So what broad features must the application have?

1. It must be a joy to use.

This is a huge one. It’s a timesheet – using it is never going to be the favourite part of anyone’s day, but it should be wonderfully intuitive and look the part. You can’t get away with a ropey-looking application any more – it just has to be beautiful.

It must also fit in with whatever colour scheme and visual design standards are in play in the environment in which it’s working. This means complete CSS configurability.

2. It must work the way you want it to work.

This is a huge one. It means it pulls time tracking information from wherever you happen to put it.

It means it makes it’s own time tracking information easily available (it’s your data after all).

It means it doesn’t get in your way.

Essentially, this means having a published API so that getting information in and out can be handled by other systems, and not just by someone clicking an “Export” button.

It also means that we don’t force you to record your time in just the we think works best. We have our views and recommendations but if you already have a process up and running then we’re not going to make you do it the Tidalsand way.

3. It must be secure.

Also a huge one – are you getting the picture?

Some companies will require the application runs on their own servers on the company intranet – they want to be completely in control of everything. Other companies will be ok with having the application run outside of their company firewall but will still want to be in control – they might want the application to run in their own Amazon AWS space. Other companies will be ok with the application running as a service on hosted servers but they will clearly require complete assurance that their company data is held securely.

This implies a fair amount of architectural flexibility – we can’t force you to use Application Server X or Database Y. We just have to make it work anywhere while also providing fully packaged solutions that work right out of the box.

So that’s it really. Mote of a statement of direction than a road map but it’s a start at least.

“Our application must be a joy to use; it must work the way you want it to work; it must be secure.”

I think that covers most bases.

Over the next few posts we’ll flesh out the details behind each part of the statement and go through some of our technology choices.

What we’d all like is for our time to be tracked for us during the week so we’re presented with something pretty close to what we’d like to submit just before we submit it. You need something lurking in the background that knows what you’re doing as you’re doing it. Lots of options here: if everything you do is based around a computer there are widgets that record the window title of the application you’re working on; there are widgets that let you select what you’re doing at the moment from a list; you might want to link through to some other application that’s already tracking what you’re doing; if you do the same stuff every week (poor you), you might just want to copy last weeks timesheet.

There’s always going to be a need to tweak things on Friday afternoon, but any time-tracking application worth it’s salt would let you get pretty much there before you even started.

That’s the “painless” side of things we’re aiming for.

We know, there are lots of these around already, but all the ones we’ve tried have been found wanting; they’ve been found wanting enough to push us into writing one that works for us, and which we hope will work for others.

We’re putting together a road map – all of us putting in our best ideas on how time-tracking should work and what it should do. We’ve done a few time-tracking applications in our previous lives so we arrogantly think we know what we’re talking about.

We know the general view is that time-tracking software is just one, big, yawn. Well, you’re right – there’s absolutely nothing sexy about a good timesheet, but there is something key to time-tracking applications: it’s one of those applications that just has to work flawlessly and intuitively – it’s used by a huge range of people (pretty much everyone in the company) and usually isn’t something any one of them wants to do. Clearly, folks would rather just get their work done and tracking time usually is one of those “late Friday-afternoon really want to go home – aghh forgot to do my timesheet” moments. We’re not kidding ourselves into thinking we’re going to make time tracking fun, exactly, but we do want to make it painless for all concerned.

When we’re done with the road map we’ll post it here as our ‘line in the sand’.

Following the tried and testing codinghorror approach, we’re working on a timeline of ’6-8 weeks’.

We’re going to put together a nice long list of requirements and nice-to-have’s – everything we can think of that will make the product everything anyone might need. The list will be put in broad priority categories and the plan is to ship something that works as soon as possible and get folks using it.

It’s going to be great! Great fun at least. What comes out at the other end will be good – perhaps not great though. You need to keep your superlatives ready for the super.