You might be thinking that there are already established tools for the job. Why create another? Because ShipReq is unlike anything you’ve ever used before.
What makes ShipReq special?
Innovated from first principles
This isn’t just “a better JIRA”, or “a better Word & Excel”, or anything else. We started from square one and took a long, hard look at the problems we face in the software development process, how those problems are and aren’t addressed by existing tools, and what a next-generation solution could be. In fact there were many, many months of literally nothing but thought and detailed analysis to get to where we are now, which is an entirely modernised, and newly-innovated solution that we hope even disinterested users will fall in love with.
Lightning fast; offline capable
How many hours have been collectively wasted by teams sitting around in meeting rooms, trying to get their project tools to work? Maybe it’s because a different region just came online, maybe it’s because the internet in some meeting rooms never seem to work properly. We’ve all had our share of frustration and that’s something we’ve worked very hard to avoid being an issue for ShipReq users. ShipReq has been built from it’s core to be lightning fast; now and always, and resilient to suboptimal environments. In fact, ShipReq is already 95% offline capable — with 100% offline just around the corner.
A compiler for your content
Compilers check code and present errors where code is definitely wrong, and warnings where code is likely wrong. ShipReq is like a compiler over your data and its integrity. It prevents entire categories of incorrectness in your content, and warnings for other categories of potential incorrectness or ambiguity. It’s even like an IDE in that when you make certain changes, it will ensure everything affected by your change is updated appropriately and automatically.
Decrease data decay
It’s a sad but widespread problem that recording data once isn’t enough — it needs to be kept up-to-date. Data decays. Data decays usually because the upkeep effort is tedious and doesn’t scale. In real-world projects, as data and processes deteriorate, so does usefulness. Creative endeavours of any kind are hard enough work as is without administrative distractions consuming time and mental energy.
One of our core design goals is to minimise the time you spend in ShipReq, and maximise the value you get out of ShipReq.
Fail without fear
The real world changes all the time. The cost of change, of experimentation, of failure, even of plain old human mistakes, should all be inexpensive, and trivial to revise or revert. In ShipReq you’re free to make experimental changes and immediately return to your original state — even if you’re affecting hundreds of requirements at a time, even if other users have added new content in the interim.
Likewise, with ShipReq you’ll never lose data because it’s never permanently discarded in the first place. More advanced users can access the entire data history (including point-in-time) similar to how you can in Git and other version control tools.
Solve non-technical problems
ShipReq doesn’t just aim to be a technical solution, it aims to solve human problems too. Just because a requirement or a task is written down, doesn’t mean that all the people involved are going to act in an optimal, textbook manner. It’s common that a significant subset of a team will have lost faith in, or are completely uninterested in process-related tools, and understandably so, all things considered. ShipReq aims to specifically address these problems, and ensure that it’s as useful socially as it is technically.
We “eat our own dog food”
At ShipReq, we use ShipReq to develop ShipReq. As user #1, we’re not only living through our customer experience, but we don’t treat end-users like guinea pigs to ensure the integrity of our service. We’re always finding new ways to improve and refine our platform.
Highly configurable; highly flexible
ShipReq is designed to serve your software development team in all its aspects — regardless of how you operate. As such, we’ve employed very careful consideration to remove implicit assumptions and constraints on your unique workflow. We want you to have the freedom to work your own way and configure ShipReq to your process — not the other way around.
Happiness leads to productivity
The main purpose of ShipReq has less to do with technicality and more to do with a passion for improvement — we simply want to bring happiness to our users’ lives. (Well, ours too as the first end-users of ShipReq). It’s our mission to make enthusiastic users ecstatic, and even cantankerous users grudgingly pleased. We strive to spark joy. Sometimes that means carefully thought-out functionality and automation, sometimes it just means giving you what you need as quickly and effortlessly as possible, and then getting out of the way.
Is ShipReq generally available yet?
ShipReq is currently in a private beta phase. If you’d like to know more, participate in the beta, or subscribe to the newsletter, get in touch @ shipreq.com.