Next week, intriguing productivity app Taskflight by software startup Vantagon will be ready for mass consumption, promising to bring more honest and efficient business practices to the workplace.
Taskflight is designed to track progress in the workplace, where people can assign tasks, transfer files, and collectively work toward “objectives,” or bigger goals.
Unlike most productivity apps that focus on the here and now, Taskflight considers future end goals. Its name comes from a flight app that creator Mariano Malisani, who is also CEO and founder of Vantagon, was taking from Argentina to Paris.
As he left Buenos Aires, Malisani noted that the city looked far more expansive from the outside. He immediately made an analogy to his day-to-day tasks, he told the Epoch Times in a phone interview.
“What if you could start taking a bird’s-eye view of your situation and you could clearly spot where problems lie?” he said. “What if you could take your task on a flight and you could see where you are and where you want to go?”
Malisani got the idea for Taskflight from his time working as business development manager for a biotech firm in Argentina where he felt there was little transparency or work ethic.
“Imagine that your goals get changed from one management meeting to the other and nothing is clear. There’s no complete oversight. It was very messy,” Malisani said of his time there. “So when I quit that job ... I asked myself, what will be my first software product? Well, it’s got to be something that can help people in my situation.”
He structured Taskflight to make the workplace more transparent. Multiple hourlong coffee breaks or secret naps would become obvious as people report their progress on tasks, which are then automatically calculated to a percentage of progress for the particular objective.
“You set up a clear objective and you can easily know if somebody has done something or not,” said Malisani. “Tools like Taskflight will make that come to light. And some teams might not like that. But my personal ambition is to promote healthier cultures and teamwork.”
