A way to get hints back after hiding them would be useful, too. Or some sort of way to summon contextual help. After hiding the hint to get it out of my way, I found I didn’t know what “Size” meant, and wasn’t immediately sure of where to look.

By the way, I’m currently using pivotal tracker (which has the nice advantage of being free, for some reason), so that’s my baseline for comparison.

Minor annoyance: the names next to the « or » should be clickable also, the «» are too small as click targets, so dismissing a sidebar requires more care than it should.

Pivotal gives you an ability to assign FPs to estimate stories, while Zen strongly encourages that you try to make your stories equally sized. I think I like your approach better, since I know I tend to avoid large stories — I need to break it down first before I can work on it without being frightened of it.

There seems to be a bug with trying to edit a story owner while the backlog is open (maybe applies to other sidebars as well, didn’t check). When I click the name, it disappears, then if I close the sidebar, the form shows up. If I click on multiple stories while the bar is open, I only get the form on one of them, and have to refresh the page to see the owners again. This is in Safari 4, didn’t check other browsers.

It would be nice if stories could be left unassigned in the backlog (perhaps this is meant to be possible, but is buggy? I can’t tell due to bug in above paragraph). Actually, I’d be happiest if stories added to the backlog defaulted to unassigned.

It took me too long to figure out how to reach the focus view, since you have to hover over the # (which I didn’t realize was clickable), and it is small. Feels like there should be an easier way, though I don’t have a suggestion at the moment.

Focus view of a story seems less-nice than the rest of the app. Too cluttered. Oh wait, if I hide the hint, it looks much nicer. I want to be able to widen the sidebar in focus view to have the values line up with the headings, making it shorter to get rid of the scrollbar I have there at my current window height (just a little bit too short).

------

Above was comments while I was playing with the app, hopefully it’s organized enough, because I’m too lazy to go back and review.

I think I like your approach more than Pivotal Tracker. Cleaner, and more pleasant, although you need to work really hard to address each and every interface quirk (a couple of which I mentioned above), since the primary appeal of your app is that it has a clean and fluid interface.

Customizable process (without a cluttered interface to manage it!) is a win. The way it is setup should help discourage people from having too many steps in the process, as well, since then the board would become unusable.

My 2 main sticking points:

1. Pivotal is free (again, I have no idea why. They should be taking my money right now)

2. I am unsure about the lack of time estimation (Pivotal provides, I think, the best method I’ve seen of time estimates, if you’re going to have them). Maybe it’s better to not have? I’m not sure.

Anyway, I have a project I’m just starting, with 1 other person. Will have to see if Zen tempts me enough to pay the $9 I’d need ;)

Some closing random thoughts:

1. Put a mini version of your logo to the left of Features (without moving Features to the right) in the nav bar, on every page except the home page. Or something along those lines. We really do look in the top-left to get back to the home page.

2. … just the 1 thought I guess. I had another, but I lost it.

I also thought it was funny.

Edit: Signed up; looked around; certainly appears to be a solid product. I kinda like the story-board style stuff. Good luck! :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen

"Enhances visibility and communication" -> "Make it easy to understand the status of your project at a glance"

"Simple and flexible" doesn't really have any meat in it. See Kawasaki's opposite rule – your competition doesn't describe their product as "Complicated and rigid."

"Easy to get started" -> "Get started in seconds"

Specific claims add a lot more punch and right now they're ousted from prominent positioning by phrases that don't say much.

Do you have a reference for this? As of this writing, the first Google hit for "Kawasaki's opposite rule" is the parent comment. :-)

"Apply the opposite test. How many times have you read a product description like this? “Our software is scalable, secure, easy-to-use, and fast?” Companies use these adjectives as if no other company claims its product is scalable, secure, easy-to-use, and fast. See if your competition uses the antonyms of the adjectives that you use to describe your product. If it doesn't, your description is useless. For example, I've never seen a company say that its product was limited, full of leaks, hard-to-use, and slow."

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/the_art_of_bran.html

http://agilezen.com/?r=hn

Also, the querystring timestamps break caching in some proxies. It's a bit of a pain, but it's best to integrate the timestamp into the filename.

The "Add Story" sidebar doesn't render properly for me when hints are enabled (FF 3.5, Windows 7). The submit button is hidden behind the hint bar -- maybe the sidebar could be shorter so it's not covered by the hint.

More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_software_development

Am I just doing it wrong or is this a bug?

This page could work for a team of 4 or 5 people with impressive backgrounds and interchangable skills, but it just shows your underwear. What if something happens to him? What if something happens to her? What if something happens to "them"?

In a strange way, the Company page is a lot like a butcher shop. We all know that, on the internet, a small company can look like a big company, but we really don't want to see what goes on behind the scenes.

Is there some way you can display your strengths on this page without revealing your weaknesses?

I would cut down with the japanese/zen "motif." This isn't a Las vegas casino, it's a web app. I don't want the joy of slowly unraveling your Internet Mystery, I want an obvious and functional and minimalist (zen!) application that Gets Things Done.

I like your color scheme