Abstract

This is the documentation and notes for the DashboardHub team and community.

Milestone

Current milestones for DashboardHub

milestone

RETROs

Retro 28th of May 2018

Team retrospective after first week.

Team members contributing to retro: - Tilly - Eddie

Table 1. Retro points
What worked well What could be improved Suggested actions

Supportive team

Occasionally meet up to pair

Pairing in person (Sat 16th of June)

Passionate team

Admin tasks could be improved

Try to use project board

Flexible working (time & remote) allows to be focussed & efficient

Larger backlog & more details

Eddie to put more body in the descriptions

EVENTs

Startup Grind

WebSummit

Exhibiting in Alpha stage 2018

Pre event

Days running up to event.

  1. [x] Logistics (e.g. taxi booked for 7am, room service for breakfast)

    1. Book taxi

  2. [ ] Things to take

    1. laptop (not ipad)

    2. swag box

    3. wear tshirts

  3. [x] Tasks on the day

    1. Tanya in developer lounge

    2. Bybreen at stand with me and using my phone

  4. [x] Social media accounts

    1. send to Csenge on FB messenger to DH page? Do test message today

    2. not on whatsapp because it reduces the quality of photos

    3. base hashtags (in priority order) #websummit #opensource #dashboardhub #devops #diversity #inclusion #startup #code

  5. [x] Tanya dropbox to store all teams photos

  6. [x] Eddie to update website strapline (+social media)

  7. [x] Eddie to do value propersition

Tip
 The no-setup, open-source platform that makes your deployment pipeline more transparent by ensuring everybody on your team is on the same page. DashboardHub does this by gathering the most relevant, up-to-date information, like what version is on what stage and build/deployment durations

  1. [ ] Demo

    1. existing environment

    2. creating and setting up new environment

  2. [ ] Pitch

    1. record all of our practice pitches

    2. share final pitch

  3. [ ] Key objects + questions to ask people

  4. [ ] Web Summit App connections - use app to search/filter for contacts and send them our stand details

  5. [ ] New UI

    1. Fix defects

    2. Deploy

Post event

Table 2. Retro

What worked well

What could be improved

Suggested actions

Team were good at speaking to people

Our backs were sometimes towards the public and we could’ve missed opporunities

N/A

The two days of prep worked in our favour

Better understanding of the engineering of the product, so able to articulate the nuances of the product

N/A

We failed fast - realised quickly that the original plan of having presence in the dev lounge wasn’t working, so we re-grouped and started again

Wasn’t sure who our target audience was. Techies thought the tool was for non-techies, and non-techies thought it was for techies

N/A

We arrived early and was one of the last to leave. This meant we were able to maximise the day

Could’ve had a banner to cover the wooden frame at the bottom of the stand to advertise the product. It was wasted space

N/A

Our interpersonal skills were apparent, and we had the emotional maturity to deal with each others quirks

Facilitation of interpersonal skills

N/A

We were able to quickly adapt to the each person who came to the stand

Create a more visually appealing stand to attract more people

N/A

Networking with other startups at the stands

Could’ve improved on the social media

N/A

Had dedicated people to speak to other startups

N/A

Appreciating the people standing right next to you

Speaking to everyone in the stands near us

N/A

Pre Fosdem

Actions

  • Csenge

  • bags (ideally orange bag with double sided logo)

  • Sketch video

  • Video

  • Voice over

To bring

  • laptop (Csenge also)

  • power adapter

  • power extension / splitter

  • studio clips/clamps

  • posters x3

  • table cloth === Post Fosdem

What worked work

  • Stand location

  • Arival/departure timings

  • Good swag (x3)

  • Elevator pitch was good + consistent

  • Fosdem had good audience

  • Good communication with audience and betwen the team

  • 3 people on the stand

  • Lots of new connections / relationships

  • Best exhibiting we have done

  • Vlogs worked well

What could be improved

  • More swag (x3)

  • Postcards incorrect information (x3)

  • Highly technical discussions

  • 4 people taking shifts would allow going to talks / talking to other stands

  • DashboardHub improvements - new version etc

  • Didnt get Andrew in vlog

  • The team in front of the stand in the vlog

  • PostIt notes needed url

Actions

  • Chat with Andrew in Fosdem like place for vlog

  • Next event?

