Check out our startup: Scrumy http://scrumy.com Scrumy is a simple tool for Scrum project management. My partner in crime and I began working on Scrumy (our then side-project) full-time shortly after flying back from the final interviews for YC Summer '08 empty handed. We'd love some feedback from you guys, especially if you're familiar with Scrum. You can check out the Pro features at the "demo" project, http://scrumy.com/demo Thanks! |
[1] (I loved the misapplication of Scrum. The Scrum book we were using had examples of things to never do, and that's exactly what we did. We actually had 8-hour sprint planning meetings every two weeks, in addition to an 8-hour "demo days" and "retrospectives"... leaving 7 days out of every 10 for actual work. Of course, those were cut into by other meetings like "architecture working sessions" and so on. In the end, nobody got anything done, so they added even more meetings to determine why that was the case. Around that point, I quit.)
I heard Ken Schwaber tell a funny story about this. He was asked in by some place to evaluate how they were doing, so he attended their daily scrum. For anyone who doesn't know, that's supposed to be a brief meeting in which a facilitator called the scrum master asks each team member: 1. What have you done since yesterday? 2. What are you doing today? 3. Are you experiencing any impediments to your work? (The intention, of course, is that the scrum master then fight like hell to clear the impediments.)
At this outfit, they had taken a project manager and labeled him "scrum master". His version of the three questions:
1. Have you done what I told you to do yesterday?
2. Here's what I want you to do today.
3. (omitted)
That suggestion was nixed by the "office manager" (secretary), because white boards didn't go with the office's decor.
I am not making this up. I'm surprised I lasted for half a year at that company.
Overall though, it really rocks. I will be using it for sure come Monday morning!
Great work, very simple and it works!
Maybe I just have a weird set of brain cells connected to my optic nerve, but I read that URL as being pronounced as "screw me dot com" .
10/10
But that's the problem with project management tools: everyone's got a different mental model for organizing work and measuring output because nobody strictly follows all the practices of any one methodology to the letter ("Agile is empirical," after all). You adopt the practices that work for you and your team, which means you have to create your own project management tools adapted to that unique workflow (unless you're lucky enough to find the tools that someone else created meet your needs perfectly).
Otherwise, you're forced to adapt your workflow to the tools you choose.
Just wanted to let you know that the current version of Scrumy Pro has both a product backlog and burndown charts.
I did a quick search on Google for "scrum boards" and "virtual scrum boards" and found some similar, but maybe overly complicated and expensive, apps. Also found this http://code.google.com/p/scrumboard/. Anyone try any of these?
One bug in chrome (who cares yet, right?) but anyway: When typing into the task textbox, the centered text doesn't display correctly.
bucksaws12anthrax highland56horsiest imparts21biscuits sourly95whole cling33wombats
I got such a kick out of this, thanks! How do you generate these names?