= Kanban Web-Based Tools Evaluation =

This page has a review of the tools that are under evaluation for use in Launchpad.

For each of the tools, I put current Launchpad team data in and recorded both how that process when as well as whether I thought the tool was adequate for the job.

Finally, there's a section on API.  We'll want a web-based API to these tools so we can integrate them into Launchpad data, at the very least.

== LeanKit Kanban ==

Here are my findings:

 * General Comments:
  * There appears to be at least 3 people working on this tool:
   * Chris Hefley, President and Founder
   * Stephen Franklin, VP of Operations and Founder
   * Daniel Norton, VP of User Experience and Founder
  * Tool quality is there.  Everything works as it seems it should.
  * Found API docs here: http://wiki.leankitkanban.com/KanbanAPI.ashx
   * Ouch, C#

1. LeanKit Kanban - Company site: http://www.leankitkanban.com
 * Created boards (only 1 for free)
  * Created lanes for work flow
  * Can move lanes via <-> icon on top-left corner of the lane (in edit mode).
  * Found a horizontal "split" feature.  TBD: use that for horizontal swim lanes
 * Added tasks - input dialog is sufficient for this
  * Called all WIP items "features"
  * Put all features into Backlog (as an experiment)
  * Found the only way to move items (edit) out of backlog is drag-and-drop.
   * This issue is being worked on by LeanKit folks.
   * The work-around is that you drag to first lane, which works to then drag further.
   * NOTE: I could have set the initial lane in the Item input dialog.
 * Edited tasks unto board - reasonable process
 * Cannot make the backlog widget any smaller.
  * UI is too big for a single browser w/o scrolling (even on large H/R display)
  * There is a Zooming feature, which I didn't try yet.
 * Created horizontal swim lanes for projects.
  * This quickly takes up the screen real estate.
  * I left the one set of swim lanes in the "Analyze" lane, for show.
  * You can see that it runs off the bottom of the screen, and I've only got 3 teams so far.
 * Should put developer names on cards, but that would require more users.
 * API: Copied the C# API example.
  * TBD: Need to spend some time reading code

And here's a full-size image of the generated page I made.

http://people.canonical.com/~fromme/launchpad/images/leankit-lp1001-full.png

=== Update ===

As Launchpad is an open-source project, we have been granted more boards and users.  This will help in your evaluation, but isn't enough to cover our large project size out of the box.

-----


== Zen ==

 * General Comments:
  * There appears to be 2 people working on this tool:
   * Nate Kohari, President and CTO - http://kohari.org/
   * Nicole Kohari, VP of Operations and Founder - http://nikibeth.com/
  * Tool quality is there.  Everything works as it seems it should.
  * Found API info here: http://blog.agilezen.com/2009/08/03/introducing-the-zen-api/

1. Zen - Company site: http://www.agilezen.com/
 * Created boards (only 1 project board for free)
  * Created lanes for work flow
  * Since there is a "Ready" attribute of a WIP card, didn't need to create a "Ready" lane.
   * It is possible we will want Ready lanes, but screen real estate is an issue.
  * Arranging lanes once they are define is done by drag-and-drop.
  * Could not find a way to do horizontal swim lanes
  * On the other hand, color-coding of WIP cards was easy, so color-per-team was my choice
 * Added tasks - input dialog is sufficient for this
  * Called all WIP items "features"
  * Put most features into Backlog (as an experiment)
  * Moving items (edit) out of backlog is done either via drag-and-drop or editing each card.
   * The card edit feature is nice.  Easy to go from a Board to a Full-"screen" card edit form.
   * NOTE: I also could have set the initial lane in the Item input form.
 * Edited tasks unto board - reasonable process
 * Cannot put developer names on cards, because only 1 user is allowed.
 * API:
  * TBD

And here's an full-size image of the generated page I made.

http://people.canonical.com/~fromme/launchpad/images/zen-lp1001-full.png

-----
== Other Web-Based Tools ==

Here are a list of Kanban web-based tools.  

 * Digaboard
  * http://www.digaboard.net/

 * flow.io
  * http://flow.io/

 * Jira 4.0 plus Greenhopper plugin
  * http://blogs.atlassian.com/jira/2009/11/add-kanban-support-to-jira-with-greenhopper-40.html

 * Kanbanery
  * http://kanbanery.com/

 * KanbanTool
  * http://kanbantool.com/

 * Qanban
  * http://code.qbranch.se/post/listTag?selectedTag=qanban

 * RadTrack
  * http://radtrack.com

 * Rally 2009.5 plus Kanban Mashup (video)
  * https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/playback/Playback.do?id=3jr0mg

 * Silver Catalyst
  * http://www.toolsforagile.com

 * Target Process
  * http://www.targetprocess.com

 * Trichord
  * http://trichord.change-vision.com/en/index.html

 * Version One
  * http://community.versionone.com/GettingStarted/Guide/Kanban.aspx