
Sprint.ly: New software development management tool from Joe Stump - dotBen
https://sprint.ly/
======
gexla
Got as far as the sign-up. I'm already skeptical because of all the other
options available and I'm already pretty happy with what I'm using. When I saw
that I had to enter a credit card during signup just to try the free period, I
closed the browser tab.

Getting even just an email address from someone is very valuable. Why turn
anyone away by requiring all this other stuff? Why not have the person simply
enter an email address and then send a password via email or something? That's
a 5 second sign-up process. Then you can have the user fill out the rest of
the info during some sort of "getting started" process. Let the user fill in
this info on his own interest in using the application (within the actual
application.) Filling out a sign-up form is not interesting. It's more like a
leap of faith that the application will be interesting enough for me when I
get into it that it will reward me for the effort of going through the sign-up
process.

Do you really have such a high volume of sign-ups that you have to do beta
invites? I wonder if there is a better way to handle these things. Perhaps you
could have a system where the feature gets auto-enabled as needed? My problem
with beta invites is that for most services, by the time I receive the invite,
I have forgotten what the invite was for and I ignore the email.

ETA: Look how scrumy.com does their process of getting a user from using the
app to sign-up. Maybe not perfect, but far better than most I have seen.

~~~
stump
All great feedback. The primary reason to limit signups right now is twofold:
1. There are only two of us and the holidays are upon us, so we wanted to keep
support load as low as possible for now, 2. Our on-boarding process/funnel, as
you've pointed out, is really lacking. Two nerds with full-time jobs don't
make great copy editors unfortunately.

We're working on all of these things. I'll check out scrumy.com as well.
Thanks for the tip.

------
rickmb
Looks nice, but it still leaves me with the same feeling as most other tools
like this: any co-located team is better off with just whiteboards, cards and
sticky notes.

Plus most of these tools are geared towards the structured initial development
phase, and become considerably less usable once a product is live and goes
into maintenance mode. This is odd, since the major part of a projects
lifespan consists of maintenance, not development.

The one great missing online tool IMO is one that both integrates _and_
separates the way the user experiences issues (like via Zendesk) and the way
those issues are split up, prioritized and handled by developers (any known
issue tracking system like Redmine etc).

Right now, every team I know either uses two systems in which the relationship
is handled manually (and thus labor intensive and prone to errors) or one
system that is only geared towards either audience.

~~~
kneath
Tender was built with that exact situation in mind. You can attach any number
of support issues to one Lighthouse ticket and get bi-directional
notification. This is a nice way to notify n support requests that the problem
has been fixed once it's shipped. Alas, it only works with Lighthouse still.

But I do wish more support systems worked this way.

------
judofyr
I didn't watch the whole video because it completely fails to describe the
_workflow_. What I'm really interested in: how would Sprint.ly solve/represent
this workflow:

1\. Customer reports a defect

2\. Programmer figures out there are two tasks that needs to be done by
different people (in different places). One task depend on the other.

3\. The first task is solved. How does the other person know to start?

4\. The second task is re-assigned and then solved.

Actually, it doesn't have to be this complex. But at least have that in mind
when showing your product; all todo-applications can tackle the easy stuff,
it's when the more complex use-cases appear that most of them fall apart.

And when you say "make it possible for everyone to participate" I hear "no way
to figure out what _you_ need to do". Although it's good to have a place to
see everything, I'm more often interested in only what I _need_ to participate
in. Show us that please!

~~~
stump
As for #3 in your list, we offer a feature where coder A can say, "Hey, coder
B, you're item X is blocking my item Y!" When coder B finishes item X, coder A
is alerted via email that coder B has unblocked them.

~~~
dmix
The original comment is correct though in that the video just talks about
features, it doesn't tell a story or focus on how it would be used to build a
product.

Even though I'm familiar with pivotal/ticketing systems, I still wanted to be
sold on what it does not just on how it does it.

------
Macsenour
I know it sounds crazy, but I'd love a free option. A 1 person project doesn't
make a lot of sense in any case other than as a test for the product. From
that view, a free option doesn't seem like a big deal. I think of it like
having a racing bike I can't take out of the house. I can see all that it
does, try it out, but to really use it I'll get a paid account.

~~~
stump
We do offer a free 30 day trial, which should be plenty of time to get a quick
thumbs up / down for your needs.

~~~
Macsenour
I think that's great, but it's just not the same as Free.

------
phzbOx
It's beautiful, the video is great, but I don't see myself using this instead
of the other thousands of project management tools. What does it do
differently? In what will it make my life easier? Is it for developers or
managers (or everyone..?) Basically, why should I use this instead of trello
or asana? (To name only 2 out of 1000 project management tools).

------
martingordon
The site itself is light on details, but the video provides an excellent
overview of the product. I especially like the minimap and the mad lib-style
issue reporting.

~~~
stump
I like the name "minimap". Graham and I struggled with what to name it and
could only come up with "quick sort bar", which is a mouthful. :)

------
iamleppert
First, I want to say that it looks like a lot of work went into this and it
looks well done, complete with the cheery wide-eyed demo video.

However, do we really need yet another task management tool?

[http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2011/12/tyranny-of-
th...](http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2011/12/tyranny-of-the-1.php)

~~~
embwbam
Yes, and I need another text editor :)

No, seriously, for something as integral to what I do so many hours every day,
I don't mind people continuing to innovate. Getting an editor or a management
tool to fit you perfectly is pretty hard, and I, for one, haven't found a
process or tool I'm 100% happy with

------
salimmadjd
When Pivotal first launched they had a free version for a while before started
to switching pricing. Now, I understand there is a big no-no about raising the
price later. However, I think there is a world where they can offer:

A - personal free accounts. Or free account for team of < 2.

