A tool that both helps startups and researches them
- One tool project management and research in one flow
- PhD the thesis builds on the platform's data
- Teaching a fixed part of DTU's entrepreneurship programme
- You want to understand how the work actually happens, not what people remember afterwards.
- Data about the process only exists in emails, meetings and memory.
- A tool for measuring will not get used unless it also helps.
That is what it looks like in many knowledge and research environments. These are some of the challenges we have worked on with DTU Skylab.
What was DTU Skylab facing?
DTU Skylab is DTU's innovation centre, where students, researchers and companies work on new ideas. Many startup teams run side by side, and they needed help managing their projects without Skylab being able to follow each one closely.
At the same time, Skylab was a research environment. Data had to be gathered on how teams prioritise, collaborate and choose strategy, and progress had to be presentable to investors and stakeholders. Two purposes that easily end up as two systems, where one of them never gets used.
The students got a working tool, and the research got its data.
Project management in every format imaginable, and knowledge about the process that disappeared when the team broke up.
DevelopmentLog: a shared, real-time overview for teams, mentors and stakeholders, wherever they were sitting.
Data on collaboration, strategic choices and prioritisation, gathered while the work happened rather than reconstructed afterwards.
The documentation arises because the tool is worth using
- Usefulness first
Teams manage their tasks, goals and priorities in the platform, because it is easier than the alternative.
- Real time
Changes in priorities and goals reached become visible to everyone on the team immediately, including when they are sitting apart.
- The trail
Conversations and decisions are documented along the way, so the research can see how a team actually worked, and not what it remembered.
The same action serves two purposes. The students get a grip on their project, and Skylab gets data collected while the work was happening. That is why the material was strong enough to carry a PhD thesis.
Skylab had two purposes that easily become two systems
The obvious approach would have been to keep things apart: a project tool for the students and a data collection for the research. Two systems are easier to specify, but one of them always becomes the one nobody bothers using.
Project tool and data collection kept separate
- Easier to scope and build
- But recording becomes extra work with no payoff
- The data becomes patchy exactly when things are busy
One platform where the use creates the data
- The students use it because it helps them
- The research gets material from real work
- Investors and mentors can follow along in the same picture
Three moves that held the two purposes together
DTU Skylab knows the entrepreneurial environment and the research questions. Our contribution was building a platform where the students' everyday work and the needs of the research could meet in the same tool.
- 01
Collaboration across distance
Chat and updates over websockets let a team work together in real time, wherever they are.
- 02
Structured data from the start
Tasks, goals and priorities are recorded in a format that can be analysed, without the students having to think about it.
- 03
Infographic in the building
A dynamic visualisation at Skylab shows progress across teams, so status is something you see rather than something you ask about.
Fixed price, several prototypes
The project ran at a fixed price, which requires agreement on what is going to be built. We held workshops and made several prototypes along the way, so the frame could hold without locking the solution down too early.
We also followed how the platform was actually used once it went live. That is the kind of observation that decides whether a tool becomes a habit or a chore.
"Coignite were essential in developing the DevelopmentLog platform, which supported our research into startup teams by giving students an effective tool for real-time project management. Their ability to work closely with us and understand our goals made all the difference, and secured a solution that matched our needs precisely."
From tool to part of the teaching
DevelopmentLog became an integrated part of DTU's teaching in entrepreneurship and gave a more structured approach to project management. Investors followed the teams' work through the platform and took part in conversations and presentations, which gave even more insight into the environment.
The material the platform gathered was used in a PhD thesis that received the highest grade.
- Industry
- Research and education
- Platform
- Web
- Our role
- Development partner with operational responsibility under a service agreement
- Capabilities
- Digital consulting , UX and service design , Web development , System development
- Technologies
- Angular, Postgres, Java/Scala
- The collaboration
- Fixed-price project with workshops
Shall we look at what your data could show?
- A reply from one of us by the next business day.
- A no-obligation review of your situation.
- Clarity on which options are relevant to you.
- A concrete plan, if you choose to go ahead.