Agile is all about understanding
Occam's Razor. That is to say "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best". So where is the simple Agile Assistant tool? I am deliberately avoiding saying "Agile Project Management Tool" because I think that would be missing the point completely. I have been looking at Version One, JIRA and others and they are all way too complicated! They try to satisfy too many users and have too many features. So here is my wish list of features for a tool:
- Visual representation of story cards on a whiteboard
- Change status of story cards by moving them between lanes on the whiteboard
- Add / edit / delete stories
- Prioritise stories
- Enter estimates for stories
- Model how much can be done by when by entering a theoretical velocity (i.e. release modelling)
- Group stories into a Sprint
- Sprint burndown graph
- A story should have:
- Name
- Notes
- Estimate
- Priority
- Tasks (with hour estimates)
I think that covers about 99% of what I want out of an Agile Assistance Tool. Maybe one day I will build it for myself... It seems like the sort of Open Source project that the community would appreciate.