Trajectory: Project Management, Sorted

If you’re working on a project you’re really passionate about, chances are that it will show within the quality of the outcome. Some apps can really help to allow developers, designers and just about any team embrace the passion they have for a particular project and offer an environment in which they can easily plan out the details, ready for work.

Trajectory is an app that provides this and much more. It offers teams an environment that can greatly improve productivity simply by making everything that much simpler to manage.

Overview

Trajectory is a project management app. No, actually, it’s a lot more than that. Trajectory allows teams the ability to easily take advantage of its features to increase productivity on a project. Its incredible method of doing this, coupled with its visually-appealing interface make Trajectory a significant player in the project management field. It allows teams of developers, designers, craftsmen, whatever, to take their management online – using simple separation of future ideas and current ones being worked on to allow for serious work to take place.

Pricing

The cost of using the app varies depending on the maximum number of projects a team would like to manage using the system and the storage space required for that particular team. Though its main plans range from $50-$200 per month, there is also a smaller $20 per month plan that is ideal for small development teams that may only need to mange one or two projects using the system.

Though the other larger plans can seem like quite a hefty amount for small organisations to fork out for this type of thing, it’s clear that the developers have full confidence in the ability their app has to really boost productivity using the system. After all, if a project can be managed a lot easier, it’s surely going to be developed better and in the long run be more profitable, right? Overall, the pricing of the app is understandable, especially since it really does offer a nice variety of features for the price you’re paying, an upside being that each plan allows for unlimited users. Can’t go wrong with that!

The Concept

Trajectory allows its users to begin managing certain tasks by offering them two main sections for them to explore: ‘Ideas’ and ‘Stories’. Just as you would expect, the Ideas section of the app mainly details features that team members plan to implement at some point in the future and are rough outlines of what may (or may not) be required for future progression in that project. The Stories section details activities that are currently being worked on by that team. They do cross over, however, and stories can be added to certain ideas as they begin development.

Now to look at each section in detail a bit more.

Ideas

When a member of a team wants to suggest or add a feature to a project that could possibly come to fruition in the future and wants to discuss this with other members of the team, they would first create a new entry into the ‘Ideas’ section of Trajectory. A title can be added as well as a body of text that maybe describes what they have in mind for that particular thing and also, files can be attached. When submitted, the idea would then be shown to other members of the team within that particular half of the app.

Trajectory encourages communication between team members about this type of thing so, naturally, other members of the team can give their two cents, something that can easily be done using the comments section. Again, files can be added to comments so should someone else have a different idea about the suggestion, they can make sure that their thoughts are known.

Stories

The main bulk of the Trajectory app revolves around the idea of having Stories for each action that is performed on a project. When a story is added to either an idea or is thrown in just by itself, users are given the option of providing additional information such as whether development work, design work or both are needed for that particular task. They will also be required to add information about that story such as the level of work required to complete it (referred to as an ‘estimate’) and additional details can be added.

When stories are added to Trajectory, they can then be assigned to certain users and others can comment on the work being completed, as with the ideas section. Once work has begun, the story can then be marked as started and then, depending on whether it’s been abandoned or completed, it can be marked accordingly.

Additional information is provided to each story such as a calculated velocity based on the past three iterations of a task though it’s hard to really comment on this as the features aren’t really explained as well in the app.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I believe that Trajectory seems to handle itself and the projects of others quite well. The interface compliments the main concept of the app nicely and provides a sleek visual environment for the functionality of the app to really be explored and taken advantage of by teams. It appears to offer just about everything that a large team would need to manage a high profile development project for a client and could easily work just as well for smaller organisations, depending on the type of requirements they have.

However, the one major flaw I found with Trajectory was the lack of clear documentation. Though it does have a knowledgebase inside the help section of the main website, it’s not well-linked for users once actually logged into the app. This information also seems to assume that users have a prior knowledge of the app’s workings and as a newcomer to Trajectory, I found it quite hard to understand the concept of velocity as I’ve never really come across it before.

Nonetheless, Trajectory’s definitely well worth its price tag and offers its users a unique way to manage their projects in a way that is both visually-appealing and also mentally-pleasing.