Ask HN - Web based agile development tool - Please Review | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN - Web based agile development tool - Please Review

skinnyboard.com

21 pointsjosh_fluid21 comments

Try out this tool and see how you like it. Feedback appreciated.

NEVER send my password to me in plain text. Every site that does this, I immediately lose confidence in.

Funny how they take the pain to provide the page using HTTPS and then this.

I notice that you rotate through images on the main page if I sit there long enough. Why not let me move back and forth through those manually?

The name of the free plan seems a bit odd to me, any reason why that was chosen over "Starter" or something? Also, you may want to highlight that this plan is indeed "Free" instead of "$0.00" - just a thought.

The plan selection seems a little bit disconnected with regards to where it is located and where the plans are listed. Maybe you could use a radio button or something on the plan list for selection.

I'll echo others on so much info for signup. At the very least show me how my twitter credentials will be used.

Overall though, I think it looks like a very promising tool. Something which I'll certainly consider in the future.

I've noticed that marketing a free item as costing "$0.00" is somewhat of an emerging trend. I am all for mixing things up a little bit, but I think at this point it still makes a customer think "wait a second, are they going to charge me something?" The best way to go is still just plain ol' "free"

Perhaps a good opportunity to do some A-B testing. Although the more I think about it, the more I'm not sure it really matters that much since, after all, it is the free plan. There are probably better places to optimize.

That's a lot of signup info you're asking for. How 'bout a nice "try it now" button?

And/or a bigger link to the "FREE! ::: 1 board, unlimited users ::: sign up". I doubt most folks are going to whip out their credit cards based on a rotating homepage image.

I would make your "free to try" option a bit more prevalent. I almost left the site before I saw it in that small text on the lower left. It will probably help your bounce rate if you try to get people using it ASAP.

On the Privacy Policy page you have a section titled "Our Three Plans" followed by 4 plans. Also, your subscription policy is flat out ridiculous - you pay for a full month when you end your subscription and you don't get the rest of the month?

Looks nice, but (due to issue #1, #2 and #6 below) not yet ready for public consumption.

1.) Slow. I clicked on burndown and waited for it to give me info. As I type this, I'm still waiting. If I actually needed this program, I would have given up by now.

2.) I had to create a trial account to figure out what it actually did. Your front page could explain a bit more (but maybe I'm not in the target audience).

3.) What's a story? Why not call it "Project"? And what is a story point?

4.) Lots of wasted screen real estate. The table looks like this:

    [Add new story] empty  empty ...

    story 1         tasks  in progress ...

All that empty space next to [add new story] is annoying. I can close the "add new story" frame to free it up, but that's confusing.

5.) I just finished all the tasks in a story. But the story is still there. How do I mark the story as done? Can I do this?

6.) I'm still waiting for the burndown.

[edit: added this right afterwards]

7.) I closed the tab, and reopened to take another look. Now I see the signup page. At the top of the page, to the right of the logo, I see the words "Access Denied\ You do not have access to that domain.\ log out".

I really like the feel of the site. Agree with jjs - the sign-up form put me off. I want to get started now, and add info (eg Twitter, company name) later if I choose to do so.

A little more info around the jargon would be appreciated - what's a board, how does this influence project structure etc.

The pricing is confusing, as I don't really understand how you define a board, so I can't judge whether I need 1, 15, 50 or 32,767 boards.

I know you have a link to FMi, but a little info about you guys would go a long way. Make me feel like there are people like me behind this would help me trust you with my project data a little more.

I do like it though - keen to give it a try for my own projects!

There are some good ideas in there. I think that people working on "Basecamp-sized" projects will find this handy. Some comments in no particular order:

- There's no way to put a note in to say why an item is parked. - Most even medium sized agile shops will desire some way to manage a backlog of stories, and a way to move them onto an active board. + Putting avatar icons on assigned items is a great visual shorthand. - SSL != security - no way to track the original estimate relative to the remaining work. (Maybe the burndown will do this?)

Since you require so much information to sign up, you could really use a demo or a video of the site in action. Also, the free version is too hidden, I almost left the site, thinking that there was no way to try it for free.

Thank you all for the very insightful feedback thus far. We are taking all accounts very seriously. Expect to see some of the changes you may have suggested in the future of Skinnyboard.

The company I work for, and similar companies, will never use this let alone pay money for it without being able to host it in-house.

We're a scrum house, but the security implications of having all our goals in such exquisite detail on someone else's servers presents too much risk.

I'm not saying you're wrong for doing this as a hosted webapp, but there is a segment of potential customers who will never use it (I have no idea how big that segment is).

Perhaps I missed the link, but a video demo would be very useful to get a better idea of your product.

Does anyone here think that this is an easy way to get subscribers for an app?

I mean, the lack of an anonymous or guest account, as well as the requirement of all that info, never makes me feel to try the app out.

You should advertise the free model on the front page, with just as much space as the paid ones. nobody's going to just pay 15 bucks without trying it for free, and if that isn't deadly clear, then they'll leave.

Nit-pick-mode enabled:

The font in the "Lean. Clean. Agile Machine" are a little aliased. At first I was willing to overlook that, thinking you had embedded fonts, but seeing that it's an image, and a background-matching JPG at that, it could be easily fixed.

Otherwise I like the look of the site (though I haven't had much chance to use it yet.) The "Login" and "Password" areas look a bit off. I'd either shrink the text inputs or increase the font on the label. Also, the gold border on focus just sits wrong with me. These are of course, personal opinions, so please confer with others to see if I'm the oddball, but it strikes me as overlooked.

Regarding the copy, "a web-based software" also strikes me as off... perhaps replace with "a web-based application?"

Also the footer doesn't match the page alignment of everything else. If it were my site, I'd bring the left and right margins in line with the rest of the site, as they're otherwise hard to find.

Aside from that, I'll parrot that it needs a "Try it now" type of button somewhere, and you should probably lean down what you're asking for at registration-time. I usually try to restrict registration questions to only the things I really need to make the software work, which is usually less than 5 total questions.

Altogether though, it looks solid, and I look forward to playing with it more.

Nice idea. But really poorly implemented. Good luck guys! But for now my credit card will rest in my pocket...

I think he was asking for suggestions on how to improve it, or at least what you didn't like, specifically, rather than simply "really poorly implemented".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com