tag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:/discussions/suggestions/8-are-you-guys-living-in-the-real-worldLighthouse: Discussion 2011-12-29T23:52:47Ztag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622007-04-14T18:02:26Z2009-06-20T20:56:47ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>Thanks for your comments on the pricing plan. It's a delicate
balancing act, and we will adjust (lower) the prices if
necessary.</p></div>Ricktag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622007-04-18T15:57:51Z2009-06-20T20:56:47ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>dontforgetmario: The things you are listing as missing from
Lighthouse are part of the reason why I prefer it to the likes of
basecamp. Basecamp is way too big, some people just don't need
charts, chat, calendar etc. They want to track issues. You also
have to realise that Lighthouse is more than a Mac like interface
in just it's looks. You can put aqua style buttons onto Windows XP
but it isn't a Mac like interface. Lighthouse is also extremely
simple and intuitive to use.</p>
<p>There is a reason why there are different products out there,
and that is because people want different things. Lighthouse may
not be for you, but other products that you like may not be for
someone like me.</p></div>Martin Pilkingtontag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622007-04-18T18:41:00Z2009-06-20T20:56:47ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>bq. Basecamp is way too big, some people just don’t need
charts, chat, calendar etc.</p>
<p>Basecamp has none of those things :) I think you're confusing it
with GoPlan? I wouldn't call it too big though. We love Basecamp
(and especially Highrise), but the fact is we needed something
developer centric.</p></div>Ricktag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622007-05-22T12:18:33Z2009-06-20T20:56:49ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>I agree with Pilky mostly, one of the reasons I like this app is
the simplicity and lack of features =) I personally don't want a
calendar or writeboard or chat added to clutter the ui when I will
never use them.</p>
<p>I agree the pricing may be a little high though, for the
personal and bronze at least. Perhaps you would get a few larger
projects who choose those plans, but i would expect you mostly get
smaller developers wanting to manage their personal projects, and
in that case $10 and $24 seems a little high.</p></div>Nazgumtag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622007-10-30T07:27:45Z2009-06-20T20:56:05ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>It has just about everything necessary for my project, if you
need more I say go to any one of those sites you listed. I signed
up because it doesn't have any of that erroneous stuff. When you
need that many tools to communicate you are at a point where you
spend more time managing your project then you do actually getting
work done on it.</p>
<p>It seems to me Lighthouses unique value proposition is exactly
what you described: Not having "Reports, Calendar, Charts, Chat,
Writeboard..." If it ever did get all of that stuff I would
leave.</p>
<p>This is a tool for developers and it is suiting my project very
well.</p></div>john.postlethwaittag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622007-11-03T00:10:17Z2009-06-20T20:56:05ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>I thought I'd add to this :)</p>
<p>I agree, the simplicity is perfect and the look and feel make
all the difference.</p>
<p>Zoho I find has the worse feel when you try and use but yes, it
has the most features.</p>
<p>I use Lighthouse specifically as an internal ticketing system
and communication is only needed between developers in it and not
clients so comments on tickets and assigning tickets is perfect..
nothing else needed.</p>
<p>I did in the beginning find the price a little high too but
still bought in because of the simplicity so I considered buying in
part of investing in such a great system that will over time, grow
to gain some more features / functionality that best suits this
system.</p>
<p>Keep up the great work and keep it simple..</p></div>steve_tag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622008-03-26T20:02:57Z2009-06-20T20:56:14ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>I'd very much like to add my vote for keeping it SIMPLE. There
are so many other heavyweights out there that are too bloated and
would take me several training sessions to even instruct my issue
reporters how to use. I specifically am looking for the industry
leading issue tracker that is elegant and simple and so far this is
it.</p>
<p>I have no problem paying the rates you are currently asking
for!</p></div>mbrenwalltag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622008-03-28T13:08:57Z2009-06-20T20:56:14ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>Agreed keep it simple, and allow integration with others. One of
the reason's I use Lighthouse is that <a href=
"http://www.beanstalkapp.com/">Beanstalk</a> integrates with it.
