I was caught by surprise yesterday by the release of Agile Zen, a web-based agile project management tool. I was a bit miffed at myself for not knowing about it ahead of time because I thought I had well scoured the landscape looking for tools specifically filling this type of role. Oh well. I played with it at length last night and here are my first impressions. While it’s got some visual niceties, I couldn’t even come close to using it for running an Agile project (and I *really* wanted it to be good for that).

Unfortunately, currently, PivotalTracker is much more complete and usable (at least for me, and at least right now) with regards to the things I need to do.  Definitely, AgileZen has merit, and if I was just doing development tasks, I really like their approach.  However, I need management and measurement capabilities just as much.  Here’s the breakdown:

Zen Pros:

1. Can add process steps (testing, QA, etc.) and move the order around to match how I want them. In theory I could use this to manage concurrent or staggered iterations of different teams making sure that features get marshaled through the entire process.
2. Can assign any arbitrary work effort to a task. Given my affinity for the Fibonacci method, this is nice.
3. Can limit the # of items allowed on any process step.
4. Can mark things as “Ready” or “Blocked”. This lets the PM know that action can be taken or his/her help is required.
5. Lots of metric calculations.
6. Nice interface. The board still works well when several process steps are added.
7. Decent granular control over what users/roles are allowed to do.

Zen Cons:

1. Cannot add process steps before Backlog. I personally like the concept of “Icebox” to mean “maybe someday” whereas my backlog is what’s next after I get done with what’s on my plate. Zen has backlog as its “maybe someday”.
2. Limiting of items on a process step is only based on number of tasks, not on the effort involved for those tasks.
3. Confusion around when to use the “Ready” flag and the “Ready” process step. Doesn’t seem intuitive. It also seems to determine when timers are clicked on when measuring efficiency.
4. $$. I think they need to tweak their pricing model a bit. (It’s cheaper to have a bunch of personal plans than to upgrade to the next step in the schedule.) Their scale is too linear.
5. Currently, there is no online help. It’s a Web 2.0 type product so the focus is on simplicity, but some explanation of some of the subtleties would be useful.

I’m still a fan of PivotalTracker as it has way more features (like automatically bringing in backlog if I have capacity and moving tasks to the next step as I complete them). And it’s free. But, I imagine AgileZen is just getting started and I’m looking forward to some of the things they may have in store for later releases. I wonder if they’re using this project internally and would give users view access to what’s on part of their board. That would be a neat concept indeed.

Still, after going so long with no web-based Agile options and now having at least 5 (Assembla, Less Projects, PivotalTracker, Retrospectiva, and now Zen) – I’m happy because these tools will help businesses visualize how Agile works so maybe they’ll start formalizing their embrace of the concept.

If anyone knows of any others, I’d love to take a look at them.

[EDIT] Duh. Rally and VersionOne are two heavy hitters out there as well. I inadvertently left them off in part because I’m looking for lightweight and I hate leaving my client with large recurring charges after I walk out the door. A minimum annual fee – really Rally?