John Boyer
ScrumDesk - reviewed on: April 04, 2010 - rating: 2
Summary: I chose this product because of reviews by others and the hosted version is free with less than five users. I have a Mac development shop but run Microsoft Windows in VMWare Fusion. I found the setup to be too complex for a hosted product because the user has to configure a database connection to a SQL Server. I expected a hosted version to not expose the datastore details to a user. In any case, after a software upgrade released today, 4 Apr, 2010, I’m unable to connect to the application database. Chronology: On 3 Apr, 2010, I first installed the product prerequisite: NET Framework 3.5. Then installed ScrumDesk using a link in my registration email. I entered the SQL Server host info, username and password, logged in as the administrator and added users. Then I setup a another user on a different computer. To do this correctly the administrator needs to remember to send the database connection info to the user using a button in the user interface. I installed an instance of ScrumDesk on the user’s computer and loaded the database connection info as described in their instructions. After setting up a few users, I transcribed my user stories from sticky notes. Incidentally, I like the backlog view, it's a nice emulation of a wall of notes. I closed the app and finished for the day. On 4 Apr, 2010, I opened the application and updated to a new version released on the same day. After the update, I was no longer able to login to the hosted version because of a SQL Server connection error. I hope I haven’t lost my work. Anyway, in my opinion, I think this could be a much better product if the hosted version removed the direct database connectivity dependency and refactored the user interface using something like Adobe Air or HTML 5. Conclusion: Given my experience, I would not recommend the current version of the product to a friend or colleague.
