Rob Hale
ScrumDesk - reviewed on: November 26, 2008 - rating: 9
I found this product by accident when looking for something to better manage our product backlog which I'd previously been doing using Excel. The transformation was near-instant. Even though we were mid-sprint at the time, within a morning I had entered the entire backlog into the product. The next morning we had automated burn-down charts and management reporting on stories and project progress. The only discipline we have had to enforce is for the team to update their progress but this is very simple using drag and drop graphical task boxes which are moved between states (not started through to done). We opted for a local installation of the MS SQS Server database once we'd tried out the remote ASP model for performance reasons (but we are in Australia). The application itself is .NET and has slotted into our existing SQL server Windows environment without any problems or issues. Thoroughly recommended. The product itself is growing all the time and the guys supporting it seem very receptive to user-suggestions for improvements or enhancements and the quality of support received to date exceeds that of the many much larger organisations I work with on a daily basis. In short, this product gives us everything we need to manage our Scrum deliveries. The product has some 'extra' capabilities outside formal Scrum but these don't have to be used if you don't want to use them. (such as using phases for delivery as well as sprints). Our business clients like the product too and we had them sitting round the same table using the online Planning Poker to plan and estimate stories for the current sprint. We achieved a 200 story point sprint for a team of sprint in 2 hours which I just know that previously we wouldn't have been able to do. I have not thoroughly reviewed other Scrum products but just don't feel the need to do so having used this one. It does everything we need, it works and the people who wrote and support it are only an email away if you ever need help.
