Project Management Software for SaaS Companies in London

The roadmap slide meets the sprint board

Every quarter, a SaaS leadership team stands in front of its board with a roadmap. Some of last quarter's items shipped, some slipped, and the explanation for the slips is put together in the week before the meeting from sprint reports, chat threads and the CTO's memory.

The underlying problem is that the roadmap is a plan and the board is reality, and nothing connects them until someone sits down to reconcile the two. By then, the dates that were going to slip have already slipped.

On Business, ShipSprint recalculates delivery forecasts from each team's measured velocity as sprints close. A roadmap item drifting out of its quarter shows up weeks in advance, while there's still time to cut scope, add people or warn the board, rather than explain it afterwards.

Status that assembles itself

Forecasts are only as good as the board underneath them. On Team and up, the board follows GitHub: branches move cards and merged pull requests close them. Nobody has to remember to update a card for the numbers to be right.

On Business, the owner command center shows every team in one view, and a Monday digest arrives with the week's picture already put together. Before a board meeting, leadership starts from current data rather than from a request to every team lead for an update.

Scorecards and manager performance analytics, also on Business, give the leadership team a view of delivery by team and by person. Scorecards are adjusted for time off and visible to the person they describe, and there are no screenshots, keystroke logs or activity tracking behind them.

Growing past 40 people

Team, at ₹299 per user per month, covers up to 40 users and 100 projects, which is plenty for an early product team. Once the company is larger, or leadership needs forecasts and the command center, Business is the plan to look at. It also brings the workspace audit log, priority support and unlimited projects. Sign-in with Google or Microsoft is on every plan.

Quarterly plans should allow for the UK calendar. On Team and up, capacity planning counts the leave and holidays people enter as out-of-office, and the bank holiday weekends, Easter and Christmas to New Year all fall at points in the year when a roadmap commitment can quietly lose a week.

Using ShipSprint from London: four things to check

Who you're buying from. Quantuva Technologies Pvt. Ltd. in Hyderabad, India, makes ShipSprint. There is no office or local entity in the UK, and support is provided by email and in-app help.

Time zones. IST is 5 hours 30 minutes ahead of London in winter and 4 hours 30 minutes ahead in summer. Support usually responds the same working day, Indian time, so raise anything urgent in your morning, and don't plan a migration for the day before a board meeting.

Billing. Seats are billed per user in Indian rupees through Razorpay, and your bank converts the charge to pounds. Ask your accountant about the VAT position on a service bought from outside the UK.

Data protection. If customer data ends up in tickets, the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 apply, and enterprise customers may ask about your suppliers. Check the sub-processor list and the security overview against your obligations and customer contracts first.