Created an app for Agile developers... feedback appreciated!

[bastones]

Hi everyone,

 

Just want to share something I've worked on for those of you that may be part of a development team that adopts Agile development practices.

 

I work in a team of five people. Since late last year we transitioned to a Scrum-based development framework and for our retrospectives, we've been using Ideaboardz - which, if you've ever used, leaves a lot to be desired. It's really outdated and clunky, so I decided last month enough is enough - there has to be something better than this. To my surprise, there aren't really that many options out there (you know, aside from the ol' whiteboard and sticky notes) so I decided to take matters into my own hands and create a web application to replace it.

I've been working on this for the past month or so and I feel it's now ready for wider public use - so far it's only been trialled internally at my current place of work.

 

Here's the URL: https://sprintboards.io

 

I'm really interested to hear people's feedback and suggestions. I realise it's early days and there's a lot more that can be done. I have already received feedback from a fair number of people about being able to drag-and-drop cards on each other to merge/group them into one (I imagine duplicates might occasionally be created if two members of the team place cards on a board that refer to the same topic or issue).

 

Thanks!

[Seahorsepip Veteran]

Make sure that you have looked at existing similiar or related solutions - like YouTrack, Jira, Trello etc. - and their pros and cons.

There might be some features and ideas there that you haven't thought of yourself yet.

 

The interesting viewpoint in your project is that instead of focusing on the work of the sprints you are focusing on the retrospective of each sprint, keep in mind to clearly communicate this difference and the benefits of using your platform to your audience and users.

 

It's nice to see a Vue project instead of a React project for once too 

 

As for making drag-and-drop interactions, I've used the following library for most of my projects: http://rubaxa.github.io/Sortable/

And here's a blog post about drag-and-drop interactions that has coincidentally recently been posted: https://uxdesign.cc/drag-and-drop-for-design-systems-8d40502eb26d

It was featured in the web collective from Codrops that I read every week: https://tympanus.net/codrops/collective/

 

As for the rest of the user interaction, consider making it feel more like an actual post it note board instead of a 3 bootstrap columns view.

Have a look at the simple design Google used for the post it notes in Google keep, this feels a lot more like actual post it notes and doesn't give the feeling to the user that he's working with yet another tedious tool with one dialog after another. You could for example define post it note colors based on categories, users or projects.

 

Also if you end up making any big technical/design decisions, communicate this first with your users by (paper) prototype testing before actually starting on the realization/implementation so that you're not working on a feature that your users didn't expect and/or want.

 

 

 

[bastones]

Hey, sorry for the late reply!

 

Thanks for your feedback. I should clarify that right now yes the service focuses on retrospectives, however I plan to introduce other board types in the future, such as Pros and Cons, Sprint Cycle (To Do, In Progress, Complete) among others.

 

I have made some changes since I last posted: a new homepage design, some new keyboard and mouse shortcuts, and optimisations for mobile devices. I am keen to get feedback from other agile teams to see how it works at other organisations and any feedback their team might have after using it for their own retro.

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply (and yes, Vue is amazing)