out:

Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater

There are good reasons why most people still consider spreadsheets and email their tools of choice. Fundamentally, it’s because they are in control with these tools. They can define work in their terms and structure, they know their team understands and has access to these tools, there’s a high likelihood of getting a response, and importantly, they are not reliant on I.T. Instead of throwing out the good with the bad, we’ve combined the things people like and focused on the fixing the problems: like the inability to track changes, associate documents with action items, be notified of important changes, and update items in parallel.

Team Dynamics Matter

Multiple people working on a shared piece of work are never equally vested in its outcome. It turns out that an average project encompasses about 17 people. Out of those 17, two typically shepherd the effort forward, five are peripheral players outside the group or company and the rest are a mix of direct reports and peers. Most tools require full team adoption for successful use. While the lead is often willing to spend hours mapping, organizing, uploading and tracking, the other participants typically resist the addition of another software tool into their lives. The killer app gives the leads control while making it utterly straightforward for the participants to engage within needing to adopt another application.

Automation is the Software’s Job

Software vendors often force people to conform to defined structure so they can provide the “benefits” of automating the things they are trying to manage. As an example, think of the tightly enforced, complex rules in an app like Microsoft Project (there are hundreds of installed and online equivalents). Its rules and structure just don’t fit into how most people work, resulting in participants, then the leads, deviating from the original gameplan. We’ve seen more than 7,000 structural variations of work tracking within our initial user population. Requiring them to work within a fixed structure would be like asking someone to give a speech but letting them only use 100 different words.

The Result: Smartsheet BETA

The process of designing and building Smartsheet v2 combined feedback and observations to create a solution that delivers simplicity and function. Smartsheet BETA is free for anyone to use leading up to its full release later this Fall. We invite everyone to register and experience the future of getting things done.