Both apps are simplistic and focus on doing one thing well, which
is how it should be :)</p></div>raizyrtag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622008-11-13T17:16:40Z2009-06-20T20:04:21ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>Simple and clean is good, but I would urge caution at dismissing
the needs of QA, Management etc and just focusing on developer
needs....which can be quite different.</p>
<p>I am currently evaluating other issue trackers to see wether we
need to move from Lighthouse or not..... custom fields for say
severity, or reporting/data export are important requirements. As
mentioned in a previous thread, tags are too noisy for certain
issue attributes.</p>
<p>Developers tend to have a fast and loose approach to issue
tracking - no steps in their bugs, slam them in quickly and often
little explanation of their fixes :-). This is all normal but there
are other groups of people who have different needs and approachs
to issue tracking, and if Lighthouse has too much of a dev. bias it
could alienate people, or need to be replaced as the company grows
for instance. Shifting trackers is a big PITA .</p>
<p>I do like Lighthouse a lot, and I think the rest of the team
does - lovely interface and nicely designed.</p>
<p>As QA, one or more <em>optional</em> custom fields and data
export (even better custom reports/graphs) would be great and I
think that can be done without bloating the app.</p></div>James Huggetttag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622008-11-13T17:50:58Z2009-06-20T20:04:21ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>@jahuggett But taking the focus away from developers means that
developers lose out. The good thing about Lighthouse is that it
does put focus more on development which is good for small teams
where the QA may be the same as the devs. Of course for custom
fields you can extend the tags and for data export there's the API.
Personally I like Lighthouse as is. The reason I don't like other
bug trackers is the sheer number of fields and complexity caused by
trying to please all sorts of users.</p></div>Martin Pilkingtontag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622008-11-17T16:39:54Z2009-06-20T20:04:47ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>@Pilky I'm not advocating bloating lighthouse. Additional custom
fields and data export are hardly bloat in my opinion....just a
hair less 'ultra leanness' and certainly can be invisible in the
default app configuartion. Bear in mind, that as companies grow or
are succesful often dedicated product management or QA become
involved, and if a developer is asked for some reports/metrics and
can't deliver, this could eventually result in moving to a
different defect tracker (and then everyone loses!!). The type of
QA/management activities on small lean teams is generally quite
understanding of the need for agility: don't think that focusing a
bit on their needs is somehow making a pact with the evil empire
:-) Lean RAD/agile teams can and do have testers/managers on them
as well who understand that cumbersome tools and burdensome process
are NOT what is required.</p></div>James Huggetttag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622008-11-17T17:25:47Z2009-06-20T20:04:48ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>We're working on data export; what sort of things would you
like?</p></div>Tiger Teamtag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622008-11-17T19:03:48Z2009-06-20T20:04:48ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>Off the top of my head quickly and without thinking it through
deeply:</p>
<p>Save data out as a delimited text file for dumping into excel
etc</p>
<p>Can choose fields to export or not export...thus avoid bloating
file with tags or comments for instance.</p>
<p>Export particular queries/projects (so I can build a query in
the normal way, then export the result to txt file).</p>
<p>Ability to save export configurations</p>
<p>The whole thing could be command line using the query syntax
with some other export commands available....as I say a mechanism
for saving 'export bins' would be good here. Can easily reuse, pop
output into excel and build a graph or sort etc.</p></div>James Huggetttag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622008-11-17T20:28:44Z2009-06-20T20:04:49ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>Thanks, this is very useful.</p></div>Tiger Teamtag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622008-11-17T20:46:11Z2009-06-20T20:04:49ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>We have an API already. I don't see the need to add more export
features. Though we're planning on adding a family of miniapps to
add these fringe features to Lighthouse. For instance, an export
app that would convert the xml dump into a csv file for you with
savable recipes.</p></div>Ricktag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622008-11-17T20:58:33Z2009-06-20T20:04:50ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>@Rick --- I have not investigated the API - time pressures.
Usability of API depends on programming ability of user....you may
generally find managers etc lighterweight in this regard than Dev
:-) - and same managers will likely want dev doing client work
rather than bug tracker extension. Obvious point I know. Miniapps
sound good way to approach things.</p></div>James Huggetttag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622008-11-17T21:00:08Z2009-06-20T20:04:50ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>Yes that's what I'm talking about. We can open source the
reporting<br>
miniapp and people can help out by scratching their own itch.</p>
<p>On Nov 17, 2008, at 12:46 PM, voxpop@entp.com wrote:</p></div>Tiger Teamtag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622008-12-09T21:25:45Z2009-06-20T20:09:08ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>Rick recently added some awesomeness to the API, you can follow
http://lhstatus.com or http://twitter.com/lhstatus for updates on
Lighthouse features as we roll them out.</p></div>Nicoletag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/100622009-01-06T23:48:16Z2009-06-20T20:14:29ZAre you guys living in the real world?<div><p>Just as a counterpoint: We're on the bronze plan and I think the
price is great. We're at 15 users, so we have to upgrade when we
need more users; but the price will still be ok.</p>
<p>Sure there are some features we'd like; but mostly we like not
having all the features we don't care about that others would want
to pollute the system with.</p>
<p>One thing that was a little weird for how we use it about the
plans was the 240% price increase to go from 10 to 15 users; but
the amount we pay is fine.</p>
<p>Ask</p></div>Ask Bjørn Hansen