7 ms·

Check out our startup: Scrumy

27 points by dkordik 18y ago

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!

iamdave 18y ago
VERY well done and polished. I really like the draggable ordering of tasks, simple interface, easy to manage at-a-glance. 10/10
Hates_ 18y ago
Wow! This is unbelievably impressive. In terms of Scrum, can I assign points to my stories? and see an overview of my total points for a specific sprint? Overall though, it really rocks. I will be using it for sure come Monday morning!
- dkordik 18y ago
  There is currently no built-in mechanism to manage points. We've seen some people put point values in the task text. In this version, we're trying to keep things really simple.
  - Hates_ 18y ago
    After having a play I think the idea of placing points in the task text works well. I can also tally up all the points and place them in the sprint name, which can then also be renamed at the end of a sprint to show how many points were estimated against how many were actually completed.
r7000 18y ago
So simple and elegant. That was fun! Great work guys.
13ren 18y ago
http://scrumy.com http://scrumy.com http://scrumy.com/demo http://scrumy.com/demo
sktrdie 18y ago
i dont like the flash title :(
jfew 18y ago
Where's the burndown chart (or any task effort estimates at all)? Where do I maintain my product backlog? This tool feels more suited to something like XP or generic Agile than pure Scrum to me. 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.
- dkordik 18y ago
  Hi jfew- Just wanted to let you know that the current version of Scrumy Pro has both a product backlog and burndown charts.
- dkordik 18y ago
  We've played with the idea of having a burndown chart and other task point-tracking-related things. They might show up as a future Pro feature, or they may show up in the next level of Scrumy.
jhickner 18y ago
Amazing! I love the design and the sheer amount of info conveyed in a small space. One bug in chrome (who cares yet, right?) but anyway: When typing into the task textbox, the centered text doesn't display correctly.
- dkordik 18y ago
  We noticed that. Really, really weird bug! I don't know why that is happening yet or we would have fixed it, sorry. Which is a shame, because otherwise Scrumy screams with Chrome's new JS engine.
observer 18y ago
sleek!
reid 18y ago
I absolutely love the promotional video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmZ5O5AJ2F4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmZ5O5AJ2F4 Great work, very simple and it works!
swombat 18y ago
Seen mingle? (from thoughtworks http://studios.thoughtworks.com/mingle-project-intelligence http://studios.thoughtworks.com/mingle-project-intelligence )
- mallio 18y ago
  Scrumy is cheaper, and thanks to dkordik, looks much better too :)
jrockway 18y ago
This is a good startup idea. I used to work at a company that heavily misapplied Scrum[1], and they bent over backwards to spend as much money as possible on anything that said "Scrum" on it. Software, consultants, everything. Basically, this should be easy money for you :) The people doing Scrum right will also be happy to pay for software that makes it easier. [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.)
- gruseom 18y ago
  I loved the misapplication of Scrum 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)
  - jrockway 18y ago
    He visited our company also, before I worked there. He suggested we get some white boards so we could collaborate with each other. 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.
bigbang 18y ago
It looked like a calender at first sight, but great job. Its simple to look at all info on one page to see which is to be done, verified etc. MAybe little bit more color differences would help. Like verification like in red or something, since somebody mostly would be waiting on it.
patrickg-zill 18y ago
Did you check whether scrum-y.com was taken? 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" .
kajecounterhack 18y ago
I spent 10 minutes sitting there generating names. bucksaws12anthrax highland56horsiest imparts21biscuits sourly95whole cling33wombats I got such a kick out of this, thanks! How do you generate these names?
- dkordik 18y ago
  With a very carefully pruned dictionary. Glad you dig it!
ralph 18y ago
The 121 seconds of my time would have been better spent showing me it in action instead of trying to instill that there's only one M in scrumy.com. I know that now, but I don't need to know it since I'm not planning on spending more time investigating it. I think that's a shame for the both of us.
- mallio 18y ago
  We did that video for fun really, eventually we want to have a screencast of how to use
maxklein 18y ago
I'm sorry, I don't get it. What's a story and what is scrum?
chris123 18y ago
Neat! Would be even neater if free for 1-user. 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/ http://code.google.com/p/scrumboard/. Anyone try any of these?
Thatsafinecigar 18y ago
This is pretty cool. I like the dashboard vs. the basic one. I can use this.

