[tanylak]

Hey Hacker News crowd. After a year or so toying around with my idea, thinking about the new approach and talking to people, I have decided to build a new scrum based project management app. It's going to revolve around a new board layout and concept and include the important bits of the scrum process.

If you're interested, sing up to be notified when I have the beta version ready. Hopefully in a month or two. If not, tell your friends.

Thank you Terry

[jmvoodoo]

The page is too light on details. What is different about this vs the hundreds of alternatives out there? Why would I switch from a different product? How do I know if I'm your target buyer?

[tanylak]

Just put the page together this week. Will be adding more detail to it. The idea is to get away from the kanban board look and to help you track your sprint flow. Capture standup notes, sprint planning notes, manage backlog more effectively.

I just wanted to see if there was interest. Looks like there is. That's awesome.

I'll spend some time this week adding more details to the page.

[eyelidlessness]

> The idea is to get away from the kanban board look and to help you track your sprint flow.

Can you say why? Kanban is literally the only thing I like about capital-A Agile. I doubt either of will convince the other to change our minds. But in the interest of helping you refine what you’re building and how you communicate it, articulating what you don’t want is valuable too.

[tanylak]

Originally Kanban was designed to visually track inventory. It is useful in that context because you could easily spot the items that need refilling.

I've been doing project management for a over a decade now and from my experience, and interviewing people, reading, I realized that people work best in lists. Top to bottom, most important tasks at the top, least important at the bottom. It helps us focus and get more done.

So that's the primary idea behind it.

[eyelidlessness]

Thanks for the response. I’m more confused than when I started.

You’re saying Kanban was designed to track inventory. I think that’s true but not completely accurate. It was designed to track work and inventory together.

> people work best in lists. Top to bottom, most important tasks at the top, least important at the bottom. It helps us focus and get more done.

I’m so confused! This is exactly what Kanban is supposed to be. It’s not supposed to be anything more than that, or less.

Where did the bad PM Jira you?

[tanylak]

Kanban is most often used for tracking inventory, so you can technically use it to track your tasks with it. It kinda gives you a big picture view. And one of the reasons why Kanban is effective in the inventory process is because it provides you a visual signal to replenish you inventory.

As a process for tracking work, it is lacking for a number of reasons. There is too much information on the board at any one time. It is too open, meaning, you can create as many columns as you need, which leads to unnecessary complexity.

Finally, the Kanban system works well for moving physical items (completed items) from one station to next. It is not used for changing states of items. We use it to change state on incomplete tasks (i.e from Blocked to Todo to Inprogress), which not what Kanban is for.