Why I Built Hense: A Solo Developer's Journey

A Kanban Journey

I never thought I’d build my own Kanban app. But after watching Trello slowly become something I didn’t recognize, I realized: if I wanted a Kanban tool that worked the way I needed, I’d have to make it myself.

I remember fondly when I first discovered Kanban. At first I thought that this was yet another Japanese word or term, where people take its concept literally and surround it with mystic, and ancestral practices, just to market it better here on the West. But little did I know, Kanban had a real meaning and foundation, specifically in the Toyota Production System. Basically, it was developed as a scheduling system for lean manufacturing, with the task of tracking production work with cards displayed on a board. Its main premise was to eliminate waste derived from production processes.

It was Agile software development that brought Kanban’s popularity to new highs, because of its visual and clear communication of people (individually or collaboratively) doing certain tasks at a time. This was capitalized by a product in the last decade: Trello. This web application (then became a whole platform) was one of the most relevant products at the time, that showed people Kanban’s way of work benefits. Individuals and teams started organizing their work visually, by getting rid of their countless Excel files, and literally began to see “the whole picture” of their work in real time.

Almost 10 years ago, I discovered this way of working too. I was in charge of a development team around that time, and it really made a huge difference in our working pipeline, processes, communication, and accountability. Because of this, I took interest in beginning to apply Kanban for personal projects, and it was really easy to organize all my activities and tasks this way. I felt that I was on top of things, most of the time.

What Happened With Trello

Unfortunately, my honeymoon with Trello ended relatively shortly after I discovered it. In 2017, Trello was acquired by an even bigger company, Atlassian. Most developers know this company because it’s the developer of a popular project management tool: Jira. However, their focus has always been towards the corporate world, big teams with lots of people, and complicated businesses processes and operations. It was very clear why this company acquired something like Trello: migrate their customer user base to integrate with their systems. Of course not everybody was going to fit in with this vision, but there were companies big enough that filled the quota.

At the beginning, Trello was still offering their services as usual, but you could see in the horizon that the “integration monster” was coming for you, eventually. As a personal user, Trello started restricting the boards creation to just 10 per workspace, then charging around $5-6 USD/month for more boards.

What If, I Solve This On My Own. At Least For Me

Last year, I took the decision to take this matter on my own hands. Initially, I thought about two important points for tackling this:
1. I don’t want to maintain a server infrastructure and services for this.
2. Most of Trello’s features are designed for collaboration and working with more people. I just need a subset of these features, for my own personal projects.

This coincided with another idea that I had for a while: I wanted to develop a SwiftUI app for the Apple ecosystem. I’m a heavy user of my Mac, iPhone, and iPad, and this idea was the perfect excuse to put my recently acquired SwiftUI knowledge to practice. And then, the ride began.

By tackling the two points that I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest benefits surfaced quickly: since I’m not going to pay for server infrastructure and services, maybe I could sell this app as a one-time purchase instead of a subscription. This really motivated me to consider seriously to monetize this project and transform it into a venture. However, I needed external validation and interest, to see if some people were actually interested in paying for something like this.

Validating the Idea

Even though I’m a developer by profession, I’m really lucky to have creative professionals in my life. Whether friends or family members, the work done by these individuals, have always found my admiration and respect. It’s really cool to put ideas into work, inspire others with your craft, and show a piece of yourself to the world. It’s not an exaggeration to affirm that I’m constantly inspired by these people in my life.

This was how I began asking around one simple question: how do you organize your work? And wow, the answers were all over the place. Most people relied on Excel, while others had a very manual way of dealing with this (like lots of notes, Post-Its, paper, paper everywhere). When I mentioned the word “Kanban”, I found a lot of blank stares and people asked if this was something related to Marie Kondo. Which funnily enough, it has the same root as the Kanban way of work: eliminate waste.

I had several interesting conversations with these newfound initial users, about their pain points, their familiarity with project management software, their routines, and mostly, their way of handling work-related activities as individuals or freelancers. This of course brought a lot of cool ideas for the app, but you need to organize and prioritize, or the feature creep is going to haunt you. Afterwards, I decided on the most important and basic features that this app should have.

It’s a reality that version 1 of any project or product, is going to leave you with a lot of self-doubt: is this enough? What about this other feature? Do people actually are going to pay for this thing? And so on… But, I really believe this is a crucial part of the journey. Being in an endless sea of possibilities, and build your boat piece by piece to navigate its currents, is very fun! I’m really humbled that these initial people actually cared about what I developed, and I’m equally hopeful to meet new people interested in this solution for organizing personal work and projects. I honestly believe that the best way of knowing what to work on next, is with the feedback of people that care.

Hense

Last but not least, what about the name?

Hense comes from hensei, which is the romaji form of the word 編成. This word means “the formation or organization of something”, and I believe this applies to what I’m trying to achieve with this app 🙂.

If you’re tired of subscription fatigue and bloated project tools, I’d love for you to give Hense a try. Whether you’re organizing work projects, personal goals, or anything in between, Hense is built for people who just want to get things done.