8 Sept 2005

XPlanner

XPlanner is a web application to handle user story based developments.

I tested XPlanner because I'm currently trying to program in a user story centric way.
Installation didn't go as smoothly as daisy.
I had 2 problems:
  • source code didn't compile with 1.5 jdk because of enum keyword [see bug 1124530] - putting javac source="1.4" in ant solved this.
  • I had to change xplanner.properties with my root/password MySQL account (I don't like to leave my database password in clear in properties files)
At first, I found it a bit confusing, I didn't really catch the way to navigate in the web application. On top of every frame you can see:
Project | MyIteration | MyTask
It's the place were you are in the web site, I think it would have been clearer with something like:
Project > MyIteration > MyTask

You also need to configure a project in order to start using it... I find it a bit hard because of my lack of knowledge of a user story centric project and terminology.

An other problem was: I had hard time figuring how to add a person to a project, but I finally made it.

But XPlanner doesn't only have problems ;)
It seems quite simple (I like simplicity), you can get many metrics without additional efforts (your CEO will be happy!).
Every description can be entered in a twiki style, cool.
Simple http://.. links can be added to you're descriptions. Or you can create your own simplified protocols, example: bug:000[my link text] will point to the bugzilla page of this bug.
That a simple way to link xplanner to other systems.

In conclusion, I found XPlanner to be a good software but it seems a bit young, I think the few problems will be solve in the next releases. But it can already be used.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you haven't done it yet, you could try the 0.7b2. It should be ready for prime time. I haven't released it yet since it includes a new installation/upgrade mechanism that I want to make sure work well.

Benjamin Francisoud said...

I tested the 0.6.2 release...
I'll take a look at the 0.7b2 when I'll get some more time :)