CodeOps Technologies

Company information

CodeOps Technologies LLP is a software technology company based in India. Founded in 2016 by techies, we started as a technology training company. We provide training, custom software development, and consulting services to SMEs and large organizations focusing on serverless technologies.

We are passionate about developer communities and organize some of the most popular meetup groups in India (with 47,000 members as of April 2021) and also actively contribute to the JetBrains India Meetup group. We have also helped organize numerous developer-focused conferences, including JetBrains Day India, which took place across multiple cities in 2018-19.

As techies, we are big fans of JetBrains tools. This passion led us to becoming an Authorized Reseller and Service Partner for JetBrains.

Challenges before adopting Space

Too-many-tool-itis. Before using Space, we were suffering from ‘too-many-tool-itis – we were using too many different tools for software development and collaboration. We were using Asana for sprint planning, GitLab for repositories, code reviews and CI/CD, GitHub for repositories, Slack for team discussions, JIRA and YouTrack for issues and issue boards, Medium for blogs, Google Docs and Calendar for team meetings and document sharing, and even WhatsApp to announce our absences to the team.

The learning curve for using different tools. Even as a small organization, each team chose their own set of tools. For example, one team would use GitHub for repositories, CI/CD, and hosting, and Asana for issues and sprint planning. Another team would use GitLab for repositories and CI/CD, Vercel for hosting, and YouTrack for issues and issue tracking. When a developer moved from one team to another, which often happens in our case, they wasted extra time learning a new set of tools with no increase in productivity.

Productivity loss in switching between the tools. When a customer reported an issue, discussions happened in Slack and we created an issue and tracked it in the sprint plan in YouTrack. Then we made code changes, reviewed the code, tested it, and deployed the changes to production in GitLab. If the deployment failed in GitLab, we went back and updated the status to the team in Slack and then in YouTrack. After that, we got back to fixing code in the GitLab repository! By using and switching between multiple tools we ended up wasting time, effort, and energy.

Maintaining access for multiple tools. When a person joined or left a team, we needed to provide or revoke access to multiple tools. Some tools were on a free plan, and once we hit the limit in the number of users or usage, we needed to upgrade to paid versions. We needed to make payments and maintain licenses for different tools. In short, managing the access to and licenses of multiple tools was a pain.

Why Space?

We were looking for a unified set of tools, or a single tool, for software development. Since we loved JetBrains tools, we tried out Space as soon as Beta was released. We have experienced Space evolving rapidly with the addition of features such as issues, issue-tracking, documents, CI/CD, and more. We haven’t looked back since then!

Convenient chats. The first feature we used was chats. The move from Slack to Space was straightforward since no “migration” was needed, unlike other tools. Next we adopted internal blogs and document sharing.

Collaborative documentation. Earlier, we were using YouTrack Knowledge Base and Google Docs for documents. We now easily and conveniently do collaborative content editing in Space, and we love the markdown feature. There are other benefits as well. For example, in Google Docs, we have to provide/revoke access to specific people (painful!), whereas Space offers team access (convenient!).

Streamlined access and training. Previously when members joined or left our team, we had to provide/revoke access to multiple tools. Even if the email ID became inaccessible, we still had to update the tools with new members. We also had to familiarize new members with different tools, since each team had their own toolsets. With Space, the process of onboarding new members and bookkeeping after members leave has become easy. Also, it is now convenient to familiarize new teammates with just one tool – Space – instead of multiple tools.

Generous Free Plan. Startups often have limited budgets, and we were previously using free versions of many tools. It is easy to hit user limits in free versions (e.g. YouTrack has a 10-user limit in the free version). However, Space offers unlimited users and projects in their free plan. There are also higher benefits compared to equivalent tool utilization. For instance, GitLab offers 400 CI minutes in its free plan, while Space provides 2000 CI minutes. We found the free plan in Space to be quite attractive and moved all our team members to Space. Our experience shows that once a team gets used to Space, they usually move to paid versions as the team expands!

Space automation. We are a big fan of automation, and we love the automation features in Space. For example, we leveraged the Space HTTP APIs to automatically trigger error notifications from our AWS accounts for better tracking and immediate actions from the team. Also, our utilization of Space CI/CD has yielded faster and more streamlined deployments using quality gates.

Smooth migration. Our migration to Space from other tools was smooth. For instance, it was easy for us to move from JIRA to Space using APIs. We maintained the JIRA links in issues so that both boards can be used until the team transitions.

Convenience of mobile, cloud, and desktop options. Our team primarily uses the Desktop apps (both on Windows and Mac). Even on the move, our team accesses Space as a mobile app (which is very convenient), usually on Android but also sometimes on iOS. Only in rare scenarios have we accessed Space from Web/Cloud. Having different options to choose from makes Space very convenient!

Holiday calendar and absences. Our annual holiday list is now in Space. Earlier, we were using Google Sheets and Google Calendar to communicate holidays to the team. Our team also regularly updates their absences in Space. During absences, non-working hours, and holidays, Space automatically mutes notifications, helping the team members maintain a good work-life balance.

Overall,it’s an awesome tool for productivity. Our team is experiencing increased productivity after adopting Space. We recently released a platform which was developed in just 4 months from idea to release! This quick turnaround for product development and increased productivity can be partially attributed to Space. For instance, a bug may be reported and discussed in chats in Space. With just a right-click on that chat message, we can create an issue and add it to the issue board. We can make changes, perform code reviews, and deploy the changes via the CI/CD pipeline. Having all of this in a single place (Space) enhances the development velocity and improves productivity.

Partners

The founders of CodeOps (Hari and Ganesh) are from tech backgrounds and love using JetBrains tools. Their tech interest led to organizing community meetups and later technical conferences. We contributed to the organization of JetBrains India Day across multiple cities (Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune) and Kotlin/Everywhere in Bengaluru.

While organizing meetups and conferences, we’ve personally experienced how much developers love using JetBrains products. It doubled our enthusiasm for evangelizing the tools.

With that, along with community contribution, we started organizing expert tech talks in different companies. We also created short videos and blogs covering tips and tricks for using JetBrains tools. As a natural extension to these initiatives, we became an Authorized Reseller and Service Partner for JetBrains.