This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by John Wilger. Original Post: What is eXPlainPMT Feed Title: eXPlain Project Management Tool Feed URL: http://www.explainpmt.com/feed/ Feed Description: Official eXPlainPMT Website Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by John Wilger Latest Posts From eXPlain Project Management Tool

eXPlain Project Management Tool (or simply eXPlainPMT) is an open-source, web-based application that assists in the planning and managing of software projects that use the eXtreme Programming methodology.

In traditional XP, story cards are simply written on notecards which are then sorted, ranked, and estimated by the development team and customer. This works well as long as the development team and the customer can be in the same location and a good organization system is in place to prevent story cards from going AWOL. However, if the project team can not overcome geographical separation, or if the idea of keeping track of stacks of notecards is a real turn-off; a web-based system for organizing a project’s story cards may be your only chance at sanity.

There are several applications aside from eXPlainPMT that aim to support XP and other agile methodologies (both commercial and open-source), but there is one area where they have all failed to impress me—they’re too complex. The whole reason for using notecards in the first place was the idea that the “process” should be as light weight as possible. Pretty much everyone can write out information on a piece of paper, so the learning curve is very low. This means that the system actually gets used.

eXPlainPMT’s goal is to remain as simple as possible. Rather than force someone else’s idea of how “XP should be done” on you, eXPlainPMT simply provides a place for you to record a project’s story cards and sort them into iterations. That’s it. There are no complex roles or rules to set up and understand. Bells and whistles are left behind in favor of creating a system that is easy to understand.

So, if you’re looking for a flexible, easy-to-use application to help you and your team run your eXtreme Programming projects with minimal hassle, you’ve come to the right place.