There’s a pattern that repeats in every B2B SaaS tool: they sell you “control over your team”. You see who’s active, what tasks they have open, how long they took to move them, who hasn’t logged in this week.
It sounds useful. In practice, it’s surveillance.
How teams notice
Teams that feel watched develop defenses. The most common defense is ceremonial use: they update the system just enough to look active. Real decisions happen on WhatsApp, where nobody is looking. The system becomes theater.
We talked to technical producers and PMs who put it like this: “If the tool makes me feel watched, I sabotage it. If it saves me two steps, I defend it to the death.”
That sentence is the filter we use every time we design something new in Producit.
The conceptual difference
There are two kinds of software that look alike on screen but are fundamentally different:
Surveillance software:
- Shows you who did what and when.
- Measures person-level response time.
- Generates “productivity reports per user”.
- The manager opens dashboards to see “how the team is doing”.
Work software:
- Shows you what’s left to do on the show.
- Measures show completion, not people.
- Generates “show status”, not “crew productivity”.
- The manager opens the system to understand the show, not to audit anyone.
The data can look similar. The philosophy is opposite.
What changes with each model
If your system is surveillance, your team uses it as little as possible. Real decisions happen outside the system. The system data ends up incomplete. You end up running a theater and doing parallel work on WhatsApp.
If your system is work, your team uses it because it saves them time. Decisions stay there because that’s where the work happens. The system data is complete because it reflects the real operation.
The first model gives you apparent control. The second gives you real control.
How we apply this in Producit
We charge by functional depth, not per person. Your full team comes in, with no per-user cost. There’s no economic incentive to limit who enters the system.
Promoters and clients access for free as guests with limited views, scoped to their show. There’s no incentive to exclude legitimate counterparts.
We don’t show “last activity” as a featured per-user metric. We show show status. The team doesn’t feel measured.
We don’t have “average user response time” in any report. We show what’s left to close on the show. The unit of analysis is the show, not the person.
The honest test
Look at the last management tool you used. Ask yourself: how many of its top-level dashboards measure people versus how many measure work?
If most measure people, they’re selling you surveillance. If most measure work, they’re selling you work.
Producit is the second kind. See how →