Social coding site GitHub recently announced a trove of new features for its platform, including the ability to create project boards to better track development. I read a lot of comments about how Github projects would “finally kill Trello” and other project management software. Many people figured that once coders could monitor their work on GitHub, they wouldn’t need anything else.
You might think Yalla is worried about GitHub’s project management capabilities. Actually, we’re thrilled.
Yalla and GitHub serve two different purposes and two different audiences. GitHub is for coders who want an easy way to track changes to their work, especially in groups. Yalla is for coders, too. But it’s also for small business owners, marketing firms, large corporations and students. Many people in those groups don’t need the version control that makes up the basis of Git and GitHub’s awesome selling points.
We built Yalla because we kept banging our heads against other project management software and figured, “Why not just do this ourselves?” We prioritized features that we found most useful, like separate chat channels for each client and funnels to track new sales leads. Yalla is built for collaboration, but it’s also possible to stick to its to-do list functions and use it to keep yourself motivated.
Another big difference is client participation. If I’m building an app for someone who works in real estate, I’m probably not going to invite them to check out the app’s GitHub repository. They’d mostly just see folders full of raw code.
I would invite that client to Yalla, though. They could use it to chat with me, assign priorities to our team or see a record of our invoices. It brings all communication to one place so we don’t have to keep track of emails, phone calls and carrier pigeons.
The ability to better manage projects on GitHub is a good thing, and I’ll definitely use it on any collaborative code work. I have no doubt our very smart coders who are expanding Yalla and building mobile Yalla apps will use it, too. But before you go declaring the death of project management software, remember – there are millions of people out there who don’t know what a pull request is. They’re going to need a way to collaborate, too.