B - announce the price but provide a 6-9 mont grace period just so they can
get a nice momentum.

Now, they might be charging from the get go for fundraising reasons. Basically
so they can go to investors and say: look we got X number of real paying
customers in Y months. Which makes a real good case for getting investors.

That said, I love the UI. But I wont invest anytime on it yet, unless I know I
can use it for free for a few months, or if there is strong social value that
proves it can really help projects and requirement gathering process.

------
ethank
I often joke (with myself since I'm sad that way) that everyone must at some
point make a productivity web-app. It's nice that Joe has made one that fixes
a few things that annoy me about most.

Most are targeted at engineers first (Pivotal), at visually oriented
organizers (Trello) or adapted for the specific team that wrote it's methods
(like Thoughtbot's).

Luckily I'm at the "tool choice" stage of a new venture so I won't give my
team whiplash by trying this one out. If it integrates with Campfire it'd be
perfect.

~~~
foca
Yep, it needs an API and webhooks.

~~~
stump
Hey foca! :) What webhooks should we add? I have a few ideas, but would love
more. API is in-progress. :)

~~~
foca
Chat hooks! I want hipchat (or campfire, w/e) to say "Joe commented on…" etc.
Specially new items, comments and status changes.

Then I could configure github to notify sprintly and sprintly to notify the
chat, instead of getting all the pushes in the chat, which is too noisy IMO.

------
stump
Hey guys, looking forward to seeing the comments. Go easy on Graham, though,
he's the sensitive type. ;)

~~~
fsaintjacques
I'd like an information page not forcing you to watch a video. I don't know
what this product is about.

~~~
stump
Sorry, we just have the video right now, but we hear you loud and clear. Lots
of people asking for this. Nerds aren't great at putting together marketing
materials. Who knew? Thanks!

------
adammcnamara
Looks interesting Joe. Any chance you'll offer team pricing? Per seat pricing
quickly runs away in cost compared to alternatives.

------
brendoncrawford
Is there a good text-based description? Not really interested in sitting
through another cutesy startup video.

------
Aloisius
I got a bit distracted after I realized I recognized the voice in the video,
but it looks like a nice project management tool. I wish there was more
information about estimation though.

Right now, we use Pivotal and the lack of estimation on tasks makes it an
incomplete offering. We estimate feature, but that is a fairly rough estimate
used for longer-term prediction. It isn't until we break things down into
tasks that people really understand how long it is going to take. Just having
to estimate hours gets people to really think things through.

Given that half of project management is about predicting completion dates and
judging risk of slippage, I'd say estimation is absolutely required.

~~~
stump
We have estimation; it's just not featured in the video. Whoops! The estimates
are the bubbles next to the item cards. We use S, M, L, XL for all item types.

------
MartinMond
We've recently tried apptrajectory.com but they are iterating in a different
direction from what we want (e.g. Stories are finished then delivered then
accepted)

sprint.ly looks like it is a lot closer to our workflow.

------
softbuilder
I bailed halfway through the intro video. There was nothing wrong. It looks
great. I'm just so very jaded about anything purported to manage... anything.
Especially in a web app.

~~~
Metapony
Vimeo doesn't allow one to skip ahead -- it should be hosted on youtube. (I
have this problem with any vimeo vs youtube video.) Also, it looks like some
of those popup boxes don't open when clicked until a delay happens. Looks
slow. Ug.

~~~
edd
Interestingly Vimeo does let you jump forward if you use their html5 player.

------
mvkel
The demo video should tell a story. "John has a donut company and is having
trouble keeping track of his team's tasks..."

Instead, it's literally a feature list.

~~~
stump
Great idea. Version 2.0 will be better!

------
ericHosick
Estimation is an important feature.

1) by story points for team effort

2) by story points for business value

3) by hours for work to be completed in the current "iteration"

~~~
stump
We have estimation; just wasn't highlighted in the video. We use S, M, L, and
XL (rather than 1, 3, 5, 8) for scoring all tasks.

~~~
ericHosick
For both business value and effort? Also, by hours for tasks during the
sprint?

------
dfischer
We like to say development is a marathon, not a sprint.

<http://www.kanbanpad.com> \- Had to :).

P.s nice site design.

------
iamdave
Would you consider perhaps a feature set or details as to what it does that
doesn't require me to sit through a video?

------
Brajeshwar
Would like to sign-up but it asked me for a Beta Invite Code and I don't have
one. Can someone please send me one?

------
lancefisher
I'd really like to try this. How can I get an invite code? How far out are you
from sending more?

------
sever
Looks gorgeous, what framework(s) is this implemented with?

~~~
stump
We use Python/Django and MySQL. Pretty boring to be honest, which I'm digging
after spending nearly five years working on crazy ass big infrastructure.

That being said, I'm eyeing Redis, Node.js, Memcached (of course), and some
AWS services for future upgrades, services, and features.

