How to Choose the Right Software to Keep Your Team Focused on Product

Recently I have been puzzled about how to efficiently keep a team focused only on business or product.

Obviously this is a large topic, so I started with a specific angle: how to use software more efficiently to first solve objective problems.

Software exists to solve real problems for a team, so the software a team truly needs must be identified by first understanding the team's actual problems.

Each team's positioning differs, leading to different software choices. Below I use our current team as an example to explore this.

Our team’s positioning: a product‑focused, fast‑response team that solves problems rather than learns. We do not prioritize foundational or systematic technical accumulation, nor do we engage in overly trendy or research‑oriented technologies.

Based on this positioning, the software can be divided into the following parts:

Building the technical environment.

Project management.

Team technical knowledge accumulation.

Building the Technical Environment

Goal: Transform a product into a user‑accessible product through technical means, i.e., accessible via a client.

This environment does not require every member to be familiar with it; a stable version is sufficient, avoiding unnecessary effort from other members. It must be automatable and support continuous integration.

Responsibilities may differ per person; here is the method we currently use for setup.

Project Management

Goal: Implement the product in the optimal way while reducing uncertainty.

We adopt an agile development model for project management, using Worktile. All work revolves around product projects.

Team Technical Knowledge Accumulation

Goal: Reduce time costs of using development software and solving related issues.

We focus solely on the software used within the team.

In summary:

For environment‑building software, we avoid distracting other members and generally automate the setup.

For project‑management software, we concentrate all work on it, focusing on user stories, iterations, and minimizing project cycles.

Technical knowledge accumulation revolves around the technologies the team uses, aiming to reduce time and eventually share higher‑level insights via blogs.

Finally, I strongly recommend two tools: Weizhi and Worktile.