  • Order more swag (event dependent)

  • GitHub project board (now to be post fosdem)

  • Next verison of DashboardHub out (by March)

Notes

  • People were happy there was no agent to install

  • Promotheus

  • trigger and approval through DH when you have a PR

  • one click deployment (CLI)

  • extra/custom data in curl commands

  • automatic dependency updates - Greenkeeper

  • compatibility with GitLab

  • code on T-shirts

  • Mascot? + Suit

  • coding challenge on a laptop with mentoring

  • side shoe horn for camera

RESEARCH

Main competitors

StatusHub:

https://statushub.com/

features:

  • Incident Communication

  • Create and schedule maintenance events

  • API

  • Off-site Hosting

  • Hub-switcher

  • Private or public status site

  • Embeddable status sharing

  • Connect to monitoring tools

  • Multiple notification channels

  • Import subscribers and manage subscription settings via CSV import tool

pricing:

  • free trial

  • monthly:

  • basic: $49

  • standard: $99

  • premium: $299

  • enterprise: contact them

  • yearly:

  • basic: $529

  • standard: $1,069

  • premium: $3,229

  • enterprise: contact them

marketing strategies:

  • brand: efficiency, flexibility, communication, trust

  • advertising: social media, blog posts on website, seems minimal though

  • target audience: tech people

  • USP: automatic incident communication

social media:

  • Facebook: 1 like, nothing since 2017

  • Twitter: monthly posts, 57 followers, not much engagement, no hashtags

  • LinkedIn

  • Instagram

  • not really used

customers:

  • colleges, universities, companies

  • Iowa State University, Michigan State University, University of Wales

  • Accruent, Bottomline Technologies, Citrix, Fannie Mae, McKesson

popularity:

  • some featured customers on website, did not find much about it nor reviews

StatusPage:

https://www.statuspage.io/

features:

pricing:

  • free trial

Monthly:

Public Page:

  • hobby: $29

  • startup: $99

  • business: $399

  • enterprise: $1,499

Private Page:

  • starter: $79

  • growth: $249

  • corporate: $599

  • enterprise: $1,499

marketing strategies:

  • brand: trust, easy communication, “Just like DigitalOcean, Dropbox, and Intercom“

  • advertising: mainly through Atlassian, Google ads

  • target audience: support, devops and IT teams, incident response teams, marketing and sales teams

  • USP: comprehensive status page, “everything you need in a status page, right out of the box“

customers:

  • SaaS companies, Dev, IT Teams, Universities

  • Digital Ocean, Reddit, University of Colorado, MIT

social media: - Facebook: 242 likes, nothing since 2017 - Twitter: not in use since 2014 - LinkedIn - Instagram - not really in use, mainly Atlassian

popularity:

  • thousands of companies as customers

Pingdom:

https://www.pingdom.com/

features:

  • uptime monitoring

  • alerting

  • page speed monitoring

  • real user monitoring

  • transaction monitoring

  • server monitor

  • tailor incident management

  • real time alerts

pricing:

Monthly:

  • starter: £9.95

  • standard: £33.95

  • advanced: £59.95

  • professional: £164.00

Yearly: (per month)

  • starter: £7.95

  • standard: £27.00

  • advanced: £48.00

  • professional: £131.00

marketing strategies:

  • brand: easy, efficient, a solution, puts you ahead of competitors

  • advertising: social media, customer reviews

  • target audience: e-commerce, developers, managers

  • USP: amazing end-user experience

customers:

  • all kinds of companies, including Imgur, Netflix, Evernote, Shopify and Buzzfeed

social media: - Facebook: 55k likes, regular posts, little engagement with posts - Twitter: regular posts, 94k followers, not much engagement, no hashtags - LinkedIn: not really in use - Instagram: not really in use - blog on website

popularity:

  • 850,000 users, very popular

New competitors found

Octobox: https://octobox.io/

features:

  • manages GitHub notifications

  • host your own

pricing:

  • free for open source projects

  • private repositories: from $10/user/month

marketing strategies:

  • brand: open source, efficient, easy managing

  • advertising: cant find anything

  • target audience: github users with several projects

  • USP: github notification management

customers:

  • developers from Facebook, Google, Angular etc

social media:

  • no Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn

  • Twitter: new, fairly regular posts

popularity:

  • not sure

Uptrends: https://www.uptrends.com/

features:

  • website monitoring

  • web application monitoring

  • web performance monitoring

  • API monitoring

  • real user monitoring

  • server monitoring

pricing:

Basic Monthly:

  • starter: £7.43

  • premium: £25.98

  • professional: £103.92

Advanced Monthly:

  • business: £17.78

  • enterprise: £32.17

Yearly: 20% off monthly

marketing strategies:

  • brand: comprehensive, for teams, adaptable

  • advertising: live product demo, social media, customer reviews

  • target audience: tech teams

  • USP: ultimate monitoring tool

customers:

  • companies like Microsoft, HP, Lenovo, Virgin etc.

social media:

  • used to advertise and engage, regular posts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

popularity:

  • 25,000 users

Uptime Robot: https://uptimerobot.com/

features:

  • website monitoring

  • downtime notifications

  • API

  • public status page

pricing:

  • free

  • pro-plan: $4.50/month

marketing strategies:

  • brand: simple, effective, efficient, friendly

  • advertising: social media

  • target audience: IT teams

  • USP: simplicity

customers:

  • companies like Mini and Expedia

social media:

