Product Review: Hive

Hive is productivity and collaboration software that is famously used by teams at world-class companies ranging from Google to Starbucks to Toyota to IBM. As a productivity and community building enthusiast, Hive was already on my list of products to try. The icing on the cake? One of my someday/maybe list items is to keep bees, so I’m already digging the metaphor. Here are my thoughts on Hive. (Full disclosure before we dive in: Hive nominated me as one of the 11 best project management blogs and influencers of 2020.)

Getting Started with Hive

Hive offers a 30-day free trial of its software, no credit card required. The software prompts you to answer a few questions to help set up your workspace. These questions relate to the size of your organization, the project(s) you are managing, and key tasks that you wish to accomplish related to those projects. Hive also asked me to select some templates that might be of interest—I chose product roadmap, agile development, and content calendar based on some of the recent endeavors I’m leading. Hive pledged to provide some inspiration based on my responses and then welcomed me to the platform.

I liked Hive’s clean, colorful interface immediately. Since it was my first time using the platform, Hive offered a friendly tool tip with a series of activities designed to increase familiarity with the platform. This is standard for many products I’ve reviewed, but what I like about Hive’s tool tip is that it gamifies the activities so that completing more of them increases your standing as a productivity master. They know their audience. Us Type A productive types will want to optimize—and win.

I also liked that Hive supplies fake team members in the chat panel. I could have invited collaborators if I wanted to, but it was helpful to imagine how the chat features would have worked for my team in advance of hiring employee #2. (Also, side note, one of the employees was named Landon. It’s like they know me.) Like any chat worth its salt, Hive lets you react to messages with gifs or emojis (called “buzzmojis” in Hive. Cute.) Unlike in Microsoft Teams, Hive offers a more expansive set of reaction options for a given message. Also, unlike both Microsoft Teams and Slack as far as I’m aware, there is an option to mark a message as unread so you don’t forget to respond to it later. (Having to remember to respond creates an open loop in your brain, decreasing your productivity for more important functions.) Cue the Hallelujah chorus.

Actions Panel

Next to the chat panel is your list of actions, grouped by project, with the option to sort the actions based on due date, priority, or last updated. You can also filter the actions by status or date. I found it strange that you could export the actions list as a PNG but not via any other modes. It’s probably the old school consultant in me that briefly wondered about Microsoft Excel, before awakening with a jolt to realize that no one uses Excel anymore in 2021. The PNG is perfect for inserting into this week’s executive prezi. Nonetheless, a PDF would have been useful as well.

Clicking on an arrow beside the project name transforms the task list to a Kanban board. Excellent.

Clicking on one of the actions allows you to edit the details. You can add a description, update the status, create subactions, attach files, and/or specify a deadline. I liked the clean interface that included salient details without overcluttering. I also appreciated how the interface emphasized collaboration by allowing you to follow specific actions so that you stay plugged in as changes are made. Also, other people can comment on the action.

If you’re switching from a competitor to Hive, you won’t necessarily have to retype your actions list. You can import tasks from Trello, Asana, Basecamp, Smartsheet, or even a CSV file (if you happen to be an old school consultant who still appreciates a good spreadsheet now and then.)

Project Navigator

The left panel included an option to toggle between the “My actions” and “Projects” view. Selecting “Projects” brought up the Project Navigator page, which reminded me of the selections I had made when I initially set up my Hive workspace. In addition to my “Very Important Project,” I saw the agile development, content calendar, and product roadmap project templates that had initially sparked my interest.

In this view, Hive offers the option to create a new project as well as add people to your existing projects. You can also archive projects, essential for the PM who dislikes clutter but understands the importance of documentation.

The sample projects prepopulated Kanban boards with examples that might pertain to these types of endeavors. For example, the agile development project organized actions by status—backlog, ready for dev, in progress, code reviewed, live in production, etc. Each project also offered the option to sort the Kanban board by person or label in addition to status, or to view the contents as a calendar, table, or Gantt chart (we know my feelings on this one.)

I was most excited about the project summary view, which allows you to present actions from more than one project at a time, based on the details you select (e.g., team member or status.) This would come in handy for cross-functional executive briefings.

Hive Apps

Hive also has workspace apps that further optimize productivity and collaboration. Some are included; others are add-ons. Those that sounded most appealing were project analytics, time tracking, workflow automation, and portfolio views for multiple projects (example below.)

Hive also offers integrations with a myriad of other productivity products, including but not limited to Slack, Jira, Zapier, and Zoom. They even have their own mail system, so if you wanted to, you could operate entirely out of Hive.

After my brief tour, I was impressed with what I saw. Hive has a clean and comfortable interface that masks a powerful productivity punch. I also like that Hive makes it easy to navigate within and across other applications, reducing friction, furthering collaboration, and maximizing output—all essential ingredients to building a healthy and resilient community.