27 points by dkordik 18y ago

iamdave 18y ago

VERY well done and polished. I really like the draggable ordering of tasks, simple interface, easy to manage at-a-glance. 10/10

Hates_ 18y ago

Wow! This is unbelievably impressive. In terms of Scrum, can I assign points to my stories? and see an overview of my total points for a specific sprint? Overall though, it really rocks. I will be using it for sure come Monday morning!

dkordik 18y ago
There is currently no built-in mechanism to manage points. We've seen some people put point values in the task text. In this version, we're trying to keep things really simple.
- Hates_ 18y ago
  After having a play I think the idea of placing points in the task text works well. I can also tally up all the points and place them in the sprint name, which can then also be renamed at the end of a sprint to show how many points were estimated against how many were actually completed.

r7000 18y ago

So simple and elegant. That was fun! Great work guys.

13ren 18y ago

http://scrumy.com http://scrumy.com http://scrumy.com/demo http://scrumy.com/demo

sktrdie 18y ago

i dont like the flash title :(

jfew 18y ago

Where's the burndown chart (or any task effort estimates at all)? Where do I maintain my product backlog? This tool feels more suited to something like XP or generic Agile than pure Scrum to me. 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.

dkordik 18y ago
Hi jfew- Just wanted to let you know that the current version of Scrumy Pro has both a product backlog and burndown charts.
dkordik 18y ago
We've played with the idea of having a burndown chart and other task point-tracking-related things. They might show up as a future Pro feature, or they may show up in the next level of Scrumy.

jhickner 18y ago

Amazing! I love the design and the sheer amount of info conveyed in a small space. One bug in chrome (who cares yet, right?) but anyway: When typing into the task textbox, the centered text doesn't display correctly.

dkordik 18y ago
We noticed that. Really, really weird bug! I don't know why that is happening yet or we would have fixed it, sorry. Which is a shame, because otherwise Scrumy screams with Chrome's new JS engine.

observer 18y ago

sleek!

reid 18y ago

I absolutely love the promotional video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmZ5O5AJ2F4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmZ5O5AJ2F4 Great work, very simple and it works!

swombat 18y ago

Seen mingle? (from thoughtworks http://studios.thoughtworks.com/mingle-project-intelligence http://studios.thoughtworks.com/mingle-project-intelligence )

mallio 18y ago
Scrumy is cheaper, and thanks to dkordik, looks much better too :)

jrockway 18y ago

This is a good startup idea. I used to work at a company that heavily misapplied Scrum[1], and they bent over backwards to spend as much money as possible on anything that said "Scrum" on it. Software, consultants, everything. Basically, this should be easy money for you :) The people doing Scrum right will also be happy to pay for software that makes it easier. [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.)

gruseom 18y ago
I loved the misapplication of Scrum 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)
- jrockway 18y ago
  He visited our company also, before I worked there. He suggested we get some white boards so we could collaborate with each other. 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.

bigbang 18y ago

It looked like a calender at first sight, but great job. Its simple to look at all info on one page to see which is to be done, verified etc. MAybe little bit more color differences would help. Like verification like in red or something, since somebody mostly would be waiting on it.

patrickg-zill 18y ago

Did you check whether scrum-y.com was taken? 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" .

kajecounterhack 18y ago

I spent 10 minutes sitting there generating names. bucksaws12anthrax highland56horsiest imparts21biscuits sourly95whole cling33wombats I got such a kick out of this, thanks! How do you generate these names?

dkordik 18y ago
With a very carefully pruned dictionary. Glad you dig it!

ralph 18y ago

The 121 seconds of my time would have been better spent showing me it in action instead of trying to instill that there's only one M in scrumy.com. I know that now, but I don't need to know it since I'm not planning on spending more time investigating it. I think that's a shame for the both of us.

mallio 18y ago
We did that video for fun really, eventually we want to have a screencast of how to use

maxklein 18y ago

I'm sorry, I don't get it. What's a story and what is scrum?

chris123 18y ago

Neat! Would be even neater if free for 1-user. 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/ http://code.google.com/p/scrumboard/. Anyone try any of these?

Thatsafinecigar 18y ago

This is pretty cool. I like the dashboard vs. the basic one. I can use this.