TextWise - Delivering an automated, scalable, and contextual e-commerce solution on the web

Shortly after adopting TeamPage in the Spring of 2005, Rob Rubin (then CTO) of TextWise said "Since we've been using Traction® Software's TeamPage enterprise blog for our product development management, our culture has changed 100% to where our meetings and communications are totally driven by TeamPage. One day, our email system was down and not one engineer complained because they use Traction® TeamPage exclusively to track status and projects."

See news coverage of this story in August 2005 | IT Execs Face Need to Link Dispersed Developers and August 2006 | Blogging Your Project.

Rob Rubin accepted the position of CTO of TextWise, LLC, a content-driven Internet solutions company with over 30 employees, when the company was in the middle of a major product launch that involved significant architectural changes to its products in a very tight timeframe. The development team, based in multiple locations, communicated primarily with email strings and was structured in a hierarchical fashion. Rubin took the job knowing that he wanted to:

1) Make project status transparent to everyone in the organization.

2) Leverage the talent of the organization for all design decisions, regardless of department or location.

3) Capture and share all QA test and spec information in one location.

4) Function as an agile development team that could deliver new software releases in 1-2 week turnaround time.

Rubin knew that the existing structure, communication methods, and tools in place in the organization would not enable the group to meet these goals. He put together a steering committee to review different options for communications tools, including Traction's TeamPage and several other blog and wiki solutions. They made an immediate decision to purchase TeamPage.

The benefits of TeamPage that TextWise saw were:

1) Ease of configuration

2) Better security model

3) Ability to manage documents in addition to blog postings

4) Ability to utilize organizational tools such as labeling.

Within a few weeks, more than half of the TextWise organization was using TeamPage. Product development and design decisions are now made in a much shorter timeframe, costly design mistakes are reduced dramatically, and the communication both within the team and throughout the organization is now significantly improved.

TeamPage now drives development meetings and status reports, enabling more productive meetings and the ability to leverage talent throughout the organization. More than 1000 documents and email strings that had been floating throughout the organization are now centrally updated and stored on TeamPage, enabling access to them to everyone in the organization.