Bright Green Projects

[Nick McKenna]

HI

I heard about this Agile tool on LinkedIn. Has anyone used it?

http://www.brightgreenprojects.com/

Nick.

[Neil McLaughlin]

Looks interesting but not used it. We are using Mingle which,
considering it was developed by Thoughtworks, is not as good as it
could be.

I've had a play with www.assembla.com which, on a cursory look, seems
good although it may be weaker on the agile side but does give you an
svn repository.

2009/11/17 Nick McKenna <nickam...@gmail.com>:

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[Nick McKenna]

My main complaints about Agile tools are:

1. They have too many features that I don't want
2. They force me to work a particular way (e.g. they force a series
of status changes)

The key things I am looking for are a simple requirements management
system and a drag and drop kanban board. After that I would like some
really basic Product Backlog / Sprint Backlog management tools.

So far, our best solution has been an Excel spreadsheet, MS Word, a
whiteboard and lots of Index cards...

Has anyone got a really simple, but effective Agile tool?

Nick.

On Nov 17, 9:05 am, Neil McLaughlin <neilbmclaugh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Looks interesting but not used it. We are using Mingle which,
> considering it was developed by Thoughtworks, is not as good as it
> could be.
>

> I've had a play withwww.assembla.comwhich, on a cursory look, seems

> good although it may be weaker on the agile side but does give you an
> svn repository.
>

> 2009/11/17 Nick McKenna <nickamcke...@gmail.com>:

>
>
>
> > HI
>
> > I heard about this Agile tool on LinkedIn. Has anyone used it?
>
> >  http://www.brightgreenprojects.com/
>
> > Nick.
>
> > --
> > --[[ post:            agi...@googlegroups.com               ]]--
> >  --[[ unsubscribe:     agilist+u...@googlegroups.com   ]]--

> >  --[[ www:            http://www.agileyorkshire.org]]--- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Daniel Drozdzewski]

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 9:13 AM, Nick McKenna <nickam...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My main complaints about Agile tools are:
>
>  1. They have too many features that I don't want
>  2. They force me to work a particular way (e.g. they force a series
> of status changes)
>
> The key things I am looking for are a simple requirements management
> system and a drag and drop kanban board. After that I would like some
> really basic Product Backlog / Sprint Backlog management tools.
>
> So far, our best solution has been an Excel spreadsheet, MS Word, a
> whiteboard and lots of Index cards...
>
> Has anyone got a really simple, but effective Agile tool?
>
> Nick.
>

Nick,

I agree with you re agile tools - far too many options to choose from.
What is more - it seems to me that there are few Agile houses that
exist only to provide the rest of the world with tools to do agile
development and/or project management, most likely the way they do
those themselves. The hype of agile have reached the executives now
and more people jump on the bandwagon which on its own is great and it
created a market for such tools. Unfortunately it also means that
there is more noise and it is harder to find the right tool. It also
means (like everywhere) that 80% of those tools will not be of great
quality or fit for purpose.

I also agree that between Jira+Grasshoper, Bugizlla and Trac that I
have used in my work, the winner is MS Excel (providing it is done
right with simplicity and clarity for the users).

Having said that I have seen really good presentation on a product
called FogBugz at StackOverflow Dev Days this year and few things
there seem to be done extremely well and simple. Seems that once it is
set according to your practices and structures, it would do magic.
What really blew me away was something they call Evidence-Based
Scheduling. Their burn down charts provide visibility into how
probable it is that the project will ship on a given day (using some
Monte-Carlo magic behind the scenes) and as complicated as it sounds,
the UI seemed very clear and simple. The chart does not only track but
also tries to predict the future. What is more, one could rearange
stories or people around and see, what impact would that have on the
burn-down, which is great. View into developer timelines was very
usefull too. It is not cheap (not too expensive either I think), but
expensive enough that my seniors would not buy it :/

Has anyone here heard of it? Used it? What are your opinions?

here is the link:
http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz


best,

Daniel

>
> On Nov 17, 9:05 am, Neil McLaughlin <neilbmclaugh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Looks interesting but not used it. We are using Mingle which,
>> considering it was developed by Thoughtworks, is not as good as it
>> could be.
>>
>> I've had a play withwww.assembla.comwhich, on a cursory look, seems
>> good although it may be weaker on the agile side but does give you an
>> svn repository.
>>
>> 2009/11/17 Nick McKenna <nickamcke...@gmail.com>:
>>
>>
>>
>> > HI
>>
>> > I heard about this Agile tool on LinkedIn. Has anyone used it?
>>
>> >  http://www.brightgreenprojects.com/
>>
>> > Nick.
>>
>> > --
>> > --[[ post:            agi...@googlegroups.com               ]]--
>> >  --[[ unsubscribe:     agilist+u...@googlegroups.com   ]]--
>> >  --[[ www:            http://www.agileyorkshire.org]]--- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> - Show quoted text -
>
> --
> --[[ post:            agi...@googlegroups.com               ]]--
>  --[[ unsubscribe:     agilist+u...@googlegroups.com   ]]--
>  --[[ www:             http://www.agileyorkshire.org ]]--

--
Daniel Drozdzewski

[Ashley Moran]

On Nov 17, 2009, at 9:13 am, Nick McKenna wrote:

> Has anyone got a really simple, but effective Agile tool?

No :) Well, unless you count whiteboard + index cards...

But I was wondering, has anyone tried this?

http://agilezen.com/

Ashley


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[Wilkinson, David]

Re:AgileZen

Yes we are using agilezen. Its pretty basic with some flaws (and
irritations) but does the job without any bells and whistles. I believe
its free for a single project with a limited number of users. There is
also an API with which you can extract the data to excel. I can provide
more info (if required) just a bit tied up at the mo..

Dave

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[Alan Williams]

We used Excel effectively for sprint backlogs and burndowns but it
became a problem over a VPN with team members in the USA. We switched
to Google Docs to solve that problem. It worked well. It was better
for sprint backlog management than Jira which we ended up using
through organisational standardisation which was probably necessary
with 20-odd development teams. I found that Jira wins over Excel for
product or release backlog management but that is really the domain of
the product owner and some would argue that the PO should not be too
concerned with day-to-day sprint progress. So why not pick the most
effective tool for each job? Our PO was VERY concerned with sprint
progress though and you have to take account of that.

> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

[Ashley Moran]

On Nov 17, 2009, at 1:41 pm, Wilkinson, David wrote:

> Yes we are using agilezen. Its pretty basic with some flaws (and
> irritations) but does the job without any bells and whistles. I believe
> its free for a single project with a limited number of users. There is
> also an API with which you can extract the data to excel. I can provide
> more info (if required) just a bit tied up at the mo..

Sounds like it might actually be worth me trying it on one project at some point - we're primarily remote pairing. Thanks for the info.

Cheers