  • Twitter: 15k followers, active, interactive

  • Facebook: 5k followers, active

  • LinkedIn: not in use

  • Instagram: no

popularity:

New Relic: https://newrelic.com/

features:

  • real time analytics: metrics, dashboards and alerts

  • full stack visibility: customer experience, applications and infrastructure

  • scalable cloud platform

  • applied intelligence

pricing:

  • $69-999/month/app

marketing strategies:

  • brand: efficient, clear, useful, improvement, customer tested and trusted

  • advertising: customer reviews, partnerships with IBM Bluemix, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure and more

  • target audience: DevOps, managers

  • USP: improves your business

customers:

  • companies like Ryanair and Condé Nast

social media:

  • Instagram: focused on community

  • Facebook: active, interactive, 30k+ followers

  • Twitter: active, interactive, 70k+ followers

  • LinkedIn: active, interactive, 40k+ followers

popularity:

  • over 17,000 customers

  • huge revenue, on stock exchange

Site24x7: https://www.site24x7.com/

features:

  • website monitoring

  • server monitoring

  • application monitoring

  • network monitoring

  • real user monitoring

pricing:

  • free trial

All in one plan/month: - pro: $35 - classic: $89 - elite: $225 - enterprise: $449

marketing strategies:

  • brand: simple, comprehensive, effective

  • advertising: referral partners, reseller partners, social media

  • target audience: DevOps and IT operations

  • USP: all in one monitoring solution

customers:

  • companies like Nasa, cisco, ford

social media:

  • Facebook: 10k+ followers, events, active

  • Instagram: not active

  • Twitter: 14k+ follower, active, events

  • LinkedIn: not active

popularity:

  • 10,000+ customers

Wider competitors

Instana:
https://www.instana.com/
- application performance management (APM)
- infrastructure monitoring(IM)

features:
- automatically and continuously aligns to every change that results from continuous deployment
- delivers actionable information in seconds, not minutes, allowing you to operate at the speed of CI/CD
- AI powered APM delivers intelligent analysis and actionable information

pricing:
- APM: $67 per host per month
- IM: $10 per host per month

social media:
- Facebook: 326 likes, regular posts, little engagement with posts
- Twitter: regular posts, 3k followers, not much engagement, no hashtags
- LinkedIn
- Instagram

Atlassian:
https://www.atlassian.com/
- StatusPage
- OpsGenie: With deep integrations into monitoring, ticketing, and chat tools, Opsgenie groups alerts, filters out the noise, and notifies you using multiple channels, providing the necessary information for your team to begin immediate resolution.

features:
- Status for each part of your service with Components
- Inform users about future Scheduled Maintenance
- Incident Templates
- Third Party Components
- ChatOps Integrations
- API
- Automation Integrations
- Status Embed

pricing:
- public page per month: $29 - $1,499
- private page per month: $79 - $1,499

social media:
- Facebook: 209k likes, regular posts, little engagement with posts
- Twitter: frequent posts, 76k followers, not much engagement, no hashtags
- LinkedIn
- Instagram

SignalFx:
https://www.signalfx.com/

features:
- full stack metrics
- distributed tracing
- events
- logs
- streaming analytics
- nosample tracing
- signalflow data science
- mutable metadata
- instant discovery
- high resolution
- smart alerts
- full stack correlation
- service maps
- dashboards
- devops collaboration
- APIs
- service bureau
- cloud costing

pricing:
- per host per month: $15 - $65

social media:
- Facebook: 410 likes, regular posts, little engagement with posts
- Twitter: frequent posts, 2k followers, not much engagement, no hashtags
- LinkedIn
- Instagram

Dynatrace:
https://www.dynatrace.com/
- application performance management (APM)

features:
- automated
- full stack
- AI-powered
- Web-scale for 100.000+ hosts
- Enterprise governance and security
- Flexible deployment options

pricing:
- free trial
- actual price not given

social media:
- Facebook: 3k likes, regular posts, little engagement with posts
- Twitter: frequent posts, 15k followers, not much engagement, no hashtags
- LinkedIn
- Instagram

Firebase research

Checklist

  • ✓ DB - No SQL

  • ✓ Typescript

  • ✓ pub/sub - out of the box

  • ✓ frontend hosting - Simple deployment and cloud front alternative

  • ✓ Deployment (from CI) - CLI

  • ✓ CRUD

  • ✓ offline

  • ✓ local development / automated testing / open source contributions - Testing uses the cloud, recommended to use Cypress https://angularfirebase.com/lessons/cypress-angular-testing-end-to-end/

  • ❏ Validation - rules file, function?

  • ❏ API - not used by UI

  • ✓ Auth

  • ❏ ~~Manage users~~

Dashboard criteria

  • ✓ GitHub OAuth

  • ✓ Realtime

  • ✓ Aggregations - keep totals in parent document

  • ✓ Pings (every 30mins) - seems possible with recent annoucements