Monday, December 6, 2010

What is the best Scrum tool from Google Apps Marketplace?

In the first part of these series we reviewed 5 Google Docs templates for managing your Scrum team. In this second part we will review Scrum tools from the Google Apps Marketplace.

Searching for "Scrum" in the Apps Marketplace returns 4 products. TaskPoint however doesn't have any integration with Google Apps services so I decided not to review it.

This is not an in-depth review. Based on my experience with Scrum, I wanted to get an overall idea on how well each tool could support distributed Scrum. My personal ratings are shown in this table.


Product
Google Apps Integration Scrum Kanban Pricing Rating
Bright Green ProjectsSingle Sign-on
Universal navigation
Free for 3 users
$20/month/per additional user
Acunote Single Sign-on
Universal navigation
Free for 5 users
Other package start at $49/month
Gravity Single Sign-on
Universal navigation
Calendar
Mail
Free for 3 projects
Paid version not yet available

What did I like and what do I think can be improved on these tools.

Bright Green Projects
Bright Green Project Visual Wall
  • Like
    • Visual Wall
    • Supports release planning
    • Help by chat
  • Could be improved
    • Limited Help
    • Unclear use of terminology for Scrum users


You Tube introduction to Bright Green Projects




Acunote
Acunote Current sprint overview
  • Like
    • Straightforward Scrum
    • Burndown charts
    • Good help
    • Integration with bug tracking tools (Mantis,..)
  • Could be improved
    • No support for release planning
    • No visual wall
You Tube introduction to Acunote



Gravity
Gravity Visual Task Board
  • Like
    • Very intuitive
    • Straightforward Scrum
    • Visual wall
    • Good support trough email
  • Could be improved
    • Still in Beta
    • Limited online help

Conclusion

  • Gravity is my personal favorite because of its simplicity. The only tool that got me going in seconds.
  • I particularly like the visual walls in Bright Green Projects and Gravity. This kind of wall comes close to a white board and is much better in giving an overview of the tasks then any other list.
  • Overall I'm a bit disappointed in the integration with Google Apps and its collaborative features. Hopefully these features will be further exploited by the makers of the tools.
So what is your opinion on these tools?