Project management has been part of the I.T. crowd for decades now.
Every few years, the proliferation factor ushers in a new era of products that tend to offer something extra compared to their predecessors.
In that sense, there are a bunch of notable names in the industry due to the sheer volume of customers and the business’s reliance on innovation.
We’ve got Monday, Asana, Trello, Slack, and many other Agile advisories incepted a long time ago with a worldwide cult-like user base. In that order, it isn’t easy for a relatively new company founded 4 – 5 years ago to create a project management or, let alone, a productivity tool with the idea of reinventing the wheel.
Co-Founder at nTask
It’s a challenging endeavor. There’s no denying that.
Most up-and-coming startups throw in the towel during their 3rd year or merge with a more significant business to sustain. After all, it’s a fish eat fish rule out there; tech companies are no different.
But then again, there’s always the underdog, consistent in its approach, progressive in its strides, and has a tenacious appetite to offer more.
We recently sat down with Fawad Ansari, co-founder of nTask, to talk about customers’ pressing needs, the scope of industry project management apps, and the innovation that will affect such a company’s products in the next decade or so.
Describe nTask in one sentence for us
nTask is a project management application with a diverse portfolio to meet our customers’ demands from the I.T project management sector.
Although I’m inclined to extend my answer beyond the one-sentence limit, we’ll find out more during this interview.
What makes nTask different from any other project management application? There’s a bunch of them out there with, more or less, the same features. The question is: what ‘really’ draws the line between nTask and its competitors?
To be honest, we are no different than our competitors if it is about the basic ideology of a project management application.
However, our competitors are strong advocates for creating software solutions with a laser focus on one or a few signature features. And their advocacy reflects in the type of features they built their product or service around.
Take Trello as an example of a phenomenal Kanban board interface where you can manage tasks, create plans, and create an entire roadmap for multiple projects. But then again, that’s a one-off solution with an exceptional approach to Kanban methodology, and in that sense, they’re doing quite well.
On the contrary, we wanted to create a full-stack product. It wasn’t easy because we had to focus on multiple features simultaneously. You have your team working on in-app Kanban boards deployment, interactive Gantt Charts, dedicated modules for Risk Management, 3rd party integrations, and vice versa. At the same time, these guys are also working on near future updates with new features to add to the end-user experience.
To that effect, nTask had to go through several iterations, with each new update backtracking on making the product’s features better and introducing new enhancements to level with our customers’ expectations.
It sounds like nTask is focusing on one too many things at the same time? Doesn’t that hinder your product update timeline?
To some extent, it does, but we have a very robust team.
nTask was purpose-built to offer the most demanded features in a project management cloud-based solution and maintain a delightful customer experience.
We adopted two different approaches. The customer team would listen to our customers to create a list of issues and bugs that needed a bit of elbow grease and aggregate feedback on the type of features expected in the next release.
By the time we are ready to push out a build, we ensure that we have not only squashed any possible bugs but also have an MVP or a fully functional feature made available. So much so that for our larger clients, we even create customer features, which are only personalized to meet their demands. It requires a lot of work on our part and backtracking, but the approach is paying off quite well.
In the wake of the recent pandemic, how did nTask persevere?
Just like any other industry, we’ve had our fair share of setbacks during the pandemic. However, since we collaborate in the productivity and tech sphere, our teams have continued to function through remote software tools.
We were quick to adopt and impose a flexible culture that respected the boundaries and the fundamentals of resource management sans time-boxed events. I’d say that letting go of the strict 9 – 5 mentality tends to be more beneficial to businesses rather than the old-school mentality of work ethics.
What’s the one piece of advice for new startup owners and entrepreneurs you’d like to share with us?
Believing in yourself, especially if you are looking to launch a new business, is half the battle. You will have setbacks, unexpected challenges, and different issues in due course of time, but everything will fall into place. It’s part of the game.
Whether tech-related or any other industry, any successful business owner has to go through the same learning process you’re experiencing. To that effect, adopt a ‘getting things done’ attitude and avoid procrastination as much as possible.
Maintaining such an approach to life and work inspires confidence in team members to take the bull by the horns. Other than that, it’s all about innovating and timely implementation of your ideas before it’s too late.
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