Remember that movie Groundhog Day? Where Bill Murray experiences the same day over and over and over and heartwarming hilarity ensues? Working from home can feel like a lot like that (minus the heartwarming hilarity). The hours meld together because there’s no natural divider to separate work time from personal time.

It’s easy to look at project management software through the lens of a single goal: more successful projects. It’s true: 77% of high-performing projects are built with project management software. Companies that use project management software are better at staying on schedule, on budget, and on top of stakeholder needs. Those things create a better customer experience and a stronger bottom line. But remember, buyers are human.

When you hear the word “transparency,” project management software probably isn’t what comes to mind. Maybe you think of the window next to your desk. Unless the blinds are closed, you can see clearly into your yard. It’s not much different in the work context: Unless you have a reason to block the light, you should be able to watch what’s going on from where you’re seated. Project management software is that transparent window.

So you’ve decided on a project management software you want to introduce to your team. Great! Choosing a project management software is a challenge in and of itself. But now that you’ve found the perfect one, the real battle begins: implementation.

Business is a battle, and the companies that best optimize their resources tend to win. But without a clear look at project-level data, it’s impossible to distribute those resources well. The right project management software shows you how and where your resources are spent. Organizing, executing, and analyzing projects is a lot easier when you can find it all on a single platform.

Our legal team shares its favorite tips and tools for automating repetitive tasks, collaborating with outside counsel and much more, all inside Slack

Telecommuting or remote working is no longer only a strategy to scale up your customer service or globally distributing your support teams. It’s a growing necessity that is more about future-proofing your customer service against business-related uncertainties. Apart from being a developing global necessity, the need for telecommuting also entails the preferences of workers.

As a native New Yorker, I almost get the feeling I’ve seen this movie before. I saw 9/11 up close. I experienced the 2008 financial crash from inside Goldman Sachs. I’ve been through bomb threats, water main ruptures, and a hundred other predicaments too banal to remember distinctly. But even having worked and lead teams through all that, I still find the COVID-19 crisis challenging to navigate.

Studies of customer feedback already tell us that the majority of customers prefer to solve their problems on their own over contacting a support agent. It makes sense—self-service puts the customer in the driver’s seat, empowering them to be autonomous and find the right answers with speed. But self-service is also better for businesses. It enables them to do more with less and frees their support teams’ time up for higher-stakes issues that require a human touch.

This year, I got a unique opportunity to call in at Mattercon 2020 and give a talk about my experience working on Mattermost and open source software (OSS) in general. I talked about how OSS helped me grow as a self-taught developer and how working on issues from Mattermost’s repos helped me gain experience and confidence in software development. In this article, I will highlight some of the things I talked about and also throw in a few pointers related to working on OSS.