Project Management Software for Marketing Agencies in San Francisco

The launch moved again

An agency working for software companies plans backwards from a launch date it doesn't control. The client's product team slips a sprint, the launch moves by three weeks, and the agency's carefully sequenced plan of teasers, press outreach, landing pages and launch-day posts has to be rebuilt. Then the positioning changes, because the feature that was meant to lead has been cut.

The cost of all that rework rarely makes it into the client conversation, because nobody tracked it. The team just re-did the work.

ShipSprint makes the re-plan and its cost visible. The campaign lives on a board organised around the launch, so moving the date means re-sequencing cards, not rebuilding a spreadsheet. Time logged against each task (on Team and up) shows how many hours went into the second and third versions, which is exactly the number you want when a client asks why the retainer ran over.

Asking the client for something that helps

An agency can't see a client's sprint board, but it can ask for the client's current forecast. If the client also runs ShipSprint on Business, its delivery forecast is recalculated from measured velocity as each sprint closes, which is a better basis for a campaign date than the one on last quarter's roadmap slide. If not, ask for whatever the engineering team's current estimate is, and record it in the campaign's wiki page with the date you received it.

On your own side, capacity planning on Team and up counts approved leave and out-of-office. A launch that moves into Thanksgiving week in late November, around Independence Day on 4 July or into the end-of-December holidays may now land on a week when your designers are away. See that before you agree to the new date.

Nobody is tracked while they work: no screenshots, keystroke logging or activity tracking. Time reminders go to the person. On Business, scorecards are leave-adjusted and visible to the person they describe.

Using ShipSprint from San Francisco: the vendor side

Who you're buying from. Quantuva Technologies Pvt. Ltd., a company based in Hyderabad, India. There's no office or local entity in the US. Support is by email and in-app chat.

Time zones. IST is 13 hours 30 minutes ahead of San Francisco in winter and 12 hours 30 minutes ahead in summer. We usually reply within the Indian working day, which for you is the middle of the night, so don't count on a same-afternoon answer during a launch week.

Billing. Seats are charged in Indian rupees through Razorpay, and your bank converts to dollars. For whether sales or use tax applies, ask your accountant.

Data protection. California's CCPA applies to many businesses that handle Californians' data, and campaign work can involve a client's customer lists. Elsewhere the US relies on state laws and sector rules like HIPAA rather than one federal law. Check the sub-processor list and the security overview against your obligations and client contracts.