Calculating ROI for Glass
- Balázs Szakál (Unlicensed)
Introduction
Whenever you spend money on something, you should consider if its worth it or not. Especially when you spend your company’s money, this questions comes up regularly from your manager, or your manager’s manager. Why should you buy an extra App? Whats the Return Of Investment? Let’s walk through popular use cases, and calculate the price with and without Glass installed.
Average click needed for Getting Information
When you want to get some information, you want it fast. As fast as possible. Lets see some examples, how fast can you get information from your beloved Jira system, as a Simple User, Project Admin and System Admin. Let’s compare these click to reach numbers with Glass in the following table:
| With Glass | Without Glass | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
Clicks needed per Actors | Any User with Glass View Permission (Starting from Glass Project Page) | Simple User (Starting from Project Main Page) | Project Admin (Starting from Project Admin Page) | System Admin (Starting from Admin Page) |
Getting Components | 1 click
| Components not available. Still you can explore components from issue screens, where components field applied. | 1 click
| 1 click
|
Getting Versions | 1 click
| Versions not available. Still you can explore versions from issue screens, where Fix Versions field applied. | 1 click
| 1 click
|
Getting Issue Types | 1 click
| 2 click You need to click on Create button. If you have Create issue permission on the project, you can browse Issue Types. | 1 click
| 1 click
|
Getting Other People in the Project | 1 click
| People not available. You can guess for other people in the project by browsing the user type fields like Assignee. | 1 click
| 1 click
|
Getting Permissions in the Project | 1 click
| Permission overview not available. You have absolutely no knowledge about Project Permissions, neither the owned Permissions. | 1 click
| 1 click
|
Getting Notifications in the Project | 1 click
| Notifications overview not available. You have absolutely no knowledge about Events, neither when and who get Emails and why?! | 1 click
| 1 click
|
Getting Screens and Fields | 2 click
| You can discover screens and containing fields while using Jira. But you have no overview, about fields and Screens. | 4 click
| 4 click
|
Getting Workflows for an Issue Type | 2 click
| 4 click - minimum If you already have issues in the project, you can open them and click on View Workflow. If you don’t, you need to create issues in the project, just to browse the related workflow. | 2 click
| 2 click
|
Analyze Workflow Post Functions, finding Custom Post Functions | 2 click
| Simpl not possible. You just can’t know what will happen when you transition an issue. | Still not possible. You still don’t know anything about the existence of Post Functions. | 3+(transitions*2) clicks
|
Conclusion about getting information
As a Simple Jira user, you are screwed! Basically your system is a big mystery, you can’t know anything for sure, which can make you depressed and angry. That's bad. Not only for you, but for you productivity, for your admins, your general feedback about Jira and for everyone in your company.
As a Project Admin, you can feel like a small king in your kingdom, you can know many things about your project, you can manage components, version, users, and you can answer Simple User’s questions about your Project. But there are few mysteries, and uncomfortable layouts for you as well.
As a System Admin, you are the true emperor of your system. You know all the answers if you really want, but sometimes it take a little more time as it would be comfortable/affordable for you. Especially questions about projects which created by another administrators, takes much longer to answer.
The cost of a full project configuration documentation
Project documentation helps all the users interacting with the project, also in some industries strict audit rules expect them. If you are not sure why should you create project documentation, read our blog on this topic: Why should you create Jira Project Documentations?
Let's try to calculate how much does it cost to create a project documentation for 1 project.
Suppose that an Atlassian Administrator’s hourly rate is 60$ (based on Upwork public data).
Creating a well formatted document, could take 4 to 20 hours, depends on the size and complexity of the project. Lets calculate with an average of 6 hours.
So the documentation of a unique project costs around ~360$.
Let’s compare this to the price table:
| 10 users | 25 users | 50 users | 100 users | 250 users | 500 users | 2000 users | 10000 users | 10000+ users |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Glass Prize / tier | 10$ | 300$ | 600$ | 1200$ | 3000$ | 5000$ | 8000$ | 12000$ | 16000$ |
Documentation time for the same money | 10 min | 5 hours | 10 hours | 20 hours | 50 hours | 83 hours | 133 hours | 200 hours | 266 hours |
Unique projects can be documented | <1 | 1 project | ~2 projects | ~4 projects | 8 projects | 14 projects | 22 projects | 33 projects | 44 projects |
For example if you have an instance with 50 users, you can fully document 2 unique projects manually one time, but if you are on the 2000 user tier, you can create 22 project configuration documentation in 133 man-hours, instead of investing into Glass.
Also don't forget, creating documentation manually will be outdated very soon, there weill be extra maintenance cost as well!
Conclusion about cost and ROI
Glass is an investment, to automate your boring and expensive manual documentation process, makes it easy and sustainable, while your documentation becoming always up to date!
Overall Solution for Project Documentation
At the end Glass saves you lot of time, and time is money.
With Glass, you can create a project documentation with only 1 click / project: Get Project documentation with 1 click
Over that, you can support your
simple Jira users with easy to understand project information (which they could not reach otherwise)
project admins to overview their project and educate newcomers
system admins to reduce their dependencies, and increase their productivity
Dont hesitate, try Glass now for free!
