Expo

We had been trying to adapt flexible tools to product management and it wasn’t working. Our previous tool could be used for everything but it didn’t give us the information we needed most: a clear view of what everyone was working on as individual contributors and where our energy was focused as a company.

Once we started using Linear, things immediately felt faster. The defaults were close to how we approached building product. From issue tracking to the Github automation to quarterly milestones, it fit with our workflow. While we planned to try Linear with my team first, before we could finish the trial the whole company was using it. We don’t just track engineering and design work in Linear but also tasks related to growth, documentation, and support. Even the contractors we work with are in it.

A couple of things changed once the full team was on Linear. One is that we're able to track what is going on in a distributed company which had been hard to do with random docs and outdated lists. Everything is synced in Linear across views and with GitHub, so it’s always up to date. This means people are able to communicate better. They see what is happening and know who to ask questions or what is next.

The second thing is that using Linear built a culture around taking action. We started keeping better track of issues that used to get lost in Slack messages or conversations. It was so fast to create an issue and even enjoyable that people now create issues instead of talking about them.

There had been some concern since Expo is an open source tool and moving to Linear meant that we’d no longer have a single, public source of truth. Using Linear requires this trade off but the benefits have been worth it.