online tools for managing workflow



Here is a quick comparison done by my colleague PauloNonaka on a few online tools for managing workflow.

Some cool stuff on Trello:
  • priorities vertically – I can prioritize debt tech over stories, stories over bugs and etc
  • clearly who is working on what (avatars) - them clearly can see our capacity limit
  • plugin for WIP limits
  • it shows tasks completion while developing a story
  • it shows when there is no pairing on a story (or when we have a threesome or even more :) )
Also figured out that I can export and treat Trello's data:
Negatives points:
  • No more than 7 labels (but I don't see it as problem if we in separate teams in different walls provided that all things related to the same team keep together)
  • No historic when moving vertically
Rally Kaban also seems pretty nice. Although I didn't figured out how to set up pairs in the cards and how to add tech debt cards. 
I insist that tech debt cards should be together among stories. In this way we can easily (and visibly) define priorities based on our real WIP limit - that is not visible when we have cards spread over many walls and emails.

Kanbanery seems pretty cool, although it's not free.
It has some cool WIP oriented reports like lead & cycle time (by task type), cumulative flow chart, and task distribution.  

I also want to check out Agilezen (not free) and Kanbanize (free).

Kanbanize seems very flexible and it has reports as Cumulative Flow, Cycle Time, Task Distribution and Block Resolution Time. I tried it a little bit and it has the same problem as Rally Kaban - just has a field for owner.