My wife sighed when "300" arrived at the house last week. I had once again intercepted the Netflix queue, prioritizing an action movie over Thomas the Tank Engine. Needless to say, I watched this one alone.

If you haven't seen the movie, it's a tale of how King Leonidas of Sparta leads 300 Spartan warriors against a massive Persian army during The Battle of Thermopylae. A scene I particularly like is when Leonidas asks several members of a supporting army what they do for a living. They responded 'blacksmith', 'tailor', 'teacher' - everyday people who took up arms to defend their land. This was in stark contrast to the 'professional' Spartan fighters - every one of whom were born and raised to be a fierce warrior.

It made me think of the 300 project management tools on the market today. Like Leonidas and his men, these tools are 'born and raised' to do one thing: run projects - and only projects. They enable professional project managers to battle against the thousands of base-lined, inter-dependent, costed deliverables on their project plan. These 300 firms battle each other for circa $500m market, a tiny sliver of the overall software market.

In contrast to the professional project managers, there are millions of others (me included) who do not subscribe to the project management association newsletter, but do spend much of our time keeping track of where things stand. Even though we don’t have 'PM' in our title, we are deadline driven, interact with others extensively, and constantly need updates on tasks. Organizing, tracking, and sharing information is fundamental to our job. Our jobs responsibilities aren't like Spartan warriors who were asked to do one thing. We can't neatly place all that we do into milestones, resources, and dependencies. I applaud the project management tools who cater to the ‘Spartans’, but I don’t believe they are serving the majority or the long tail of the market.

We non-Spartans don’t want strict rules or processes imposed on us. We want tools that are convenient, easy to use, accessible, and effective at tracking and sharing information. It's why we've embraced Excel, e-mail, and our mobile devices for all these years. Smartsheet aims to help these people. The tools we've used so faithfully have served us well but they carry a cost. Information gets out of synch, commitments are shelved in archived emails, and it's difficult to see all the moving parts on one page.

As we design Haymaker (our next major release), we are sure to keep the 300 project management tool providers in mind. It is tempting to build the 'warrior-like' solution that is silo'd by design, but it's the millions of 'blacksmiths, tailors, and teachers' we are trying to help in their everyday jobs. If they are ever asked to face an epic project management battle, we'll be happy to refer them to a Spartan solution. In the meantime, we'll help them get things done a whole lot more quickly and confidently.

Mark, CEO